This paper explores a new method for analysing and comparing image histograms. The technique amounts to a novel way of backprojecting an image into one with fewer, statistically significant colours. When the method is tested with the COIL-100 and MPEG-7 data sets it is shown to have a performance that is as good as the best methods using fewer enteries than the original histogram. Therefore it offers the potential for extending the use of histograms into high dimensional feature spaces.