How to Read Footprint Charts: A Practical Guide for Day Traders

Every candlestick on your chart is a lie by omission. It tells you where price opened, where it closed, and the extremes it hit. What it does not tell you is who was fighting inside that candle, where the real volume hit, and which side was actually winning. Two candles can look identical on your chart -- same body, same wicks, same color -- but one had aggressive institutional buyers slamming the ask while the other was a hollow, low-conviction drift. You would never know the difference from a standard chart.

Footprint charts fix that. They crack open the candle and show you every transaction at every price level, split by aggressive buyers and aggressive sellers. If you have ever felt like you were "reading the chart correctly" only to get stopped out by a move that made no sense, footprint charts will probably explain what you missed.

This is not a theoretical overview. This is a working guide to reading footprint charts, understanding what the numbers actually mean, and using that information to take better trades.

What a Footprint Chart Actually Shows You

A footprint chart displays the same candles you already see on your chart, but each candle is expanded to show the volume traded at every individual price level within that candle's range. The most common display -- the bid/ask split -- shows two numbers at each tick:

• Left side (bid volume): Aggressive sellers hitting the bid. These are market sell orders crossing the spread downward.
• Right side (ask volume): Aggressive buyers lifting the ask. These are market buy orders crossing the spread upward.

If you see "161 x 240" at a price level on a 1-minute ES candle, that means 161 contracts were sold aggressively at the bid and 240 were bought aggressively at the ask during that minute, at that specific price. The total volume at that level is 401. The delta -- the net difference -- is +79 (240 minus 161), meaning buyers were more aggressive.

This distinction matters enormously. It does not just show "buyers on one side and sellers on the other." The left side specifically shows sellers who were willing to accept a lower price to get filled immediately -- aggressive sellers who accepted a buy offer. The right side shows buyers who were willing to pay a higher price to get filled immediately. Both sides represent urgency and intent, not just participation.

If you have read our breakdown of cumulative volume delta, you already know that delta tracks aggressive orders -- the traders willing to cross the spread. Footprint charts give you that same delta information, but at every single price level instead of aggregated for the whole candle. That granularity is where footprint charts earn their reputation.

The Three Display Modes That Matter

Most platforms offer several footprint views. Three are worth your time:

Bid/Ask Split is the default and the most informative. You see the raw aggressive sell volume on the left and aggressive buy volume on the right at each tick. This is the view that lets you spot absorption, trapped traders, and imbalances directly.

Delta simplifies the display to a single number per price level -- the net difference between buying and selling volume. Green means net buying, red means net selling. It is cleaner and faster to scan, but you lose the ability to see how much total effort was behind a move.

Volume Profile within the footprint shows the total volume at each price level as a horizontal bar, visualizing the distribution of trading activity inside the candle. This makes it easy to spot the point of control -- the price level where the most contracts changed hands -- at a glance.

Use bid/ask split when you are analyzing a specific candle at a key level. Use delta when you want a quick read on the overall pressure of multiple candles. And use the volume profile view when you need to understand the shape of volume distribution inside a candle.

Reading the Point of Control

Inside every footprint candle, one price level will have more volume traded than any other. That is the point of control, and it matters for two reasons.

First, it tells you where the market found the most agreement. Buyers and sellers were most active at that price, which means the market considered it a fair value within that candle's context. Second, the POC often acts as a magnet on retest. If price moves away from the POC and then comes back, there is a reasonable probability that same level draws attention again.

The location of the POC within the candle is also telling. A POC near the top of a bearish candle suggests sellers absorbed buying pressure at high prices before pushing price down. A POC near the bottom of a bullish candle suggests buyers accumulated aggressively at the lows. When the POC sits at the extreme of a candle, it often marks a level where one side was heavily committed -- and those participants will defend that level on retest.

This concept pairs directly with volume profile analysis, where the POC of a session or range becomes a gravitational center for price action. The footprint POC is the same idea, just zoomed into a single candle.

The Value Area Within a Candle

Beyond the POC, footprint charts also show the value area -- the price range that contains approximately 70% of the volume traded in that candle. The value area high (VAH) and value area low (VAL) appear as dotted lines extending horizontally from the candle.

Why does this matter? The value area tells you where the market considered prices "fair" during that time period. If price later returns to the value area from outside it, there is a tendency for the market to accept those prices again -- meaning the value area can act as a zone of support or resistance depending on direction. When a candle with a tight value area forms at a key level, it tells you the market found a narrow consensus. When the value area is wide, the market was exploring and undecided. Both readings are useful for planning entries and targets.

Imbalances: Where One Side Dominates

An imbalance occurs when one side of the auction overwhelms the other at a specific price level. Most platforms default to a 300% threshold -- meaning the volume on one side must be at least three times the volume on the other side for the level to be flagged as imbalanced.

If you see 12 contracts on the bid and 38 on the ask at the same tick, that is roughly a 3:1 imbalance in favor of buyers. The platform will highlight that level, usually with a colored box on the buy side. If you see 45 contracts on the bid and 8 on the ask, sellers are dominating that tick at better than 5:1.

Individual imbalances are interesting. Stacked imbalances are significant. When you see three, four, or five consecutive price levels all showing imbalances on the same side, that is a wall of aggressive intent. Stacked buy imbalances near the bottom of a candle suggest strong initiative buying -- someone is aggressively lifting offers across multiple price levels, not just poking at one. Stacked sell imbalances near the top of a candle suggest aggressive distribution.

Here is the practical application: stacked imbalance zones often act as support or resistance when retested. The traders who built that imbalance cluster were committed enough to buy or sell aggressively across several ticks. If price returns to that zone, there is a reasonable chance those same participants -- or others who recognize the significance -- will defend it.

For entries, some traders use a 200% imbalance threshold for backtesting to capture more setups, then tighten to 300% for live trading. The idea is that 200% gives you more data to test with, but 300% filters for only the highest-confidence signals where one side truly dominated.

Note the diagonal calculation. Imbalances are not calculated by comparing the bid and ask at the same price level. They compare the bid at one level with the ask at the level diagonally above it. This is because the best bid and best ask are always at least one tick apart. So if the bid volume at one level is 15 and the ask volume one tick above is 45, that is a 300% imbalance -- the buyers at the higher price outnumbered the sellers at the lower price by 3:1, indicating strong upward initiative at that price intersection.

Finished vs. Unfinished Auctions

This concept alone can change how you read chart extremes. Look at the very top and very bottom of any footprint candle -- the absolute high and absolute low.

A finished auction at the high means there were zero (or near-zero) contracts traded on the buy side at the top tick. The last few levels might read 0x9, 0x3, 0x0. Translation: nobody was interested in buying at higher prices. The auction ran out of fuel naturally. This is genuine exhaustion and it increases the probability that the high will hold if retested.

An unfinished auction at the high means there were still significant numbers on both sides at the extreme. Something like 15x19 at the very top. The market did not run out of interest -- it ran out of time within that candle. It has unfinished business at those prices, and markets tend to return to where unfinished business remains. This is a liquidity concept at its core: unfinished auctions represent remaining liquidity, and price gravitates toward liquidity.

The same logic applies at the low of a candle, just inverted. A finished auction at the bottom -- with minimal sell-side interest at the lowest ticks -- signals exhaustion and makes the low more likely to hold. An unfinished auction at the bottom suggests the market may come back for more.

When you see a finished auction at a high that coincides with a resistance level you have already identified, and then a new candle at that same level also produces a finished auction, you have a high-probability short setup. The market has twice declared it has no interest in higher prices at that zone.

Absorption: The Institutional Signature

Absorption is the most important concept in footprint analysis, and it is the concept most invisible on a regular candlestick chart. Here is what it looks like:

You see heavy selling -- large red numbers on the bid side, a strongly negative delta. Sellers are aggressively hitting the bid. This should push price lower. But price does not move. The candle prints heavy volume but goes nowhere.

What is happening? A large passive buyer is sitting with limit orders at those prices, absorbing every market sell order that hits. They are not crossing the spread -- they are letting the sellers come to them. On the footprint, you see aggressive selling being rewarded with zero downward progress, and that disconnect is your signal.

One trader described it perfectly when analyzing gold futures: "8,000 contracts traded over 15 minutes below a key breakout point, and price did not change." That is absorption. And the tell-tale sign was simple -- most genuine breakouts do not stall for 15-20 minutes. They continue within a few minutes. When a breakout stalls despite heavy volume, someone is on the other side.

The reason absorption matters so much is what happens next. Those aggressive sellers who pushed into a wall of passive buying are now underwater. They are trapped. And trapped traders must eventually exit -- which means those sellers must buy to close their positions. Their forced buying becomes fuel for a reversal. This is the core mechanic behind the institutional price blocks concept: zones where institutions accumulated positions often produce the strongest reactions when retested, precisely because of the trapped traders left on the wrong side.

One important nuance: always observe absorption in high-volume conditions. When volume is thin, a single algorithm can create the appearance of absorption by placing and canceling orders rapidly. But when thousands of contracts are trading and price still will not move, that is real inventory changing hands between large participants. One side has to win, and the passive absorber almost always has the deeper pockets.

The V-Reversal Pattern

A specific footprint pattern worth memorizing is the V-reversal. It shows up as a sharp initiation by sellers -- a strong negative delta candle with heavy bid volume -- followed immediately by an equally sharp reversal with strong positive delta and heavy ask volume in the very next candle. The two candles together form a V shape on the delta.

V-reversals on the footprint tend to hold as strong price action signals because they represent a complete shift in control. The first candle shows aggressive selling. The second candle shows equally aggressive buying that overwhelmed the sellers. The low of that V-reversal becomes a significant reference point going forward. If that low is later retested and holds, it confirms the reversal. If it breaks, the buying conviction was not as strong as it appeared.

On a regular candlestick chart, a V-reversal looks like a simple bullish engulfing or a hammer. But the footprint tells you the quality of that reversal -- whether it was backed by real volume and genuine delta shift, or whether it was a thin, low-volume bounce that is likely to fail. Not all engulfing candles are created equal, and the footprint is how you tell the difference.

Trapped Traders and Delta Divergence

If absorption is the setup, trapped traders are the payoff. The logic is straightforward:

If you see aggressive selling at a support level but price refuses to drop, those sellers are not being rewarded. Every minute they sit in a losing position adds pressure. Eventually, they have to close. And when they close shorts, they buy -- creating a burst of buying pressure that can fuel a sharp reversal.

The footprint makes this visible in real time. You watch the delta go negative candle after candle -- sellers are in control of the flow -- but price holds at the level. Then the delta flips green. Sellers gave up. Buyers take over. That flip, at a predefined level where absorption was visible, is one of the cleanest entry signals footprint charts produce.

Delta divergence is the broader version of this concept. Price makes a new low, but the delta on that push is weaker than the previous push down. The first leg down might show delta of -1,000. The second leg, also making a new low, shows delta of -250. Price is still moving down, but the aggressive selling effort behind it has evaporated. The market is running on fumes.

This is the footprint chart version of the exhaustion concept you can also track with CVD divergences. The difference is that footprint charts let you see exactly where that exhaustion is occurring -- at which specific price levels the effort dried up.

There is also the exhaustion ratio to watch for at extremes. Compare the volume at the last two ticks of a candle's high or low. If the second-to-last tick had 200 contracts and the very last tick had only 8, that is a ratio of 25:1 -- a dramatic dry-up in volume that suggests the move ran out of gas. The larger these ratios at candle extremes, the more likely that extreme will hold. Professional order flow traders flag exhaustion ratios above 10:1 as significant, and the biggest ratios tend to appear at the tops of extended moves.

Practical Setups: How to Trade With Footprint Data

None of this matters if you cannot turn it into entries. Here are the setups that actually work, drawn from how professional order flow traders use footprint charts.

The Absorption Reversal

The setup: Price pushes into a known support or resistance level. You see a candle with heavy aggressive selling (at support) or heavy aggressive buying (at resistance), but price stalls. The delta is strongly directional, but price refuses to follow. The next candle shows a shift -- buying volume appears on the ask side, or selling volume appears on the bid side.

The entry: Go long once the candle closes above the absorption zone at support, or go short once it closes below at resistance. Stop goes just beyond the extreme of the absorption candle.

Why it works: The passive side absorbed all the aggression and is now in control. The aggressive side is trapped and their exits will fuel your trade.

Target: First target is VWAP or the session mid-point. Second target is the prior swing high or structure level. Risk-to-reward of 2:1 or better is typical when the absorption is clean. Some traders scale out -- taking half at 2R and trailing the rest.

The Imbalance Breakout

The setup: Price coils in a tight range. Volume builds over several candles. Then a breakout candle forms with strong stacked imbalances on the side of the breakout. Delta spikes aggressively. A 3:1 or 4:1 volume imbalance appears near the top (for longs) or bottom (for shorts) of the candle.

The entry: Enter on the close of the breakout candle or on a pullback to the breakout base. Stop goes below the range for longs, above for shorts.

Why it works: Stacked imbalances show initiative orders -- real commitment to the direction, not passive fills. When you see that kind of conviction backed by volume, the move has legs.

One important detail: when stacked imbalances appear on a breakout candle, entering with a market order at the close is often better than waiting for a limit fill at the POC. The price usually does not come back to the POC when imbalances are this strong. Hesitation costs you the trade. If you want to be conservative, split the position -- enter half at market on the close of the breakout candle, and place a limit order for the other half at the POC in case of a pullback.

The POC Retest Entry

The setup: A signal candle forms at a key level with the correct directional bias. It closes beyond its own point of control in the expected direction, and the delta matches. For a short at resistance, the candle must close below its POC and have a negative delta. For a long at support, the candle must close above its POC with a positive delta.

The entry: Place a limit order one tick beyond the POC of the signal candle. The idea is that the POC acts as the first barrier -- if price comes back to retest it and respects it, the original directional thesis is confirmed. Stop goes beyond the high or low of the signal candle.

Why it works: The POC represents where the market found the most agreement. If a directional candle closes beyond that consensus level, the pullback to retest it becomes a high-probability entry with a tight stop. The one-tick buffer ensures you get filled even if the exact POC level attracts too many resting orders.

Bonus confirmation: If the signal candle also has a finished auction at the extreme (zero contracts at the high for a short setup, zero at the low for a long setup), the probability of the trade working increases. That finished auction tells you the market exhausted interest in the direction opposite to your trade. It is not a required condition, but when it is present alongside a clean POC close and matching delta, you have about as much confluence as a footprint candle can give you.

The Delta Flip at a Level

The setup: Price arrives at a predefined level from your higher-timeframe analysis -- an order block, a volume node, a session level. You switch to the footprint and watch. Multiple candles show one-sided delta (all negative at support, all positive at resistance), but price holds the level. Then one candle flips -- delta turns positive at support or negative at resistance.

The entry: Enter on the flip candle or the next confirmation candle. Stop below the level for longs, above for shorts.

Why it works: Consecutive one-sided delta with no price progress is textbook absorption. The flip is the moment the aggressive side capitulates and the passive side takes initiative. This combines the footprint reading with the price action context you already use for level identification.

A note on risk management with this setup: an average winner is typically 3-4R, so you can afford to take two attempts if the first entry gets stopped out. If you still see absorption at the level after being stopped, the thesis is not invalidated -- the timing was slightly off. Re-enter with the same stop distance. One loss plus one win at 3R still nets you 2R. This is why precision levels combined with footprint confirmation can tolerate imperfect timing.

Where Footprint Charts Work and Where They Do Not

Footprint charts need real volume data. That means centralized exchanges with transparent order matching. They work best on:

• Futures (ES, NQ, CL, GC) -- the gold standard. CME data is reliable and relatively affordable.
• Crypto spot and futures (BTC, ETH on major exchanges) -- volume data is real and accessible.
• Liquid US equities -- large-cap stocks with deep order books.

They do not work on:

• Forex -- there is no centralized exchange. Broker-reported volume is a fraction of the real interbank market and tells you almost nothing. If you trade Forex, use futures equivalents (6E for EUR/USD, 6B for GBP/USD) for footprint analysis, or stick to tools like our Liquidity Heatmap that derive insights from price action rather than raw exchange data.
• Illiquid stocks -- thin order books produce noisy footprint data that is difficult to interpret.
• Higher timeframes -- footprint charts are most useful on 1-minute to 5-minute charts. On the daily or weekly, the granularity adds little because so many micro-battles happened inside the candle that the aggregate is smoothed out anyway.

The ideal workflow: Use a 5-minute chart with a footprint overlay for your directional bias and level identification. Drop to 1-minute footprint when price reaches a key level and you want to time your entry. This mirrors how professional order flow traders structure their screens -- higher timeframe for context, lower timeframe footprint for execution.

Platforms That Support Footprint Charts

TradingView is the most accessible option and is what most retail traders will use. Other platforms with footprint capabilities include Sierra Chart, Bookmap, Jigsaw Trading, NinjaTrader, QuantTower, and MotiveWave. Most require exchange-grade data subscriptions, particularly for futures. CME data is reasonably priced, but other exchanges like ICE can be significantly more expensive. Check what data is available and what it costs before committing to a platform specifically for footprint trading.

Setting Up Footprint Charts on TradingView

TradingView added footprint charts as a built-in chart type, making them accessible without third-party software. Here is how to set them up effectively.

Open the chart type selector and choose "Volume Footprint." You will see the footprint overlay applied to every candle. Right-click on any candle and open settings. Here are the changes that matter:

Display type: Keep it on "Cluster" for the standard bid/ask split view. The "Profile" option shows a volume profile shape instead.

Type: Set to "Buy and Sell" for the full bid/ask split. You can switch to "Delta" for a simpler view when scanning multiple candles quickly.

Gradient: Turn it off. The color shading looks nice but distracts from the numbers. You want your eyes on the actual volume figures, not approximate color intensities.

Imbalance: Set to 300% for high-confidence signals. This means only price levels where one side outweighs the other by 3:1 will be highlighted. Drop to 200% if you want more signals for backtesting.

Stacked levels: Set to 3. This means three consecutive imbalanced price levels must stack up before the platform draws a zone across your chart.

Row size: Keep on ATR (auto). This adapts the tick grouping to the instrument's volatility. If you trade NASDAQ or gold, you may want to switch to manual and set 4-5 ticks for NQ or 5-10 ticks for gold, because those instruments have more ticks per candle than the ES but less liquidity per tick. The ES at around 6,000 points works fine at one tick per row, but the NASDAQ at 25,000 points has many more price levels per candle with less liquidity at each tick. Without grouping, you will see a sea of tiny numbers that are almost impossible to read. Grouping consolidates them into something usable.

Point of control: Turn it on and give it a distinct color. Yellow works well against a dark background. The POC is one of the most actionable pieces of information on any footprint candle.

Keep your background dark, your font size medium or larger, and resist the urge to add other indicators on top. The footprint itself contains enormous information density. Adding RSI, MACD, or moving averages on the same chart creates visual noise that defeats the purpose. If you need those tools, put them on a separate pane.

One useful addition is VWAP and session levels overlaid on the footprint chart. VWAP gives you a dynamic fair value reference, and session highs and lows mark the levels where you should be paying the most attention to footprint data. These overlays are lightweight enough that they do not clutter the display, and they provide the "where should I look" context that makes footprint reading productive.

Common Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Staring at the footprint all day. This is the number one beginner mistake. Footprint charts are not meant to be watched continuously. They are an X-ray -- you turn them on when price reaches a key level and you need to see what is happening inside the candles. Between those moments, a regular candlestick chart is all you need.

Trading footprint signals without a level. A stacked imbalance or delta flip in the middle of a range means almost nothing. Every footprint signal needs context -- a support/resistance level, an order block, a volume node, an opening range boundary. The level gives you the "where." The footprint gives you the "who is in control."

Confusing volume with direction. High volume on the sell side does not automatically mean bearish. If that selling is being absorbed by passive buyers and price is not moving down, high sell volume is actually a bullish signal. Always ask: is the aggressive activity being rewarded with price movement? If not, the other side is winning.

Ignoring the time factor at breakouts. When a breakout occurs on heavy volume but then stalls for 15-20 minutes at the breakout level, something is wrong. Genuine breakouts do not hang around. They continue within minutes. If you see the footprint filling up with contracts but price is going nowhere after a breakout, that is absorption, and the breakout is likely to fail.

Using footprint on Forex pairs. The volume data on standard Forex feeds is not representative of the real interbank market. Any footprint analysis on Forex spot is unreliable at best. If you trade currencies and want order flow data, use currency futures instead.

Overcomplicating the display. You do not need to analyze every number on every candle. You are scanning for four things: large volume clusters (potential traps or control zones), strong delta shifts (aggression changing sides), imbalances at 300% or higher (bid or ask domination), and absorption (price holding despite directional volume pressure). Everything else is noise. Develop the habit of scanning quickly, then zooming in only when one of these four patterns appears at a level you care about.

Building an Expected vs. Actual Framework

One of the most powerful ways to use footprint charts is not as a standalone signal generator, but as a confirmation tool within an expected versus actual framework. Before price reaches a level, you define what you expect to see. Then you compare what actually happens on the footprint.

Say you identify a key support level on the 15-minute chart. Your expectation is: if this level is going to hold, I should see absorption (heavy selling but no downward progress), followed by a delta flip, and ideally a finished auction at the low. If instead you see clean selling with price breaking through on heavy negative delta and no absorption, your expectation was wrong and you stay out or flip short.

This framework prevents you from forcing trades. Instead of looking at the footprint and trying to find a pattern, you define what a valid trade looks like before it happens. The footprint either confirms or denies. There is no ambiguity.

Professional order flow traders describe this as "building your actual versus expected" -- and it transforms footprint charts from an intimidating wall of numbers into a simple yes-or-no decision tool at key levels. Over time, this approach also builds your pattern recognition. After analyzing a hundred breakouts through the footprint, you will know instinctively what a healthy breakout looks like (immediate continuation, heavy imbalances, no absorption) versus a failing one (price stalling, heavy two-way volume, absorption at the breakout level). That intuition, grounded in actual data rather than candlestick shapes, is what separates professional traders from retail.

Connecting Footprint Concepts to Your Existing Workflow

If you trade price action and Smart Money Concepts, footprint charts do not replace your analysis -- they sharpen it. You still find your levels the same way: market structure breaks, order blocks, fair value gaps, session highs and lows. The footprint simply answers the question that candlestick patterns cannot: "Is institutional money actually present at this level, or am I trading a pattern in a vacuum?"

When you identify a bullish order block on the 15-minute chart and price taps it, switching to a 1-minute footprint can tell you within one or two candles whether there is genuine buying interest. If you see absorption -- heavy selling into passive buying with no downward progress -- you have confirmation that the order block is live. If you see clean selling with no resistance and price slicing through, the order block failed and you stay out.

The Supply Demand Pressure Cloud already visualizes buying and selling pressure zones on your TradingView chart without requiring exchange-grade data. It gives you a similar read on whether buyers or sellers are winning at a given price zone, making it a practical alternative if you do not have access to footprint data or trade instruments where footprint charts are unreliable.

For opening range breakout strategies, footprint analysis is particularly powerful. Instead of simply trading the breakout of the first 15-minute range, you can look inside those first three 5-minute candles and see whether the breakout was driven by real initiative orders with stacked imbalances, or whether it was a thin, low-volume drift. A breakout backed by 4:1 ask imbalances across multiple ticks has a fundamentally different probability of continuation than one that barely had volume at the extreme.

Similarly, if you use candlestick patterns as part of your analysis, the footprint adds a layer of quality filtering. A bullish engulfing candle at support is a standard price action signal. But a bullish engulfing candle at support that also shows absorption of sellers on the footprint, a positive delta shift, and a finished auction at the low is a completely different trade. Same pattern on the surface. Vastly different conviction underneath. The footprint is what lets you distinguish the high-probability patterns from the low-probability ones that look identical on a regular chart.

The Bottom Line

Footprint charts give you one thing that no other chart type provides: visibility into the real-time battle between aggressive buyers and sellers at every price level inside every candle. That information lets you confirm setups, spot absorption, identify trapped traders, and time entries with a precision that standard candlestick analysis cannot match.

But they are a precision tool, not a crutch. They work best when combined with solid level identification, disciplined risk management, and a clear understanding of what you are looking for before you zoom in. Use them at decision points. Look for absorption, imbalance clusters, and delta shifts at predefined levels. And always ask the question that separates footprint reading from noise: is the aggressive activity being rewarded with price movement, or is someone on the other side absorbing it all?

If you want to apply order flow concepts to your TradingView charts without needing exchange-grade data, tools like the Liquidity Heatmap bring volume-at-price visibility directly into your existing workflow. Combined with what you now know about reading footprint data, you will have a significantly more complete picture of what is actually happening at the levels where you trade.

Start simple. Pick one concept -- absorption, imbalances, or finished auctions -- and spend a week observing it at your key levels. Do not try to learn everything at once. The traders who get the most out of footprint charts are the ones who mastered one pattern deeply before moving to the next. And if you are looking for more context on how order flow fits into the bigger picture, that is worth reading alongside this guide.