| flash/blur | shots where long exposures are mixed with flash |
| Flare | Flare is unwanted streaks of light on your photos caused by lens imperfections and/or pointing the camera at the light source. |
| Fisheye | Extreme wide angle lenses sometimes with 180° angle of view across the diagonal and a typical focal length less than 15mm (on the 35mm system). |
| Firmware | An often-used micro program or instruction set stored in ROM. Usually refers to the ROM-based software that controls a unit. Firmware is found in all computer based products from Cameras to Digital Peripherals |
| Firewire | Digital video interface (connection between camera and editing equipment, monitor, computer, etc.) specified in document IEEE 1394. Data transfer speed up to 400Mbit/s. |
| Filters | Are image processing actions that can be automatically applied to your image and which result in a particular effect. In this respect they are like preset special effects. |
| Filter | A device (usually a sheet of glass or plastic) which attenuates (reduces) all or part of the light passing through it. |
| Filmstrip | this format is used for RGB animation or movie files created by Adobe Premiere®. If you resize, resample, remove alpha channels, or change the color mode or file format of a Filmstrip file in Photoshop, you won't be able to save it back to Filmstrip format. |
| film speed | Film speed is the measure of a photographic film's sensitivity to light |
| Fill | a second flashgun should be used to fill-in the shadows caused by the main strobe and should therefore be less powerful |
| File Type | Many different 'flavors' of image file exist. They are distinguished by the file extension e.g. TIF and by the description seen in explorer view e.g. Tagged Image Format (for TIF) |
| File Size | The size of a file expressed in bytes or in pixels (e.g. 6Mb or 4256 x 2848). |
| Feather | Feathering is the process of blurring edges around a selection. Blurring the edges helps the selection blend into another object, file, or selection when it is moved, cut, copied, and/or pasted. |
| Fade | The Fade command appears in the Edit menu after a filter has been applied and allows you to change the blending options for that filter. The Fade command also appears after using a painting tool, using an eraser, or making a color adjustment. The Fade dialog box has two options: changing the opacity and changing the blending mode. |
| Eyedropper | A tool to sample color |
| Extrude | Gives a 3D texture to a selection or layer. |
| Extension Tube | Extension tubes increase magnification by fitting between the lens and camera body (SLR/DSLR) and are used for macro and closeup photography. |
| exposure latitude | the extent to which a light-sensitive material can be over or underexposed and still achieve an acceptable result |
| Exposure | Recording light onto photo sensitive devices and materials |
| EXIF | Exif is a standard for image files created with digital cameras and other input devices. Exif files contain either uncompressed TIFF images or compressed JPEG images. In addition, these files can contain many comment fields of various types." |
| EV | Exposure value a combination of shutter speed/aperture. |
| Establishing Shot | A shot that sets up a scene's setting and/or its participants. Generally it’s a shot at the beginning (occasionally at the end) of a scene |
| Eraser tool | Lets you erase by clicking with the mouse and erases all pixels similar in color to the area you click on. |
| Equalize | Equalize command redistributes the brightness values of the pixels in an image so that they more evenly represent the entire range of brightness levels. |
| EPS | The Encapsulated PostScript (EPS) language file format is supported by most illustration and page-layout programs and, in most cases, is the preferred format for these applications. |
| EO connector | Electro Oceanic A type of wetconnector with two contacts, in appearance like a rubber jackplug. |
| Environmentally Sealed | High end cameras are protected from ingress of contaminants by seals around controls. |
| EMF | The Enhanced MetaFile (EMF) format is an extension of the Windows metafiles format developed for use with 32 bit Windows applications. It is only available to native 32 bit applications. |
| Emboss | Embosses the current loaded image. Embossing gives the image a raised metallic like look. |
| Electronic viewfinder | A viewfinder that displays the image on a mini TV screen |
| EI | Exposure index, or EI, refers to speed rating assigned to a particular film |
| Effective Pixels | the number of recorded pixels |
| Edit Switch | A switch on a camcorder or VCR that allows bypassing of some playback during dubbing |
| Edit controller | A machine that controls two VCR’s during editing. |
| Edit | The process of correcting or revising scenes, images, or sound |
| ED-Beta | High quality Sony videotape format |
| ECU | Extreme Close Up Shot |
| Dynamic Range | Dynamic range is the ratio between the whitest whites (DMin) and the blackest blacks (DMax). It may not be possible to capture the entire range of a scene photographically due to the limitations of the technology used. |
| Dyes | Types of pigment |
| Dye sublimation print | A high-quality print created using thermal dyes |
| DX coding | Pattern printed on the side of a 35mm film cassette, which is used by the camera to sense the required ISO/ASA filmspeed setting. The film speed is sensed by means of electrical contacts pressing against the canister, so dirt can cause miss sensing. |
| DVE | Digital Video Effects Special effects eg. Page turning, patterns etc. |
| DV | Digital Video |
| Dust & Scratches | Reduces noise by changing dissimilar pixels. To achieve a balance between sharpening the image and hiding defects, try various combinations of radius and threshold settings. Or apply the filter on selected areas in the image. |
| Dub | (Dubbing) recording or replacing voices |
| DSLR | Digital Single Lens Reflex Camera. A camera that uses a mirror to redirect the image projected onto the film into the viewfinder. The mirror flips out of the way when the button is pressed to take the picture. |
| Dropout | Occurs when a portion of oxide is missing on the videotape causing a small spot of light passing across the screen |
| droplet | A droplet is a small application that applies an action to one or more images that you drag onto |
| Drop Shadow | Adds a shadow that falls behind the contents on the layer. |
| Driver | A special type of software that Windows uses to control a specific piece of hardware. |
| DRAM Buffer | All digicams have a certain amount of fixed memory in them to facilitate image processing before the finished picture is stored to the flash memory card. Cameras that have a burst mode have much larger DRAM buffers, often 32MB or larger. This also makes them more expensive |
| DPOF | DPOF (Digital Print Order Format) [deepuff ] is a system that allows digital cameras to specify images for printing. This allows consumers to easily get prints from (compatible) photo labs and stores information about number of copies, print size etc. |
| DPI | Dots per inch. Usually used in context of monitors but can also be a printing terms. |
| Dot gain | the inherent “growth” of a halftone dot when printed on paper, vellum, or film. A small dot can grow as much as 50 percent or more when printed. Dot gain can also occur when the ink is printed on the shirt. |
| Dome port | Lens port constructed as part of a sphere of uniform thickness for wide-angle underwater photography. |
| Dodge tool | Used to darken areas of an image or print. The Dodge tool’s name comes from the traditional photographer’s method of reducing the amount of light made available when exposing the film to get the picture. |
| Docking | The Palette Well offers a place to dock palettes that you don’t want on the screen but you still want to have access to without having to use the Window menu. To dock a palette, simply drag it from its place in the workspace to the Palette Well. |
| DNR | Digital Noise Reduction. Cleanup process used when transferring analog video signals into the digital domain. |
| DNG | Adobe’s Digital Negative format |
| Dither | Reduces visible banding related to gradients when using the Gradient tool. |
| Dissolve | Fading from one image to another |
| Display Resolution | (for your monitor) is usually 72 dpi so there is no point in having large files if they will only ever be displayed on a computer screen. Working backwards, for example, a 3 x 3 image needs 216 x 216 pixels. |
| Diopter | A unit used to express the power of magnifying glasses. Also used as a name for screwin magnifying lenses, which can be fitted to the front of a camera lens. |
| DIN | Deutsches Institut für Normung e.V. (DIN; in English, the German Institute for Standardization) is the German national organization for standardization and is that country's ISO member body |
| Digital Zoom | Digital zoom is a feature that is more marketing ploy than anything else! Unlike Optical zoom, which is produced by the lens system physically changing focal length, digital zoom merely crops the image progressively. |
| Digital Negative format | Adobe’s open source Raw file format |
| Digimarc | The Digimarc filters embed a digital watermark into an image to store copyright information. |
| Diffuser | A device that increases the effective area of a lightsource, i.e. makes it less pointlike. This is usually a piece of opal or translucent plastic that can be fitted to the front of a light source. |
| Diffuse | Shuffles pixels in a selection to make the selection look less focused according to the selected option: Normal moves pixels randomly, ignoring color values; Darken Only replaces light pixels with darker pixels; and Lighten Only replaces dark pixels with lighter pixels. Anisotropic shuffles pixels in the direction of the least change in color. |
| Diffraction | bending of light rays |
| DIB | Windows Device Independent Bitmap. This is an alternative bitmap extension (to BMP) used by Microsoft Windows Bitmaps. This format is used extensively by computer operating systems for operations in memory. However, this is not a common format for general use. |
| Diameter | (Greek letter 'phi'), abbreviation for 'diameter' (used because it consists of a line drawn across a circle). |
| Dew | A built in warning signal that appears in the viewfinder or a switch that automatically switches the camcorder off on detection of moisture on the tape or electronics |
| Device independent | Not dependent on a particular item of hardware. For example, a color result that can be replicated on any hardware device |
| Device dependent | Dependent on a particular item of hardware. For example, referring to a color result unique to a particular printer |
| Despeckle | Detects the edges in an image (areas where significant color changes occur) and blurs all of the selection except those edges. This blur-ring removes noise while preserving detail. |
| Descreen | The removal of half-tone lines or patterns during scanning |
| Desaturate | this command converts a color image to a grayscale image in the same color mode. For example, it assigns equal red, green, and blue values to each pixel in an RGB image to make it appear grayscale. The lightness value of each pixel does not change. |
| Depth Rating | The depth you can take underwater photo equipment to before it floods! |
| Depth Of Field Preview | A useful feature for SLR and DSLR cameras that allows you to preview the zone in your picture that will be in focus. |
| Depth Of Field | The zone in your picture that is in focus. |
| Density | The measure of opacity of tone on a negative |
| Delrin | Acetal Homopolymer. Engineering plastic with sufficient hardness and dimensional stability for the manufacture of precision components (e.g. screw threads). |
| Delete Editing | Editing by deleting scenes |
| DeInterlace | Smoothes moving images captured on video by removing either the odd or even interlaced lines in a video image. You can choose to replace the discarded lines by duplication or interpolation. |
| Defringe | replaces the color of any fringe pixels with the colors of nearby pixels containing pure colors (those without background color). |
| DCX | This is a multipage PCX format that enables a file to contain more than one image. It is handled the same as a regular PCX file, except for the multipage feature. |
| DCS | Desktop Color Separations format is a version of the standard EPS format that lets you save not only the file or image but also its CMYK or multichannel color separations you see in the Channels palette. DCS 2.0 allows you to save spot channels too. These files can then be exported to various other graphics programs, and their separations can be printed on PostScript printers. |
| DC | Direct current (as opposed to AC) an electrical current that does not change with time, such as might flow when a light bulb is connected to a battery. |
| DAT | Digital Audio Tape. Tape format used to store computer data |
| D8 | Digital 8 Digital video recording system using 8mm tape cassette. |
| CVBS | Chrominance, Video, Blanking, and Synchronization i.e. a composite video signal. |
| Cut-In | a brief CU or ECU of the main subject |
| Cutaway | a shot of a subject related to the main subject (but not the main subject itself) |
| Cut | A technique of moving instantly from one image (sound) to another. Often used in editing |
| Curves | Allows you to control your color changes precisely and from the entire tonal spectrum. The Curves tool also allows you to preview changes as you make them, as well as view the changes to the ink values in the Info palette at the same time. |
| CUR | This is a file format for storing Windows cursors (mouse pointers). Many imaging applications do not load or save transparency information in these files. The size when you write these images should be exactly 32-by-32 pixels. |
| CU | (Close-Up) A shot taken close to the subject. The CU explains the action definitively |
| CS | Photoshop’s camera suite |
| CRT | Cathode Ray Tube AKA old style (not flat screen) TV/monitors |
| Cropping margin | different monitors can crop the image to less than full frame. There is a safe area in the frame inside which the image is unlikely to be cropped |
| CPU | Central Processing Unite, used to compute exposure |
| Convex Lens | A lens in which the principal optical surface bulges outwards. |
| Conversion lens | A supplementary lens that fits in front of the camcorder lens. Can be wide angle or telephoto |
| Control Track | Electronic signal recorded on video tape which tells the VCR how fast/slow to play the tape |
| contrast | the difference in desity between parts of an image. High contrast, for example, denotes larger differences with blacker blacks and whiter whites. |
| Continuous tone | An image containing the illusion of smooth graduations between highlights and shadows |
| Continuous | (C) the camera's ability to continuously focus on a moving subject |
| Continuity | Unbroken flow of scenes |
| Conté Crayon | Replicates the texture of dense dark and pure white Conté crayons on an image. The Conté Crayon filter uses the foreground color for dark areas and the background color for light areas. |
| Contact sheet | A sheet that contains thumbnails of images. Contact sheets can be used to catalog images on your computer, in your digital library, for your library of logos and designs, or to offer choices for different photos or logos to clients. You can automatically create a contact sheet using the File>Automate>Contact Sheet II command |
| Concave Lens | A lens in which the principal optical surface curves into the body of the glass, i.e. the glass has a hollow or dent. |
| Compression | Many file formats use compression to reduce the file size of bitmap images. Lossless techniques compress the file without removing image detail or color information; lossy techniques remove detail. |
| Composite video | Used by VHS and standard 8mm. The signals for colour and luminance are combined in one signal. |
| Compact Flash Type II | Slightly thicker than type Compact flash type I and with greater capacity. Most common type is IBM's Microdrive |
| Compact Flash Type I | Most common type of storage card with identical contacts to PCMCIA cards (found on laptops). |
| Compact Cameras | Cameras where the lens is built-in to the camera body. AKA Point and shoot, digicams |
| Compact | Type of camera that does not employ a SLR viewfinder. |
| ColorSync | System level software developed by Apple, designed to work together with hardware devices to facilitate predictable color |
| Color Wheel | Theoretical representation of color spectrum where all colors have an opposite. |
| Color Temperature | The precise color of a light source. |
| Color Space | The actual color information put out by a device |
| Color palette | Displays information on the current foreground and background colors and allows you to change the colors as desired and/or base the colors on different color models. |
| Color Modes | Color modes determine the number of colors that can be displayed in an image, and affect the file size of an image. e.g. 1 bit, grayscale, RGB. |
| Color Mode | For (a given image size) you need 256 times the number of pixels to represent a (8 Bit) grayscale image compared to a (1 Bit) B&W image! |
| Color Management | The process of managing color throughout the digital workflow. |
| Color Halftone | Simulates the effect of using an enlarged halftone screen on each channel of the image. For each channel, the filter divides the image into rectangles and replaces each rectangle with a circle. The circle size is proportional to the brightness of the rectangle. |
| Color Gamut | The range of colors provided by a hardware device, or a set of pigments |
| Color Calibration | This is the process of adjusting your monitor to compensate for factors that affect both the onscreen image and its conversion to printed output. |
| CMYK | Cyan, Magenta, yellow, Black. The inks used in fourcolor process printing. |
| CMY | Cyan, Magenta, Yellow. The 'subtractive' primary colors. Colorspace representation used in conventional print photography. |
| CMP | This is the LEAD CMP compressed format for grayscale and color images. This format results in smaller files and better image quality than industry-standard formats. |
| CMOS | Abbreviation of Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor. [Pronounced seemoss,] CMOS is a widely used type of semiconductor chip for digital cameras. |
| close-up | Photography of smaller subjects (larger than macro) shot close, typically six inches from the lens reproducing greater than 1:3 |
| Clone | a selection moved to another part of the bitmap. Usually this is chosen to blend in e.g. so that you can hide a blemish |
| clipping group | In a clipping group, the bottommost layer, or base layer, acts as a mask for the entire group. For example, you might have a shape on one layer, a texture on the overlying layer, and some text on the topmost layer. If you define all three layers as a clipping group, the texture and the text appear only through the shape on the base layer, and take on the opacity of the base layer. |
| Clipboard | The temporary storage of something that has been cut or copied. |
| Clam shell | A housing that splits longitudinally down the middle |
| Chrome | Treats the image as if it were a polished chrome surface. Highlights are high points and shadows are low points in the reflecting surface. After applying the filter, use the Levels dialog box to add more contrast to the image. |
| Chroma | (chrominance) The colour portion of a video signal |
| Charcoal | Redraws an image to create a posterized, smudged effect. Major edges are boldly drawn, while midtones are sketched using a diagonal stroke. Charcoal is the foreground color, and the paper is the background color. |
| Character Generator | An accessory that allows the generation of letters and numbers |
| Channels | Channels are grayscale images that store different types of information: Color information channels are created automatically when you open a new image. You use alpha channels to create and store masks, which let you manipulate, isolate, and protect specific parts of an image. |
| Chalk & Charcoal | Redraws an image's highlights and midtones with a solid midtone gray back-ground drawn in coarse chalk. Shadow areas are replaced with black diagonal charcoal lines. The charcoal is drawn in the foreground color, the chalk in background color. |
| CFWA | Close Focus Wide Angle - shots taken with a wide angle or fisheye lens with a dominant close subject (usually strobe-lit) and wide angle background |
| Center Weighted | Metering system that places importance on an area of the image below the center (in landscape format). This corresponds to the best portion to meter in an average shot of land and sky. |
| CCITT | A family of lossless compression techniques for black-and-white images; supported by the PDF and PostScript language file formats. (CCITT is an abbreviation for the French spelling of International Telegraph and Telekeyed Consultive Committee.) |
| CCD | Charge Coupled Device. An integrated circuit (microchip) consisting of a group of charge storage cells (tiny capacitors) with the ability to pass charge from one to the next, in a line, like firefighters passing buckets from one to the next. |
| Cast Aluminum | It is robust, so will generally go deeper, accept accessories better, and has excellent heat sink properties, which precludes internal misting in humid climates." |
| Card Reader | Card readers are devices you can plug media cards into to store their data. They are a good alternative to carrying around your laptop! |
| Canvas | The Canvas Size command lets you add or remove work space around an existing image. You can crop an image by decreasing the canvas area. Added canvas appears in the same color or transparency as the background. |
| Camera Type | The type of camera e.g. digital, SLR, Compact etc. |
| Camcorder | A video camera |
| Calibration | Brings a device like a monitor, scanner, or printer to an absolute standard that ensures consistency across devices. Calibrating is especially necessary when files are being passed from one person to another; what a client sees on their computer, compared to what you see on your computer, compared to what the service bureau sees on their computer can differ outrageously |
| Cache | Temporary storage. An area of the hard drive where information is stored about the thumbnails, metadata, and ranking information in your images. |
| Cable Release | Usually an SLR or DSLR feature that allows you to fire the shutter via an electronic or conventional cable release. |
| Byte | Eight bits. The standard unit of binary data storage containing a value between 0 and 255 |
| Burst | Due to bottlenecks in image processing and writing to media digital cameras cannot shoot unlimited numbers of images continuously without frame rate penalties. This speed is a product of the cameras' memory buffer, image processing, and storage card. |
| Burn Time | The time for which a lamp will operate after starting with a fully charged battery. |
| Burn | tools are based on a traditional photographer's technique for regulating exposure on specific areas of a print. Photographers increase the exposure to darken areas on a print (burning). |
| Buoyancy | The propensity of an object to float (positive buoyancy) or sink (negative buoyancy) or to do neither (neutral buoyancy). |
| Bulkhead Connector | An electrical connector that mounts on a housing. |
| Bulb | (B) exposure mode for making long exposures by keeping the shutter open manually |
| Buffer | An area or block of computer memory used for holding data as it waits to be passed from one process (imaging device, program, display device) to another. When you take a picture on a digital camera it is not written directly to the storage media (digital film) because such operations are slow. Digital cameras employ a buffer to take the image data and queue it. |
| Buccaneer Connector | Multipole (multipin) waterproof connector manufactured by Bulgin, with an ingress protection rating of IP68 1 bar (i.e. submersible to a depth of at least 10m, and in practice, a lot more). |
| Brushes palette | lets you select preset brushes and design custom brushes. |
| brush tool | the brush tool and the pencil tool to let you paint with the current foreground color. |
| Brightness | The value assigned to a pixel in the HSB model to define the relative lightness of a pixel |
| Bridge | Adobe’s file browser that ships with Photoshop |
| Bracketing | The technique of making a range of exposures to compensate for metering inaccuracy |
| BNC connector | Bayonet Neill Concelman (named after the designers, Paul Neill and Carl Concelman). Coaxial connector used for video, ethernet, and radio frequency signals. |
| BMP | BMP is the standard Windows bitmap image format on DOS and Windows-compatible computers. This is a file format created by Microsoft. Some BMP images are compressed with RLE-type compression.The Apple Macintosh computer system has a slightly different ‘flavour’ of bitmap. |
| Blur | The blur filters soften a selection or an image, and are useful for retouching. |
| blending mode | blending mode specified in the options bar controls how pixels in the image are affected by a painting or editing tool. |
| Bleeding | Bleeding is a degradation of image quality caused by oversaturated pixel sensors and results in 'colors that run'. |
| Bleed | used in printing as a margin of error. The image size exceeds the print size so that there are no borders with full bleed |
| Black Point Compensation | option controls whether to adjust for differences in black points when converting colors between color spaces. When this option is selected, the full dynamic range of the source space is mapped into the full dynamic range of the destination space. |
| Bits Per Pixel | Bits per pixel is a measure of tonal rendering capability in digital pictures. |
| Bits And Bytes | There are 8 bits in 1 Byte 1,024 Bytes in 1Kb 1,024Kb in 1Mb |
| Bitmap images | technically called raster images--use a grid of colors known as pixels to represent images. |
| Bitmap | Bitmap images consist of small squares (known as pixels) to represent images. Bitmap images are the most common electronic medium for photographic images. |
| Bit depth | also called pixel depth or color depth--measures how much color information is available to display or print each pixel in an image. Greater bit depth (more bits of information per pixel) means more available colors and more accurate color representation in the digital image. |
| Bilinear | for a medium-quality resampling method. |
| Bicubic | (Smooth) for the slow but more precise resampling method, resulting in the smoothest tonal gradations. |
| Bevel and Emboss | Adds various combinations of highlights and shadows to a layer. |
| Batch | The command lets you play an action on a folder of files and subfolders. If you have a digital camera or a scanner with a document feeder, you can also import and process multiple images with a single action. Your scanner or digital camera may need an acquire plug-in module that supports actions. |
| Bas Relief | Transforms an image to appear carved in low relief and lit to accent the surface variations. Dark areas of the image take on the foreground color, light colors use the background color. |
| Barrel Distortion | Barrel Distortion is a problem associated with wideangle lenses whereby the image appears distorted outwards. |
| Bar | Unit of pressure in the SI (systeme internationale) metric system to mean 1 atmosphere. 1.01 Bars is 1 atmosphere |
| backspacing. | In order to give continuity camcorders do not start recording at the exact point they were last paused at. They roll back over the last section of action so that no gaps appear. |
| Backscatter | Backscatter is light reflected from suspended particles in the water, a problem in underwater flash photography caused by having the flash too close to the camera lens. |
| Background Noise | A type of noise often with long exposure manifesting as fixed colored dots. This noise can be removed in a photo editing application by combining the image with the mask of a blank frame, which should have identical stuck pixels. |
| AVI | Windows AVI (AVI) is a file format created by Microsoft and used for multimedia files. These files store both audio and video data. |
| Autolock | A camcorder control that locks features such as automatic mode, white balance etc. |
| Autofocus | Automatic selection of the correct focus. TTL focus systems, which work through the lens, are better for underwater video |
| Auto Bracketing | The ability to take a series of shots with different exposures automatically. |
| Audio Track | The portion of a videotape used to record audio, music and/or narration |
| Audio Dubbing | To add an audio track to a videotape whithout effecting the video track |
| Assemble Editing | Selection and arrangement of the order of video scenes whilst editing |
| Aspect ratio | the shape of the rectangle that the frame takes. Usually 3 x 4 but can be 16x x9 for widescreen |