PC Card

What Is a PC Card and How Is It Used in Photography? A PC Card or ‘Printed Circuitboard Card’ is a credit card sized card which can be used to expand the available memory or storage space in a digital device such as a computer. When talking about photography PC Cards could be used in a number of ways. If your computer has PC Card slots then you could use PC Cards to add extra storage space to your device, this could then be used to store your photographs. You could also use a PC card to move photographs between …

Read more

Pin-Cushioning

What Is Pin-Cushioning and How Does It Effect Photography and Photographs? When talking about photography and taking photographs the term ‘pin-cushioning’ refers to a kind of distortion which makes images appear ‘pinched’ in the middle. The term gets its name from the effect pushing a pin into a pin-cushion has on its appearance. Pin-cushioning is a problem associated mainly with cheap telephoto zoom lenses such as those found on point and shoot cameras. The effects of pin-cushioning can be corrected in post-processing or by using higher quality equipment. The opposite of pin-cushioning is ‘barrel distortion’ which causes an image to …

Read more

Pixel Density

What Is Pixel Density and How Does It Relate to Photography? Pixel density is a measure of the number of pixels contained in measured area. Often measured in PPI ‘Pixels per Inch’ or DPI ‘Dots per Inch’ pixel density in photography is a measurement of an image or sensor’s resolution and is dependant on the size of the pixels being measured. Pixel density is especially useful when printing an image. If we were to rely on the true image resolution, for example 640 x 480 pixels, but printed two images of different sizes, the true resolution of 640 x 480 …

Read more

Pixel peeper

What Does Pixel Peeper Mean When Talking About Photography? No, a pixel peeper isn’t a fancy device used to examine the quality of individual pixels! It is in fact a type of photographer, specifically one who spends the majority of their time examining their images at pixel level, searching for the tiniest instances of noise and softness or image defects whilst completely overlooking the image as a whole. Pixel peeping has its place, but an image perfectly exposed and rendered down to the level of each individual pixel will still look crumby if it is incorrectly composed, or contains a …

Read more

Pixelization

What Does Pixelization Mean When Talking About Photographs and Photography? When talking about photography, specifically digital photography and image processing ‘pixelization’ is the deterioration of a low-resolution image caused by a lack of enough pixels to render an image smoothly. When an image becomes pixilized the human eye is able to determine individual pixels within an image, making the image look fake or overly digitized. Printing an image at a low DPI will result in the image becoming Pixelated, as will aggressively up-sampling an image. Pixelization does however have a useful function; It is often employed to censor images so …

Read more

Polarized Light

What Is Polarized Light and How Does It Effect Photography? When the vibrations effecting a wave of light are restricted to a single plane the light in question is referred to as being ‘polarized’. Light can become polarized when reflecting off a non-metallic surface or passing through certain mediums such as water. When taking photographs polarized light can often produce unwanted glare from reflective surfaces, prevent the observation of underwater objects within a scene, or cause skies to appear to overly bright. The issues associated with unwanted polarized light can be controlled by using a ‘polarizing filter’ which absorbs polarized light …

Read more

Portrait

 What Is a Portrait When Talking About Photography? In photography a portrait is an image of a person, or the likeness of a person. Portraiture is one of the oldest forms of photography, dating back as far as the early 19th century. The art of capturing a portrait involves placing the subject in a pose, either within as scene or against a plain backdrop, and then exposing the image in such a way that the image is a clear representation and likeness of the subject. Taking pictures of a person is easy, capturing a good portrait that includes fine details …

Read more

Posterization

What Does Posterization Mean When Talking About Photography and Image Editing? In photography and image editing unwanted posterization, also referred to as banding, occurs when the bit-depth of an image is lowered enough to have a negative impact on an image. posterization can be caused by any process which ‘stretches’ an images histogram for example applying excessive compression. Posterization gets it’s name from its visual effect on an image; Distinct bands of individual colour will appear which make it look like the image has been converted into an old fashioned graphic poster. Another tell-tale sign of posterization can be spotted …

Read more

QVGA

What Is QVGA and What Is It Used for in Photography? In photography the term ‘QVGA’ refers to a video resolution of 320×240 pixels. QVGA stands for ‘Quarter Video Graphics Array’ and is named as such because the resolution 320×240 pixels is a quarter of the size of the standard VGA resolution which is 640×480 pixels. The QVGA resolution was often used in the LCD viewing screens of older digital cameras, but has now been superseded by units capable of displaying images at higher resolutions. the QVGA resolution may also be found on some basic cell phones with low resolution cameras. QVGA displays, …

Read more

Resampling

 What Is Resampling and What Does It Mean in Photography? In photography, specifically post-processing and image editing ‘resampling’ is the process of altering an images resolution by either adding or removing extra pixels. Increasing the number of pixels in an image is often referred to as upsampling, reducing the number of pixels is referred to as downsampling. Resampling has two direct effects on an image file, firstly the resolution of the file will be altered depending on the number of pixels either added, or removed, and secondly the image file size will change. The actual process of resampling an image …

Read more