Software & Post Processing Archives - Page 2 of 3

Lossless

What Does Lossless Mean When Talking About Image Editing? The term ‘lossless’ refers to a form of non-destructive compression which can be applied to a digital file so that it takes up less space than it would in its original format. This allows for more images to be stored on a storage medium. The advantage of lossless compression, and where it gets it’s name from, is that no data is lost during compression. This is particularly important when storing digital photographs as they contain a lot of data which is required to render them correctly. One example of a form …

Lossy

What Does Lossy Mean? Lossy is the opposite of lossless and it means that when a digital image is compressed, some of the image’s data and detail is lost. JPEGs are a type of lossy compression, and whilst we can control how much a JPEG is compressed by when we save it, there is always a loss. Sometimes the loss is imperceptible if we use high quality settings, but it’s there! Additional Reading What Is A JPEG? What Does Lossless Mean? Example JPEG save screen that allows the choice of how lossy we want the image saving process to …

Masking

What Is Masking and How Is It Used When Editing Photos? When talking about editing and processing images the term ‘masking’ refers to the practice of using a mask to protect a specific area of an image, just as you would use masking tape when painting your house. Masking an area of an image protects that area from being altered by changes made to the rest of the image. Using masks in image editing allows you to preserve portions of an image that you are satisfied with whilst simultaneously altering aspects of the rest of the image such as overall …

Megabyte

What Is a Megabyte and How Is It Used in Photography? the term ‘megabyte’ or MB refers to a unit of measurement used to describe the size of a digital file. One megabyte is comprised of 1,024,000 bytes, or 1,024 kilobytes of digital information. When a picture is captured on a digital camera the resulting file must be stored on the cameras memory; Depending of the resolution of the captured image, and the file format used to encode it, an image will take up a certain number of megabytes on the cameras memory. Dividing the total size of a camera’s …

Midtone

What Does Midtone Mean When Talking About Photographs? When talking about photographs and photography there are three areas of ‘tone’ within the total range of color in an image, The Highlights contain the brightest tones, the Shadows contain the darkest, and the midtones contain everything in between. In general terms the midtones usually account for the middle 50% of the total tonal depth of an image (25%-75%), with highlights and shadows accounting for the 25% each each end of the tonal range. Altering the balance between the three tonal areas of an image can have a dramatic impact on the overall …

Non-Volatile Memory

What Is Non-Volatile Memory and How Is It Used in Photography? Non-volatile memory is a type of memory that is not erased when the system within which it is contained is powered down. As such non-volatile memory makes an excellent medium for long-term storage of digital data. Volatile memory such as RAM is the other primary type of memory and is erased when powered down. As a photographer you will encounter types of non-volatile memory all the time; the computer hard drives, SD and Compact Flash memory cards that photographs are stored on are all forms of non-volatile memory, digital …

Opacity

What Does Opacity Mean When Talking About Photography? Opacity is the measure of an objects impenetrability to electromagnetic radiation. When talking about photography the term is used to describes exactly how much an object blocks light from passing through it. An object that completely blocks light is called opaque, no light is able to pass through it. The opposite of opaque is transparent. Many opaque objects will reflect light which can be problematic when taking photos. Knowing the opacity of objects is also very important when designing lenses; lens elements despite very low opacity values will still block small amounts …

Palette

What Does Palette Mean When Talking About Photography and Image Editing? Also referred to as ‘color palette’ the term ‘palette’ describes the entire range of colors that can be rendered by a digital device such as a camera LCD or a computer monitor. A computer monitor may have a color palette of 16 million colors, an image on the other hand often contains a much smaller number, typically 256. The term is also used to describe a collection of colors, usually displayed graphically in RGB triplets, which a user can select when editing images and re-touching photos. A palette, or …

PictBridge

What is PictBridge and How It Is Used in Cameras and Photography? When talking about cameras and photography the term ‘PictBridge’ refers to a photography industry standard which allows digital images to be printed directly from a digital camera without having to first be uploaded to a PC. PictBridge was introduced in 2003 and has been widely adopted by both camera and printer manufacturers; Digital images are printed by connecting a camera to a printer using a USB cable, the image is then selected by the user, which is in turn retrieved by the printer and printed.

PIM

What Does PIM Stand for When Talking About Photography? When talking about photography, and more specifically printing photos the acronym PIM stands for ‘Print Image Matching’. Print Image Matching was developed by Epsom in the early 2000’s to overcome differences between the appearance of images as seen on a digital display, such as a camera LCD, and their appearance once printed. The PIM protocol allows manufactures to provide camera specific information to enable PIM compatible printers to render a print of the highest possible quality for specific cameras and exposure settings. PIM information is stored in an image’s EXIF metadata file …