I Archives - Shutter Muse

Image Browser

What is an Image Browser and how is it used in photography? An Image browser is a piece of software specifically designed to allow viewing of digital image files. Modern digital photographers often have catalogues of tens of thousands of digital photographs, an image browser can be used to quickly visually search, organize and delete image files. Image browsers allow images to be organized on the fly using information stored in the image file’s metadata. This allows a photographer to find specific images or types of images extremely quickly, a much better solution that looking through thousands of images one …

Image Editor

What Is an Image Editor and How Is It Used When Taking Photographs? When talking about photography, an image editor is a piece of computer software which is used to edit a digital image file. Modern editing software, for example Adobe Photoshop, is extremely powerful allowing the quick application of complex editing techniques such as color mapping, masking and retouching in a non destructive environment; changes made to the original digital image file can be undone allowing a photographer to experiment with various techniques to produce a desired image. The pattern of changes made to an image can also be saved …

Image Quality

What Does Image Quality Mean When Talking About Photography? When talking about photography the term ‘image quality’ also referred to as ‘IQ’ is characteristic of an image that measures the perceived image degradation (typically, compared to an ideal or perfect image). Factors that affect quality include brightness and evenness of illumination, contrast, resolution, geometry, color fidelity and color discrimination of an observed image. Achieving the highest possible image quality relies not only on using the best available equipment, but also making correct photographic choices. Correct use of exposure, lighting techniques, and post processing techniques all effect the overall quality of …

Image Stabilization

What Does Image Stabilization Mean When Talking About Photography? When talking about photography ‘image stabilization’ refers to a technique used within camera hardware to reduce the effects of camera shake. There are two main types of image stabilization, lens based and camera based. Lens based image stabilization uses floating lens elements which move independently of the lens barrel to reduce the effects shake. Camera based image stabilization allows the image sensor to move independently to the camera body to mimimize unwanted sensor movement. Image stabilization is extremely helpful in any situations which require longer exposure times, for example when hand …

Infinity

What Does Infinity Mean When Talking About Cameras and Lenses? When talking about photography, and specifically photographic lenses the term ‘infinity'(∞) refers a focus setting where everything beyond the lens’ ‘hyperfocal distance’ will be in focus. Technically speaking, when a lens is set to infinity focus, rays of light reaching the photographic medium do so completely parallel to each other. In reality this is not quite the case due to limitations in optical manufacturing. Focusing to infinity allows a photographer to quickly ensure that an object beyond the hyperfocal distance is in focus without having to physically check focus through …

Infra-Red

What Is Infra-Red and How Is It Used When Taking Photographs? The term ‘infra-red’ refers to a frequency of light invisible to the human eye. Infra-red gets it’s name from its position in the light spectrum, between the red edge of the visible spectrum at 700 nanometers and 1mm. Infra-red light can be used to control photographic equipment, a beam of infra-red light can for example be used to trigger an off camera flash unit. Infra-red light is also used in AF assist illuminates found on flash units; a grid of infra-red light is projected over a subject which helps …

Initializing

What Does Initializing Mean When Talking About Photography? When talking about photography, or any activity that uses a digital storage medium, the term ‘initializing’ refers to the process the storage medium goes through to become ready to record new information. Information is stored on a storage medium by assigning values to locations within the available memory; initialization gives each of recordable locations an initial value, usually zero. Initialization is also referred to as ‘formatting’. If you are intending to re-use a memory card which is already full of data, you would remove all data from the memory card by initializing, …

Interlaced

What Does Interlaced Mean When Talking About Capturing Videos? When talking about cameras, and specifically recording movies and video, the term ‘interlaced’ refers to a method of capturing moving pictures by splitting an image into two ‘fields’. The odd lines of image sites on the sensors surface are captured first, followed by the even lines. The two fields are then played back as individual frames. Recording interlaced video allows for a reduction in the overall bandwidth required as each frame only contains the information from one field, or half the total image. Interlaced video was widely used in recording for …

Interlaced Scan

What Does Interlaced-Scan Mean When Talking About Capturing Videos? When talking about cameras, and specifically recording movies and video, the term ‘interlaced-scan’ refers to a method of capturing moving pictures by splitting an image into two ‘fields’. The odd lines of image sites on the sensors surface are captured first, followed by the even lines. The two fields are then played back as individual frames. Recording interlaced video allows for a reduction in the overall bandwidth required as each frame only contains the information from one field, or half the total image. Interlaced video was widely used in recording for …

Interpolation

What Does it Mean to Interpolate an Image? In simple terms, digital image interpolation is just digital enlargement. If you had a photo with pixel dimensions of 6,000 x 4,000 px, and you used photo editing software to increase the image size of the photo to 10,000 x 6,667 px, this would be an interpolation. In this process you have ended up with more pixels than your camera gave you in the file to begin with, so where exactly do all these new pixels come from? The interpolation process essentially moves existing pixels apart and then inserts new pixels in …