| PCD | PCD images are stored in Kodak’s Image Pac format, which provides five versions of each image at different resolutions. |
| PCB | Printed circuit board. |
| PC | Photo Coax. A small circular connector used in conjunction with manual flash equipment. |
| Path | The outline of a vector shape |
| Parallax | The apparent difference in position of an object when seen from two different viewpoints. |
| Pantone | Used for printing solid-color and CMYK inks. The Pantone Matching System includes 1,114 solid colors. To select a color, use a PANTONE Color guide, printed on coated, uncoated, and matte stocks. |
| Pan | (Panning) The movement of a film or video camera (rotating on a vertical axis) |
| PalmCorder | A Camcorder which can sit on the palm of the hand. |
| Palette | A special dialog with a specialised editing purpose. By default palettes appear screen right. They can be stacked with others palettes and docked. Choose the palette name in the Window menu to open it. To show or hide all palettes, press shortcut Shift + Tab. |
| PAL | Phase Alternating Line. The color television system used in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. |
| paint bucket tool | fills adjacent pixels that are similar in color value to the pixels you click. |
| PackBits | (ImageReady) lossless compression that uses a run-length compression scheme; supported by the TIFF file format in ImageReady only. |
| Overlap | Two shots that look like they have been taken at the same time on two camcorders |
| over/under | shots that cross the surface boundary i.e the camera lens is half-in and half-out of the water showing subjects above and below |
| Outer Glow | Add glows that emanate from the outside or inside edges of the layer's content. |
| O-ring | The rubber ring that seals underwater camera equipment. |
| Orientation Sensor | A special sensor in some cameras that "knows" when you turn the camera in portrait orientation to take a vertical shot and "tells" the camera to display it that way later when viewed on the TV screen during playback |
| Options bar | a menu with context sensitive commands for the active tool that appears (by default) screen top left below the main menu |
| Optimize | The process of fine-tuning the file size and display quality of an image or image slice destined for the web |
| Optical Zoom | Optical zoom is a camera feature where the lens system physically changes focal length to zoom in on distant subjects |
| Opaque | Not transparent, among other meanings including to “block out” a specific area of an image or film. |
| Opacity | Used to specify how transparent a layer should be, either on its own or in regard to other layers. When color-separating artwork, you can use the Opacity Slide to "pull" more color from the image, thus making color separating artwork easier. |
| Oilify | Applies an oil painting effect to the bitmap. |
| Ohm | The unit of electrical resistance. A resistance of 1 Ohm will pass a current of 1 Amp when a voltage of 1 Volt is applied across it. |
| ODR | Output Device Resolution. The number of ink dots per inch of paper produced by the printer |
| NTSC | National Television Systems Committee The color television system used in the USA, Canada, and Japan. |
| Note Paper | Creates an image that appears to be constructed of handmade paper. The filter simplifies an image and combines the effects of the Stylize > Emboss and Texture > Grain filters. Dark areas of the image appear as holes in the top layer of paper, revealing the background color. |
| Nose room | The space in front, and in the direction, of moving or stationary subjects. |
| Normal Lens | A lens where the angle of view approximately represents that of the human eye |
| Nonlinear editing | Computerised editing where images are then stored on the hard drive |
| Non-destructive editing | An editing approach that doesn’t alter the original pixels in a photo throughout the enhancement process. Typically used for Raw processing or in techniques that make use of Smart Object technology |
| Noise | Noise is a random pixelation across the image. This appears like a TV picture when the set is switched on, but not tuned in! Dust and scratches can also be described as noise. |
| Ni-Mh | Nickel Metal Hydride batteries are very efficient and offer about 40% more capacity than NiCD plus they don't suffer from memory effect. However they only last 500 charge and discharge cycles. NiMH batteries lose about 3% of their charge daily. |
| Nikonos Connector | A five or three pin U/W flash lead plug/socket system. |
| Nikonos | A range of amphibious cameras by Nikon. Now discontinued but widely available preowned. |
| Ni-Cd | Nicad - Nickel Cadmium rechargeable battery. |
| negative space | a compotional term to describe neutral space used to isolate and emphasise the subject |
| Negative | Creates an effect like a photographic negative on the current loaded image |
| NBR | Nitrile Butadiene Rubber. Preferred material for the manufacture of camera orings. |
| Natural Light | shots taken using ambient light i.e. unlit by flash or continuous lighting like HID but filters on the lens |
| Multi Segment | Metering system that evaluates the importance on multiple portions of the frame. The software in the camera then determines which portion to base exposure calculation on. |
| MS | (medium shot) The MS is used to identify and explore characters, to transition to much closer shots, and emphasize a point |
| Movie Clips | Some digital cameras allow you to record movie clips either with or without audio. |
| Motherboard | An electronic board containing the main functional elements of a computer upon which other components can be connected |
| Mosaic | Creates a mosaic of the current loaded image. Mosaic gives the image a pixilated look. |
| Monochrome | Black and white images |
| Monitor | A television that has inputs and outputs to allow playback direct from a camcorder or VHS |
| Moire | Moiré is the unwanted addition of patterns on a print or scan. These patterns are usually caused when two similar repetitive grids are placed on top of one another |
| model release | a document allowing reproduction rights |
| MnLi | Magnesium lithium. Rechargeable battery type |
| MM2 | Abbreviation for Motormarine Mk II (An old Sea & Sea underwater camera). |
| Mixer | Combining several audio or video inputs into one |
| Meniscus Lens | A lens that is concave on one side and convex on the other |
| Memory Stick | Sony's proprietary storage media. Available in capacities up to 256 MB. It is extremely compact and only four grams in weight, a Sony Memory Stick (MS) offers outstanding data storage. |
| Memory Effect | Ni-Cd (NickelCadmium) cells had a reputation for losing capacity if they were not discharged fully during each cycle of use. This was dubbed 'the memory effect', i.e. the cell remembered that you didn't use it to the full and changed accordingly. |
| Megapixel | Digital cameras are rated by how many million pixels they record. The more the better! |
| Media | Storage medium for holding image files. There are several competing (and incompatible) types of digital film. |
| MB | MegaByte - 1024 KiloBytes or roughly 1 million Bytes |
| Matrix Metering | Nikon system of multisegmented metering |
| mask | masks can be attached to layers to protect areas from editing changes. Masks can be saved as alpha channels. |
| Marquee tool | There are four Marquee tools—rectangular, elliptical, single row, and single column. |
| marching ants | the animated effect of a moving dashed line used to denote the edge of a selection |
| Map Shot | A downward wide angle view |
| Manual White Balance | A digital camera (and camcorder) feature that allows the photographer to decide optimum white balance |
| Manual Focus | Manual focus is a focus mode that allows the photographer to decide optimum focus distance. |
| Manual Exposure | (M) Exposure mode where the photographer manually sets the aperture and shutter speed |
| Magnetic Pen tool | A variation of the Freeform Pen, this Pen tool snaps to the edges of an image, making tracing around an image easy. |
| Magic Wand tool | Allows you to make a selection automatically, based on a color, without having to physically trace the outline by clicking in a specific area with the mouse. Options for the Magic Wand are set in the options bar. |
| Macro Port | A flat port for macro photography underwater i.e. a plane glass or plastic optical window on an underwater camera. |
| Macro Mode | A setting on the camcorder that allows standard lenses to focus from less than and inch to approximately 1.2 metres. |
| Macro Lens | An extreme closeup lens. |
| Macro | Photography of smaller subjects shot (between 1:1 and 1:3) on macro settings or with macro equipment |
| LZW | (Lemple-Zif-Welch) Lossless compression; supported by TIFF, PDF, GIF, and PostScript language file formats. Most useful for images with large areas of single color. |
| Lux | Unit of light |
| luminance | photometric measure of the density of luminous intensity in a given direction. It describes the amount of light that passes through or is emitted from a particular area, and falls within a given solid angle |
| LS | (Long Shot) A long distance shot which is usually wide angle |
| Low Pass Filter | Most digital SLR cameras employ a Low Pass Filter (LPF) or Anti-Aliasing (AA) filter in front of the imager to help eliminate color aliasing (moire) problems |
| Lossy | denotes a loss of data during Image file compression. Only occurs when higher compression rates are used. |
| Lossless | techniques compress the file without removing image detail or color information |
| Lithium Ion | rechargeable batteries with negligible memory effect and offer about twice the capacity of Ni-MH batteries |
| Lines Of Resolution | A measure of horizontal resolution in a video system, measured by the number of vertical black lines that can be resolved on a white background. |
| Linear Editing | Editing with analog formats |
| Lexan | An extremely tough polycarbonate plastic, usually transparent, used to make underwater housings. 'Lexan' is a trademark of the General Electric corp. |
| Levels | The Levels dialog box lets you correct the tonal range and color balance of an image by adjusting intensity levels of the image's shadows, midtones, and highlights. The Levels histogram serves as a visual guide for adjusting the image's key tones |
| Lens Speed | Maximum aperture diameter, or minimum f-number, of a lens controlling the amount of light admitted through the lens |
| LED | Light Emitting Diode. |
| Leak Detector | A device you can fit inside an underwater camera housing to audibly (and sometimes visually) warn of the ingress of water. |
| Lead lines | using lines as a compositional device to lead the eye into the subject |
| LCD | Liquid Crystal Display. Such displays on the back of a digital camera allow you to preview images. These usually use TFT technology. Also used to display info on film cameras. |
| Layer masks | Used to obscure entire layers and layer sets. By using masks, you can apply special effects without actually affecting any of the original data on that layer. After you’ve found the perfect effect, you can then apply the changes. The changes can also be discarded. Layer masks are created using the painting and selection tools. |
| layer mask | You can obscure an entire layer or layer set, or just a selected part of it, using a layer mask. You can also edit a layer mask to add or subtract from the masked region. A layer mask is a grayscale image, so what you paint in black will be hidden, what you paint in white will show, and what you paint in gray shades will show in various levels of transparency. |
| Layer | Layers are like transparencies, which are clear plastic sheets of material that can be printed on. The transparencies can be printed and stacked on top of one another to form a complex picture, and single transparencies can be removed from the stack for editing or removal |
| Latitude | Ability of the film or device to record the brightness range of the subject |
| Lasso | There are three Lasso tools: the Lasso tool, the Polygonal Lasso tool, and the Magnetic Lasso tool. The first two choices let you draw around an object using curves and line segments, respectively, and the third lets you draw around an object and have the drawn lines snap to the object (based on calculations determined by color differences in the object and the background). |
| Lanyard | A short piece of rope or line used as a handle or tied on to some other object. |
| Lab color | The L*a*b color model is based on the model proposed by the Commission Internationale d'Eclairage (CIE) in 1931 as an international standard for color measurement. In 1976, this model was refined and named CIE L*a*b.Lasso tools: |
| Kilobyte | 1,024 bytes. A term used to describe how much hard drive space an image will require when saved. |
| Keystoning | in order fit a 3 x 4 frame you must step back further (if flat on) or closer but angled to cover the same subject |
| Kerning | the process of adding or subtracting space between specific letter pairs. You can control kerning manually, or you can use automatic kerning to turn on the kerning built into the font by the font designer. |
| Kelvin | The unit of absolute temperature, i.e. degrees above absolute zero. |
| jump cut | This is a jolt in continuity when you stop/restart without a change in shot size or angle |
| JPEG | The Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) format is widely used. It is a bitmap format commonly used to display photographs and other continuous-tone images in web pages on the Internet. JPEG retains all the color information in an RGB image but uses a compression scheme that reduces file size by discarding extra data not essential to the display of the image." |
| Joule | The unit of energy. 1 Joule = 1 watt second. |
| Jaggies | The term to describe diagonal lines in a digital image that appear jagged. Jaggies are produced due to the square nature of a pixel. Even when aliased certain subjects like telephone lines seem unnatural. It can be made worse by sharpening images. |
| ISO9660 | The basic standard for recording computer data files onto Compact Disc. ISO 9660 allows only for upper case 8.3 type filenames, using the characters A to Z, _ (underscore) and (minus or hyphen). |
| ISO film speed | The method of film speed (sensitivity) classification developed for the American Standards Association (ASA) and finally adopted by the International Standards Organization (ISO). |
| ISO | International Standards Organization (ISO). The method of film speed (sensitivity) classification developed for the American Standards Association (ASA) |
| Iris Override | An override control that allows the iris opening, selected by the automatic exposure control, to be increased or decreased |
| Iris | Synonymous with 'aperture', but now somewhat old fashioned; the variable diameter hole used to control the amount of light passing through a lens. |
| IR | Infrared. That part of the electromagnetic spectrum (light) which lies just below red in frequency (i.e. of longer wavelength than red |
| IPTC | IPTC is the International Press Telecommunications Council standard mark-up for including text (metadata) with images. It is a very useful way to identify, keyword, and copyright your images. Because it is with the image, it never gets lost. |
| Investment Cast | Casting where the mold has wax inside, which melts as the aluminum is poured in. This method precludes bubbles and it has less inherent weaknesses than sand casting." |
| Inverse Square Law | The quantity of light falling on a subject is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the source |
| Interpolation | Interpolation is a process employed by digital cameras and photo editing software to make an image larger. The algorithms sample pixels and 'guesstimates' what the extra pixels required should look like. |
| Interlaced | Term used to describe an image sensor that gathers its data by first processing the odd lines and then the even lines. See also "Progressive Scan" for the other (preferred) method. |
| Insert Editing | To add a new shot that goes over an existing shot on a videotape |
| insert edit | allows you to record over the video only (not sound) in camera. |
| Inner Shadow | Adds a shadow that falls just inside the edges of the layer's content, giving the layer a recessed appearance. |
| Injection Molding | Method of forming plastic into complex items used extensively to produce underwater housings |
| Infrared | IEEE 1394 is a standard for high speed connection of serial devices. An infrared port on a computer can communicate with other devices without cables. |
| Indexed Color Mode | An indexed color image is based on a palette of, at most, 256 colors. When you convert an image to indexed color, you create a color lookup table, which stores and indexes the colors in the image. |
| indexed color | Converting to indexed color reduces the number of colors in the image to at most 256--the standard number of colors supported by the GIF and PNG-8 formats and many multimedia applications. This conversion reduces file size by deleting color information from the image. |
| In-Camera Editing | Shooting the shots in the exact sequence that they will be played back |
| Impressionist | Adds an impressionist effect (like Monet’s art) when the box is checked while using the Pattern Stamp tool. |
| ImageReady | an Adobe application similar to Photoshop, part of the CS suite, specifically for web design |
| Image Stabilization | Image stabilization is a feature designed to stop blur when at a long focal length. Get a tripod instead! |
| Image Size | The dimensions of an image. This is logarithmically proportional to file size i.e. double the image size quadruple the file size |
| Image Resolution | The number of dots per inch. For (a given image size) you need four times the number of dots (pixels) when you double the resolution. |
| ILink | Digital video interface (connection between camera and editing equipment, monitor, computer, etc.) specified in document IEEE 1394. Data transfer speed up to 400Mbit/s. |
| ICS5 | A 5 pin O-ring sealed connector used mainly with Ikelite TTL flash units and video lights. |
| ICS4 | An obsolete 4 pin O-ring sealed connector used with early Ikelite automatic flash units. |
| ICS2 | A 2 pin wet connector used with early Ikelite manual flash units. |
| ICS10 | A 10 pin Oring sealed connector used with scientific and technical instrumentation. |
| ICS | Ikelite connector system. |
| ICM | Image Color Management. Windows-based software designed to work together with hardware devices to facilitate predictable color |
| ICC profile | The transforms from device into a standard color space are embedded in a file with the extension ‘.icc’ - this is the ICC profile |
| ICC | A standard for defining device independant color spaces. |
| Hyperlink | A link that allows the viewer of a page to navigate or ‘jump’ to another location on the same page or on a different page |
| Hyper Focal Distance | The distance setting (of a lens) that gives the greatest possible range of distances at which objects appear to be in focus. |
| Hydrophone | Underwater microphone |
| hunting | the lens can continually seek focus, but does not lock on, usually due to low light or insufficient contrast |
| Hue | The name of a color, e.g. red, green or blue |
| HTML | Hyper Text Markup Language. The code that is used to describe the contents and appearance of a web page |
| HSB | This mode uses a color’s hue, saturation, and brightness to define it. Hue is defined by its location on the color wheel and is |
| HQ | High-quality |
| Housing | A casing or box with waterproof seals designed to contain a camera or other equipment in such a way that it can be used underwater. |
| HotShoe | A camera accessory shoe with electrical connections for a flash unit on top of a camera. |
| Hosepiping | The tendency to make unnecessary movements |
| hosepipe | shoot everything in sight! |
| History Palette | Shows the list of steps taken to create the image that you are currently working on. The History palette helps you correct errors (by storing what you’ve done to a file previously) and allows you to return to a point before a particular edit was made simply by clicking on the appropriate step. |
| History Brush | A tool in Photoshop with which a previous state or history can be painted |
| Histogram | A graph of brightness along the horizontal axis (black to white) and the number of pixels at each brightness level on the vertical axis. |
| Highlight | Area of subject receiving highest exposure value |
| High Dynamic Range | A picture type that is capable of storing 32 bits per color channel. This produces a photo with a much bigger possible brightness range than found in 16 –or 18-bit per channel photos. Photoshop creates HDR images with the merge to HDR feature |
| HID | High intensity discharge lights |
| Hi8 | Highband Video 8 |
| Hertz | Hertz is the unit of frequency, and is synonymous with 'cycles per second' (c/s). |
| Helical Scanning | All modern videotape recorders use helical scanning, and the technique is also used to write CDquality audio on to tape in DAT (digital audiotape) machines. |
| healing brush | this tool lets you correct imperfections, causing them to disappear into the surrounding image. |
| Headroom | The space between the top of the subject and the top of the picture |
| HDR | High Dynamic Range image |
| Halftoning | To create the illusion of continuous tones when printed, images are broken down into a series of dots. This process is called halftoning. Varying the sizes of the dots in a halftone screen creates the optical illusion of variations of gray or continuous color in the image. |
| Halftones | Halftones are dots of a specific shape, such as an ellipse or a circle. Halftones dictate how much of each color goes on the material at press time. Varying how large or small the dots are determines the actual color printed |
| Halftone Pattern | Simulates the effect of a halftone screen while maintaining the continuous range of tones. |
| Gutter | The blank space between columns on a page or the inner edges of a book page. |
| Guides | appear as lines that float over the entire image and do not print. You can move, remove, or lock a guide to avoid accidentally moving it. |
| Guide Number | A number used to represent the illuminating power of a photographic flash for comparison of efficiency with other flash units. |
| Grayscale | This mode uses up to 256 shades of gray. Every pixel of a grayscale image has a brightness value ranging from 0 (black) to 255 (white). Grayscale values can also be measured as percentages of black ink coverage (0% is equal to white, 100% to black). |
| Graphic Pen | Uses fine, linear ink strokes to capture the details in the original image and is especially striking with scanned images. The filter replaces color in the original image, using the foreground color for ink and background color for paper. |
| Graphic | Any non-text element like a photo, a piece of clip art, or a graph. |
| grain | (AKA granularity) is the unwanted random optical texture |
| Gradient tool | Fills a closed object with a range of colors that fade into each other. |
| Gradiation | Often used as a screen printing term, the gradual changing of color across a substrate. |
| Gloss | The shine or luster of a paper. |
| global light | Using global light gives the appearance of a consistent light source shining on the image. |
| Glitch | Video noise appearing on the TV screen |
| GIGO | Garbage In, Garbage Out |
| Gigabyte | A term applied to the size of an image, hard drive, or storage unit. A gigabyte is 1,024 megabytes of data (roughly one million bytes). |
| GIF | The CompuServe Graphics Interchange Format [pronounced Jif] is the file format commonly used to display 256 color graphics and images in web pages on the Internet. Not good for photos, good for graphics. |
| Ghosting | During the print process, a shadow that appears in the print that is generally undesirable. |
| Generation | Each stage of a reproduction as it is changed from its original state. |
| GCR | Gray Component Replacement is an extension of UCR in that it replaces the neutral colors in the image as well as the colored areas with equal amounts of cyan, magenta, and yellow throughout the tonal range of the image. |
| GB | GigaByte - 1,024 MegaBytes |
| Gaussian Blur | A filter used for defocusing a digital image |
| Gamut | The gamut of a color system is the range of colors that can be displayed or printed. The spectrum of colors that can be viewed by the human eye is wider than any method of reproducing color. The RGB gamut is greater than that of the CMYK model. |
| Galleries | A managed collection of images displayed in a conveniently accessible form |
| Gain Control | An electronic control that prevents under or over exposure |
| Full Range Autofocus Lens | A lens that, whilst in autofocus mode, allows focusing from less than a inch to infinity |
| FTP software | File Transfer Protocol software is used for uploading and downloading files over the Internet |
| F-Stop | Standard unit of exposure. A means of expressing the illuminating power of a lens regardless of its focal length. |
| freeware | software that is free! But watch out! The author may time limit it's use by time, especially if it is a demo version of a larger program |
| Frame | The picture area |
| FPX | The FlashPix file format was developed through the combined efforts of Kodak, Microsoft Corporation, Hewlett-Packard, and Live Pictur. It combines the best features of existing formats with object orientation to make the use of digital color images easier. The format of a FlashPix file is based on compound object storage, which allows storage of various kinds of data." |
| FPS | Frames per second. The number of images that can be recorded per second as determined by the limitations of motordrive (35mm) or buffer (Digicams). |
| Format | The 'format' of a film or camera is the dimensions of the image area (or frame). |
| Focus Range | The difference between the closest and farthest distances a lens can focus on. |
| Focal Length Multiplier | The Focal Length Multiplier is a figure to apply to 35mm lenses to calculate their true focal length on digital cameras that do not have full frame sensors. |
| Focal Length | The focal length of a simple symmetrical lens, is the distance between the image plane (e.g. the film) and the middle of the lens, when light from infinity is brought to a focus. |
| Flying Erase Heads | Spinning magnetic heads that allows you to start then pause then start recording again without causing any video noise, distortion etc. |
| Flat Port | A flat glass or plastic port that fits onto the front of the video housing |