Art Vocabulary
ELEMENTS OF ART
: The visual components of color, form, line, shape, space, texture, and value.
Line: An element of art defined by a point moving in space. Line may be two-or three-dimensional, descriptive, implied, or abstract.
Shape:An element of art that is two-dimensional, flat, or limited to height and width.
Form: An element of art that is three-dimensional and encloses volume; includes height, width AND depth (as in a cube, a sphere, a pyramid, or a cylinder). Form may also be free flowing.
Value: The lightness or darkness of tones or colors. White is the lightest value; black is the darkest. The value halfway
between these extremes is called middle gray.
Space: An element of art by which positive and negative areas are defined or a sense of depth achieved in a work of art
Color:An element of art made up of three properties: hue, value,
and intensity.
Hue: name of color
Value: hue’s lightness and darkness (a color’s value changes when white or black is added)
Intensity: quality of brightness and purity (high intensity= color is strong and bright; low intensity=
color is faint and dull)
Texture: An element of art that refers to the way things feel, or look as if they might feel if touched.
PRINCIPLES OF ART: Balance, emphasis, movement, proportion, rhythm, unity, and variety; the means an artist uses to organize elements within a work of art.
Rhythm: A principle of design that indicates movement, created by the careful placement of repeated elements in a work of art to cause a visual tempo or beat.
Balance: A way of combining elements to add a feeling of equilibrium or stability to a work of art. Major types are
symmetrical and asymmetrical.
Emphasis: (contrast) A way of combining elements to stress the differences between those elements.
Proportion: A principle of design that refers to the relationship of certain elements to the whole and to each other.
Gradation: A way of combining elements by using a series of gradual changes in those elements. (large shapes to
small shapes, dark hue to light hue, etc)
Harmony: A way of combining similar elements in an artwork to accent their similarities (achieved through use of
repetitions and subtle gradual changes)
Variety: A principle of design concerned with diversity or contrast. Variety is achieved by using different shapes,
sizes, and/or colors in a work of art.
Movement: A principle of design used to create the look and feeling of action and to guide the viewer’s eye throughout the work of art.
Photo Terms:
35mm: The type of film used by most point-and-shoot cameras, which is why they're called 35mm point-and-shoots. It comes in a cassette with a protruding film leader.
Advanced Photo System (APS): Breakthrough camera and film technology that has created a new generation of point-and-shoots, APS offers a choice of three print formats, improved photofinishing, and significant storage and reprinting conveniences.
Ambient light – also referred to as available light, is the light that is occurring in the scene without adding any flash or light modifiers. This could be daylight, or man made light such as tungsten or fluorescent bulbs.
Angle of view: The amount of a scene taken in by a particular lens focal length. Short focal lengths have a wide angle of view, allowing you to photograph a larger portion of the scene than long focal lengths, which have a narrow angle of view.
Aperture: the variable opening in the lens through which light passes to the film or digital sensor. Measured in f-stops. I like to compare it to your pupil which opens and closes to allow more or less light to enter your eye depending on the brightness level of the room.
Aperture Priority: A metering mode in which the photographer sets the desired lens aperture (f-stop) and the camera in turn automatically sets the appropriate shutter speed to match the scene being recorded.
Archival: Describes any negative or print storage or display material that won't cause the photographic image to fade, stain, or discolor over time. Acid-free materials are archival.
ASA: An abbreviation of the American Standards Association, ASA is the term used to describe the light-sensitivity levels of film and camera imaging sensors. Also see ISO.
Aspect Ratio: Aspect ratio is simply the ratio of the height to width. An 8 x 10 has an equal aspect ratio to a 4 x 5, but a 4 x 7 image is a bit wider. You can change the aspect ratio in your camera if you know how you’d like to print your image, or you can crop your photo when you edit it to the right ratio.
Autoexposure: The system with which your camera automatically sets the lens aperture and shutter speed to get the correct amount of light to the film.
Autoflash: Flash mode in which the camera automatically decides whether or not flash is needed, turning the flash on in dim light and keeping it off in bright light. It's the default mode of most point-and-shoots.
Autofocus: Automatic focusing.
Average Metering: Average metering takes all of the light values for a given scene—highlights, shadows, and mid-tones—and averages them together to establish an overall exposure. Average metering is best used for front-lit subjects under average lighting conditions.
Backlight: Light coming from behind the subject. When light from behind is the main source, the subject is said to be backlit.
Backlight compensation: Adjustment of exposure to prevent the subject from turning out too dark when light is coming from behind it.
Barn Doors: They facilitate shaping of the beam of light from the fixture, and prevent the distinctive scatter of light created by the Fresnel lens from spilling into areas where it is not wanted, such as the eyes of audience members.
Batch Scan: The ability to scan and process more than one image in a single action. Batch scanning is only recommended if all of the images being scanned or corrected are equal in tonal values.
Black-and-white film: Film that reproduces the subject in shades of gray (and black and white, depending on the scene's contrast) rather than in color. Black-and-white film is available in conventional or chromogenic versions.
Blocked Shadows: Term for lack of, or loss of, shadow detail in a photographic image, usually the result of underexposure or images captured by a lower resolution (and less dynamic) imaging sensor.
Blowout: Blowout is caused by overexposure, which results in a complete loss of highlight detail. With the exception of raw files captured within two stops of the correct exposure, blown-out highlights are difficult, if not impossible, to correct after the fact.
Bokeh is the orbs created when lights are out of focus in an image. It’s a neat effect to have in the background of a photo, created through wide apertures.
Braketing: Taking a series of images at different exposures or EV. You may see a setting on your camera that says
Burning In: Digital image manipulation technique that mimics darkroom burning-in: applied by brush of varying sizes and has effect of darkening i.e. increasing grey content (i.e. equal amounts of R, G and B) of affected pixels.
AEB (auto exposure bracketing). This is often used when creating HDR images or in difficult lighting situations where you may want to have a range of exposures from light to dark.
C-Stands: There are two main types of light stands: lightweight stands and C-stands which are more heavy duty. Both types come in varying sizes, lengths, and prices. Heights can usually be adjusted. Sandbags can also be attached to weight the stand and better stabilize your lights.
Camera shake: The unwanted movement passed along to your camera by involuntary hand and body tremors, it's a major cause of out of focus pictures.
Camera resolution – expressed in megapixels is the dimensions your camera’s sensor is capable of capturing. For example Canon’s new 6D has a resolution of 5472 x 3648 which equals 19,961,856, which they’ve rounded off to 20 megapixels. This is not the only factor in image quality, but generally the large the number, the larger prints you can produce from it without loss of quality.
Candid: A non posed image, spontaneous photograph of a person or group of people.
Card Reader/Writer: A device that allows you to transfer data directly from a camera's removable memory card to the computer, without being compelled to connect the camera to the computer
Catchlights: Tiny highlights (bright spots) in a subject's eyes, caused by reflections of the light source.
CCD (charge-coupled device): The tiny "chip" that is a digital point-and-shoot's equivalent to film. The CCD uses rows of microscopic sensors to measure and record light energy, which is then stored digitally.
Color print film: Film designed to produce a color negative from which any number of color prints may be made.
Color saturation: The relative brilliance with which a film (or print) reproduces the subject's colors. Films that deliver more intense colors are said to have high saturation.
Color Calibration: A process by which the image source (digital camera or scanner), monitor and output (printer) are calibrated to use the same or similar color standard, i.e., Adobe RGB, sRGB, etc). This ensures that the image viewed on the monitor has the same range of colors as the image that is printed, and any adjustments made to the color of the image in the computer are accurately represented when the image is printed.
Color Gels: Gel; Diffusion Gel; Filter Gel; Color Gel; Lighting Gel; Gels are transparent colored material used to modify lights for photography, video and theater.
Color Palette: A palette is the set of available colors. For a given application, the palette may be only a subset of all the colors that can be physically displayed. For example, many computer systems can display 16 million unique colors, but a given program would use only 256 of them at a time if the display were in 256-color mode. The computer system's palette, therefore, would consist of the 16 million colors, but the program's palette would only contain the 256-color subset.Color Temperature: A linear scale for measuring the color of ambient light with warm (yellow) light measured in lower numbers and cool (blue) light measured in higher numbers. Measured in terms of “degrees Kelvin*,” daylight (midday) is approximately 5600K, a candle is approximately 800K, an incandescent lamp is approximately 2800K, a photoflood lamp is 3200 to 3400K, and a midday blue sky is approximately 10,000K.
Composition: The process of adjusting framing, camera position, and/or focal length to turn the subject into a visually appealing photograph.
Contrast: The degree of difference between a subject's tones, a function of its inherent shades and colors and also of the quality of light.
Copyright: The legal right to use and restrict use of an image.
Correct exposure: The specific amount of light that must strike a given film to produce the best possible picture quality.
Cropping: Masking or otherwise shaping a photographic image to change its proportions.
CMYK: Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black
Default: A mode, or group of modes, that a point-and-shoot always returns to after settings are changed for a particular shot or roll.
Depth of field: is a photography term that refers to how much of the image is in focus. The camera will focus on one distance, but there’s a range of distance in front and behind that point that stays sharp—that’s depth of field.
Developing: See photofinishing.
Diffused light: Light that has been softened by cloud cover, a softbox or any other translucent element.
Digital: Pertaining to computer language and operation. A digital point-and-shoot captures and stores pictures without film, for direct use in computer software and printing applications.
Dodgeing: A term used in photography for a technique used during the printing process to under exposure a selected area(s) on a photographic print, deviating from the rest of the image's exposure.
Downloading: is the transmission of a file from one computer system to another, usually smaller computer system.
DPI: The definition of a printed image will be given in DPI (dots per inch) or PPI (pixel per inch). 300 DPI is what we use for printing in this class.
DSLR: Digital Single Lens Reflex Camera
DX code: The bar code on the side of a 35mm film cassette that automatically tells the camera what film speed (ISO) to set for correct light metering and exposure.
Export: The process of sending a file out through a specialized mini-application or plug-in, so as to print or compress it. This term is also used to describe the action of saving the data to a specialized file format, i.e. JPEG or GIF.
Exposure: The amount of light that strikes the film when you take a picture. Also, a frame of film--enough for one shot.
Exposure compensation: Found on relatively few point-and-shoots, this capability allows you to manually alter the auto-exposure for specific effects and subjects.
Exposure latitude: The range within which a film can tolerate errors in exposure and still produce acceptable results.
Exposure value: Abbreviated EV, always with a plus or minus number attached, it indicates the degree of exposure change with exposure compensation or back-light compensation--for example, +1.5 EV, –0.5 EV.
F-Stop: is a measure of the aperture opening in the lens defined by dividing the focal length of the lens by the aperture diameter. Sequence of f-stops are multiples of the square root of 2 (1.414…): 1, 1.4, 2, 2.8, 4, 5.6, 8, 11, 16, 22, etc. Even though these numbers are rather cryptic, just remember that each step is double the amount of light. Know that and it’s half the battle.
Fast film: Film with a high sensitivity to light, reflected in its high ISO rating--usually ISO 400 and above.
File format jpg versus RAW – most DSLR’s have the ability to shoot both formats. If you choose JPG, the camera will shoot a RAW file, process it using the picture style you’ve selected in your menu, save it as a JPG and discard the RAW version. If shot in RAW the resulting file will be larger, carry more information (but the same pixel resolution, see above) and require software to process. It gives you the photographer more control over the final look of your image.
Fill flash: (Also known as flash-on.) Flash mode in which the camera fires the flash for every shot. Fill flash can be used to soften shadows in bright outdoor light by filling them with light.
Film cassette: The small, lightproof housing in which film is supplied, and that you place in the camera to shoot. With 35mm, the film cassette is discarded after processing; with the Advanced Photo System, it's returned to you with the processed negatives inside.
Film Format: 35mm, Medium Format, and Large Format. (Film Size)
Film leader: The short, half-width strip of film extending from an unexposed 35mm cassette; must be engaged in the take-up spool for a camera to advance the film.
Film speed: The measure of a film's sensitivity to light, film speed is indicated with an ISO number--ISO 400, for example. The higher the number, the more sensitive the film.
Film winding: (Also called film advance.) Moving a roll of film from one frame to the next for each shot, often by built-in motor.
Fill light: is the light source that is secondary to the mail light. It is used to “fill” in the shadows to a desired degree. It can be produced by using a flash, a reflector, or a studio strobe.
Firmware: Software programs or data that have been written to read-only memory (ROM). Firmware is a combination of software and hardware. In digital cameras, the firmware is the program that allows the user to activate and control the features of the camera.
Flash: Your point-and-shoot's tiny but highly useful built-in light source, the flash fires in an action-stopping burst and often has several different modes.
Flash-off mode: A mode in which the flash won't fire regardless of the light level. It may cause the camera to set a slow shutter speed.
Flash-ready lamp: A small light beside the viewfinder window or next to the viewfinder frame, it blinks when the flash is charging and glows steadily when the flash is ready to fire. Usually red or orange.
Focal length: Technical term indicating how wide or narrow a section of a scene the lens includes in a picture (angle of view), and/or how big or small it makes the subject (magnification).
Focal length range: The run of focal lengths offered by a zoom lens. It's specified by the shortest and the longest, in millimeters--for example, 38–90mm.
Focus point: Small brackets, lines, or a circle in the middle of an auto-focus point-and-shoot's viewfinder indicating where the camera is focusing.
Focus-free: (Also known as fixed-focus.) Term for point-and-shoots that have no auto-focus capability. With these models, the lens's focus is preset at a medium distance that gives reasonably sharp results with any subject about four feet away and beyond.
Flag: A flag is used to block light, create shadow, or shield camera equipment from light sources likely to cause lens flare.
Flash Sync: You probably know that the flash is a burst of light—flash sync determines when the flash fires. Normally, the flash fires at the beginning of the photo, but changing the flash sync mode adjusts when that happens. The rear curtain flash sync mode, for example, fires the flash at the end of the photo instead of the beginning.
(When using strobe the DSLR camera shutter speed must be set at 200)
Focusing: In-and-out adjustment of the lens to make the main subject sharp on the film.
Focus-OK lamp: (Also called an auto-focus confirmation lamp.) A small light beside the viewfinder window that blinks when the camera can't focus a subject and glows steadily when correct focus has been achieved.
Formal: A photograph of a person or group of people made by mutual agreement, often with controlled lighting and a set-up background.
Frame: The rectangle that you see when you look through the viewfinder, used for viewing and composing the subject; or one picture's worth of film; or that thing you put your prints in.
Frame counter: The display that tells you how many shots you've taken, or are left, on a roll of film. The frame counter may be located on the camera's LCD panel or in a small separate window.
Frame lines: Light or dark lines or brackets just inside the viewfinder frame that indicate the area of the scene that will be recorded on the film. (Many point-and-shoots do not have frame lines.)
Frame numbers: Numbers printed by the manufacturer along the edges of 35mm film, or by the photo-finisher on an index print or the back of a print. Frame numbers allow you to identify a particular negative for reprinting or blowups.
Full frame vs cropped sensor – I get asked about this in my classes all the time. A full frame sensor is roughly the size as the “old” 35mm frame of film. Lenses are made to create a circle of light just large enough to cover that area (covering power). In a cropped sensor camera the physical size of the sensor is smaller so it only captures a portion of the entire image the lens is projecting, effectively cropping part of the image out.
GIF: Graphic Interface designed by CompuServe for using images online. This is a 256-color or 8-bit image.
Grain: Tiny clumps of silver crystals that form the photographic image during film development, their pattern is sometimes visible in the print. The faster the film, the more visible the grain--but even fast films are now very fine-grained.
Grips: Stands and grips are used to support your light sources, strobes, and even light modifiers or backdrops.
Greyscale: is a range of shades of gray without apparent color. The darkest possible shade is black, which is the total absence of transmitted or reflected light.
Gobo – something used to block unwanted or stray light from falling onto the subject. Often a reflector (using the black side) can serve a dual purpose and act as a gobo as well.
Golden hour – also called “magic hour” is the hour right before sunset or right after sunrise. The sun is low on the horizon and it is an optimal time for photography.
Hard light: Light that creates strong contrast and heavy shadows in the subject, usually from a direct source such as the sun or a light bulb.
Histogram: In photography, a histogram is a chart that depicts how many light and dark pixels are in an image. If the chart peaks towards the left, the image has a lot of dark hues.
Highlight: is a bright spot in a photograph. Normally it is assumed to be one of the brightest points in the image.
Hot Shoe: Hot shoe is the slot at the top of a camera for adding accessories, like the aptly named hot shoe flash. This has nothing to do with footwear, or temperature.
Icon: A symbol representing a specific mode or status, it's displayed on the camera's LCD panel or printed on its body.
Image:The artist’s rendition of the scene which seeks to convey or evoke a particular emotion. Sometimes the term is confused with the meaning of “Print,” which is the tangible object.
Index print: Created by digital scanning, a print-sized sheet of tiny positive images of every shot on a roll. Used for storage, indexing, and reprinting reference.
Infinity lock: Often called landscape mode, this setting causes the camera to focus as far away as possible; especially useful to prevent mis-focusing when shooting through windows.
ISO number: See film speed.
JPeG:Stands for "Joint Photographic Experts Group." JPEG is a popular image file format. ... Still, the compression algorithm is lost, meaning some image quality is lost during the compression process.
Kelvin – is the absolute measurement of colour temperature. On your camera under the White Balance settings you make see a “K” setting. This allows you to adjust the colour manually by degrees kelvin. The lower numbers represent warmer colours like orange (tungsten light) and the higher numbers are cooler (blues). Play with this scale to create different affects.
LCD (liquid crystal display) panel: Found on all but the least expensive point-and-shoot models, it indicates camera status and settings.
LED Lights: has become one of the most cost-effective and beneficial options available to both professional and hobby photographers. A few of the reasons to consider going with LEDs: LED's run cool, are cheaper, use less electricity, its continuous, and the lights have better controls.
Lens: A cylinder of shaped pieces of glass or plastic at the front of a camera, it projects a tiny image of the subject onto the film.
Lens aperture: The window in the lens that lets light through to the film. Your point-and-shoot automatically adjusts this window's size, called the f-stop, to control the exposure.
Lens flare – occurs when the light source hits the lens directly, it can manifest as a hazy looking image or artifacts such as circles of light. Some photographers actually desire lens flare and position their camera to create it and use it as a composition element.
Light meter: The built-in device that your point-and-shoot camera uses to measure light and determine the correct exposure settings.
Lighting Modifiers: The most common types of light modifers are umbrellas and softboxes.
Reflecting umbrellas produce a diffused and soft light due to the larger size of the reflecting surface. They are mounted in such a way that the strobe light is actually facing away from the subject or model. Light flies from the strobe head hitting the inside of the umbrella and then bounces back towards the subject.
There are silver-lined, white, and gold tinted umbrellas. Silver-lined umbrellas are the most efficient and can focus light more narrowly than the other types. White umbrellas offer a wider spread of reflected light, and gold umbrellas produce a warm tone.
Light source: The immediate origin of a scene's light, such as the sun or a window.
Locking the focus: Pressing and holding an auto-focus point-and-shoot's shutter button halfway, to prevent the camera from refocusing incorrectly with your final composition.
Long Exposure: A long exposure is an image that has been exposed for a long time, or uses a long shutter speed.
Long focal length: See telephoto focal length.
Luminosity: refers to how much a black and white photograph appears to glow, i.e. the warmth of an area brightness.
Manual mode allows the photographer to set the exposure instead of having the camera do it automatically. In manual, you choose the aperture, shutter speed and ISO, and those choices affect how light or dark the image is. Semi-manual modes include aperture priority (where you only choose the aperture), shutter priority (where you only choose the shutter speed) and programed auto (where you choose a combination of aperture and shutter speed together instead of setting them individually). Manual can also refer to manual focus, or focusing yourself instead of using the auto-focus.
Macro Lens: one that focuses very close to the subject allowing for 1:1 reproduction size of the object or larger.
Main light or key light: is the main light source for a photograph. It could be the sun, a studio strobe, a flash, a reflector or something else. But it is the source of light that is producing the pattern of light on the subject with the most intensity.
Mode: A setting that causes the camera to perform a specific function or operation.
Megapixel: is one million pixels. It is commonly used to describe the resolution of digital cameras.is one million pixels. It is commonly used to describe the resolution of digital cameras.
Memory: The camera's file-storage medium. Most cameras use flash memory, which is a safe, highly reliable form of storage that doesn't need power to hold the images after they are saved. Flash memory won't erase the images unless the user chooses to do so. Some cameras contain a limited quantity of built-in memory, but certainly not enough to capture more than a dozen or so images.
Memory Card: In digital photography, a memory card is a removable device used in digital cameras to store the image data captured by the camera. There are several different types of memory cards available including CompactFlash, SmartMedia, SD/SDHC/SDXC, XD, and others.
Metering: Metering is actually based on a middle gray, so having lighter or darker objects in the image can throw the metering off a little bit. Metering modes indicate how the meter is reading the light. Matrix metering means the camera is reading the light from the entire scene. Center-weighted metering considers only what’s at the center of the frame and spot metering measures the light based on where your focus point is.
Micro Lenses: Micro lenses are commonly mounted on the tops of the light-gathering portion of pixels (aka photons) and are often angled along the edges of camera sensors to capture and redirect light back into the pixel, as a method of reducing light falloff on the edges of the image and redirecting it for image processing. Not to be confused with NIKKOR micro lenses.
Mirrorless Camera: An advanced type of digital camera with an interchangeable lens system that eschews the mirror viewfinder system found in DSLRs in order to be smaller and lighter. Instead, mirrorless cameras display an image preview on an LCD or OLED screen. Many mirrorless cameras have only a rear screen for previewing photos, similar to a point-and-shoot or cellphone camera. More-expensive models also have electronic viewfinders that make them more like DSLRs.
Mount: refers to how much a black and white photograph appears to glows, i.e. the warmth of an area brightness.
Modeling Light: Most modern strobe lights will come with modeling Lights. These are basically just lightbulbs made to mimic the Light of a strobe.
Muddy: Term for prints that are lacking in detail, contrast, and color brilliance (often grayish or brownish).
ND filter – stands for neutral density filter which is a filter designed to go in front of the lens to block out some of the light entering the camera. Often used by landscape photographers to be able to get slow shutter speeds when photographing waterfalls and streams in full daylight.
Negative: Used to make the print, it's the visible form a picture takes after the film is processed. A negative's tones and (with color print film) colors are the opposite of what they were in the subject, but printing reverses them back to their original state.
Noise: Noise is simply little flecks in an image, also sometimes called grain. Images taken at high ISOs have a lot of noise, so it’s best to use the lowest ISO you can for the amount of light in the scene.
Normal focal length: Focal length setting--usually around 50mm with 35mm models, 40mm with APS models--that reproduces the most natural-looking size relationships in a scene.
One-time-use camera: A model designed to shoot a single roll of film, it's available in specialized designs, and comes in both 35mm and APS versions. You turn in the camera itself to the photo-finisher when the roll is done.
Optical Zoom:Another name for a zoom lens, which is a lens that enables the user to change the magnification ratio, i.e., focal length of the lens, either by pushing, pulling or rotating the lens barrel. Unlike variable focal length lenses, zooms are constructed to allow a continuously variable focal length, without disturbing focus.
Original: General usage means a print made by the artist.
Overexposure: The result of recording too much light when taking a picture, which results in a lighter image. In digital imaging, overexposure can usually be corrected to a certain extent by the use of image-editing software, depending on the degree to which an image is overexposed. Raw files offer more latitude than JPEGs and TIFFs for correcting overexposure.
Panning – the act of using a slow shutter speed, and moving the camera in the same direction as a moving subject, during the exposure to create a blurred background.
Panorama mode: A setting in which the camera produces an elongated image intended for the creation of a 4 x 10- or 4 x 111/2-inch print.
Parallax error: The difference between what the lens sees and what you see through the camera's viewfinder; especially pronounced at longer focal lengths and with closer subjects.
Photofinishing: (Also called processing.) The business of turning your exposed film into negatives (developing) and your negatives into prints (printing)--or into any other usable, visible form.
Pixels: Short for picture elements, the tile like bits of color and tone that form a digital image.
Pixelization: The breakup of a digital image file that has been scaled up (enlarged) to a point where the pixels no longer blend together to form a smooth image. Pixelization can also appear in the form of step-like or choppy curves and angled lines (also known as the jaggies). As a rule, the greater the number of pixels contained in an image, the less likely it will be to experience pixelization in the image.
Positive: Opposite of negative, used to describe any photographic image that reproduces the subject's original tones and/or colors. A slide is a positive; a print is a positive.
Portfolio: A group of photographs published together, usually with some unifying concept, such as artist, subject matter, composition, theme, or interpretation.
Pre-focusing: Same idea as locking the focus, but means using the technique to reduce shutter-button time lag when shooting a moving subject.
Print format: The proportions (height to width) or shape of a photographic print. The Advanced Photo System offers a choice of three print formats, select-able with a control on the camera itself.
Prime Lens - a prime lens is either a photographic lens whose focal length is fixed.
Printing: See photofinishing.
Processing: See photofinishing.
Quartz-date: Term for point-and-shoot models with the ability to imprint the date on photographic negatives; numbers appear permanently on the front of the prints.
RGB: Red, Green, and Blue
Random Access Memory (RAM): The amount of active digital storage in your computer, RAM must be relatively high to allow work with photographs.
Raw: is a file type that gives the photographer more control over photo editing. RAW is considered a digital negative, where the default JPEG file type has already been processed a bit. RAW requires special software to open, however, while JPEG is more universal.
Reflector – a device that is used to reflect light, generally back towards the subject. It can be a specialized factory made reflector (I recommend getting a 5-in-1 if you get one) or as simple as a piece of white cardboard.
Remote Capture: The ability to trip the camera shutter from a distance using a cable release or wireless transmitter / transceiver.
Remote Trigger: a device that allows the camera to be fired without pressing the button or touching the camera. Helps eliminate movement of the camera during long exposures.
Resolution: Technical term for the measurement of photographic sharpness, resolution is lower for digital point-and-shoots than film models.
Rewinding: The process of retracting a roll of exposed film into its cassette before removal from the camera. Motorized on many models, rewinding starts automatically at the end of the roll or when you press the mid-roll rewind button.
Rule of Thirds:This composition rule suggests imagining the image has been divided into three parts both horizontally and vertically. Often the most interesting compositions result in placing the subject on one of the intersections of those imaginary lines, instead of in the center of the photo.
Saturation: Saturation is the depth of the colors within a photographic image. Photographs with deep levels of color are described as being heavily saturated. A photograph with lighter levels of saturation is described as having a muted color palette. A totally desaturated color photograph becomes monotone—or black and white.
Scanning: The process of translating a photograph (negative or print) into an electronic form that can be used by computers.
Scrim: A scrim can also be a translucent gauze type material that may be fastened onto a frame, and used outdoors to reduce the intensity of, and soften harsh light on subjects/people being filmed or photographed.
Self-timer mode: A setting in which the camera delays taking a picture by a specified interval after you touch the shutter button.
Sharpness: The degree to which clear, distinguishable details of the subject are rendered in a photographic negative or print.
Short focal length: See wide-angle focal length.
Shutter button: The button that you press to take a picture. On auto-focus cameras, the shutter button also activates and locks the focus when pressed halfway.
Shutter speed: The length of time the window in the lens stays open to let light through to the film or sensor.
Shutter Priority: A metering mode in which the shutter speed is fixed and the exposure is controlled by opening or closing the lens aperture. Most modern cameras have step-less shutters that can be triggered to open and close infinitely between the camera's fastest and slowest shutter speeds.
SLR: A single-lens reflex camera is a camera that typically uses a mirror and prism system (hence "reflex" from the mirror's reflection) that permits the photographer to view through the lens and see exactly what will be captured.
Single-focal-length: Term for lenses on non-zooming point-and-shoots. Because the focal length cannot be adjusted, you can only control the subject's size in the picture by physically moving yourself and the camera in and out.
Slide film: Film designed to produce a positive transparent image of the subject on the original film itself. Mainly intended for projection or scanning rather than printing, though prints can be ordered from slides.
Slow film: Film with relatively low sensitivity to light, reflected in its lower ISO rating--usually ISO 200 and below.
Slow-sync flash: (Also known as night, night scene, or night portrait mode.) This mode combines flash with a longer shutter speed to improve background detail in low-light flash shots.
Soft light: Light that creates delicate tones and pale or minimal shadows in the subject, such as from a cloudy sky or in open shade.
Spot Metering: Spot metering is the measurement of very small portions of the total image area. Older cameras, as well as less-expensive digital cameras, only offer a single, centrally located measuring point, usually between 1 to 5 degrees in coverage.
Strobe Light: or stroboscopic lamp, commonly called a strobe, is a device used to produce regular flashes of light.
Telephoto focal length: (Also called a long focal length.) A focal length setting--usually around 60mm (with APS) or 70mm (with 35mm) and beyond--at which the subject is magnified (appears bigger than normal in the frame).
Thumbnails: Small reference images of the shots on a roll, appearing in an index print or on a computer screen.
TIFF (Tagged-Image File Format): TIFF files are flexible bitmap image files supported by virtually all paint, image editing, and page-layout applications. Also, virtually all desktop scanners can produce TIFF images. This format, which uses the .tif extension, supports CMYK, RGB, Lab, and grayscale files with alpha channels and Bitmap files without alpha channels. TIFF also supports LZW compression, a lossless compression format.
Time Lapse: A time lapse is a video created from stitching several photos together taken of the same thing at different times. Don’t confuse a time lapse with a long exposure, which is a single image with a long shutter speed.
Toggling: Pressing a push button repeatedly to advance through a menu of modes, in order to choose and set one.
Tonality: refers to both the hue of a black and white photograph and the gradation of black to white throughout the photograph.
Tungsten light: Artificial light from household bulbs (hot lights). The lamps operate at a higher temperature than normal incandescent tungsten bulbs, and so they can achieve a higher color temperature, and higher luminous efficiency. They naturally produce a warm light, but blue color correction gels can be used to simulate daylight
USB: A common interface that enables communication between devices and a host controller such as a personal computer (PC). It connects peripheral devices such as digital cameras, mice, keyboards, printers, scanners, media devices, external hard drives and flash drives.
Underexposure: The result of recording too little light when taking a picture, which results in a dark image. In digital imaging, underexposure can be corrected to a certain extent by the use of image-editing software, depending upon how underexposed your image is. Raw files offer more latitude than JPEGs and TIFFs for correcting underexposure.
Viewfinder: Window on the camera through which you see the rectangular frame used to view and compose your subject. (On many digital point-and-shoots the viewfinder is a TV like color LCD screen.)
White Balance: Your eyes automatically adjust to different light sources, but a camera can’t do that—that’s why sometimes you take an image and it looks very blue or very yellow. Using the right white balance setting will make what’s white in real life actually appear white in the photo. There’s an auto white balance setting, but like any automatic setting it’s not always accurate. You can use a preset based on what light you are shooting in like sun or tungsten light bulbs, or you can take a picture of a white object and manually set the white balance.
Wide-angle focal length: (Also called a short focal length.) Focal length at which the lens takes in a relatively large section of the total scene. Most point-and-shoot zoom lenses start out at a wide-angle setting (38mm, 28mm), and most non-zoom models have wide-angle lenses (35mm, 32mm).
Wide-area auto-focus: (Also called multi beam or multi point auto-focus.) An auto-focus system in which multiple focus points cover a wider-than-usual area in the middle of the viewfinder. Wide-area auto-focus allows the camera to focus subjects that are slightly off-center without the need to lock the focus.
Wide open – using your lens with the aperture at the widest setting (f1.8 for example)
Enjoy and get out there and start practicing your Photographer Speak. This list is not exhaustive by any means, and if there’s any I missed please mention them in the comments section below.
Vignetting- Darkening of the edges of a photographic image due to the inability of a lens to evenly distribute light to the corners of the frame. While correctable with filtration using on-camera, center-weighted neutral density filters, or electronically in Photoshop, vignetting is often valuable as a creative device to direct the eye back to the center of the frame.
Watermark: Traditionally, a watermark is an image or icon that is embedded into paper for security purposes (American paper currency has a watermark). In digital photography, a watermark refers to information that is embedded in the image data to protect the copyrights of the image.
White Balance: The camera's ability to correct color cast or tint under different lighting conditions including daylight, indoor, fluorescent lighting, and electronic flash. Also known as “WB,” many cameras offer an Auto WB mode that is usually—but not always—quite accurate.
Zoom lens: A lens of adjustable focal length. You zoom to increase or decrease the lens's magnifying power, making the subject bigger or smaller in the frame.
Zooming in: Setting a longer focal length on your zoom lens, to make the subject bigger in the picture.
Zooming out: Setting a shorter focal length on your zoom lens, to include more of the scene in the picture.
Photoshop Vocabulary
Pixels: Dots that make up an image
Hue: The color reflected from or transmitted through an object, expressed as a degree (betw. 0 and 360) and identified by a color name
Saturation: (aka "chroma") The strength or purity of the color, representing the amount of gray in proportion to hue; is measured in a percentage from 0% (gray) to 100% (fully saturated)
Brightness: The measurement of a relative lightness or darkness of a color; measured in a percentage from 0% (black) to 100% (white)
Grayscale Mode: A specialized color mode that uses up to 256 shades of gray, assigning a brightness from 0 (black) to 255 (white) to each pixel
Foreground Color: The color applied by painting tools in Photoshop; Black by default and is used to paint, fill, and apply a border to a selection;
Background Color: Color that is revealed by the Eraser Tool when it is used on a layer that has transparency locked; It is white by default and is use to make gradient fills and fill in areas of an image that have been erased
Color Picker: A feature that lets you choose a color from a color spectrum or numerically to define a custom color
Swatches Panel: A visual display of colors that you can choose from
Stroke: Emphasizing an image by placing a border around its edges
Gradient: A blend of colors used to fill a selection of a layer or an entire layer (same as gradient fill)
Grayscale Images: Can contain up to 256 shades of gray, assigning brightness value from 0 (black) to 255 (white) to each pixels (2 words)
Luminosity: The light and dark values within an image when you convert it from color to grayscale
Filters: Photoshop commands that can significantly alter an image's appearance
Sharpen Filter: Increases the contrast of adjacent pixels and can focus a blurry image
Application Bar: A bar at the top of the workspace that contains Photoshop's menus and several other commonly-used tools to help you manage your workspace.
Icon: A picture or symbol that represents the selected tool.
Menus: Lists of commands that are related to each other.
Options Bar: Located just below the Application bar. When you click on any tool in the Tools panel, the tool's options (or settings) appear here.
Panels: Small windows that contain a variety of related settings. Main ones used include: Layers, Channels, and History.
Crop: To cut off
Resolution: Quality level of an image. Measured in pixels per inch (ppi) or dots per inch (dpi)
Fastening Points: Points created by the Magnetic Lasso Tool that hold the selection border to the edges in the image.
Feathering: A fading-out effect created at the edges of a selection.
Flatten: Merge all layers in an image using a single command.
Layers: Parts of Photoshop file that keeps different parts of the design separate from each other.
Scale: To make larger or smaller.
Font: A named set of text and numeric characters that share the same look and feel.
Layer Styles: Special effects such as drop shadows, beveled edges, and colorful outlines that can quickly be applied to an entire layer.
Styles: A variety of effects, such as drop shadows and beveled edges, applied to text or shapes.
JPEG: Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG or .jpg) is an image file format that supports millions of colors and works best for photographs and other images with continuous tones.
PSD: Photoshop document. These files contain all the layers an artist creates so that each layer can be changed or edited later.
History Panel: Shows you all the moves you have done in the current session of Photoshop. It takes the multiple-undo system and puts it in a list you can pick from.
Red Eye Tool: A retouching tool in Photoshop that allows a user to neutralize red tones by blending them with the eye color of a person in an image.
Clone Stamp Tool: A retouching tool that allows a user to copy a selected area and paste it over another area to cover blemishes or other problems in the photo.
Color Balance: The adjustment of the intensity of the colors in an image.
Unsharp Mask: Photoshop effect that helps to sharpen a blurry image by masking the unsharp part. It is in the Filter menu.
RGB: A color mode that is popular for computer graphics and has a maximum of 16.7 million colors.
CMYK: A color mode used for four-color printing. It has a maximum of 16.7 million colors.
Color Mode: Determines the color model used to display and print images. CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black); RGB (red, green, blue) and Grayscale are this.
File Size: The digital size of an image, proportional to the pixel dimensions of the image. To find this, multiply width in pixels by height in pixels.
PDF: Portable Document File enables the printing and viewing of documents. Tjhe document appears the same regardless of which operating system or computer is used.
TIFF: The Tagged Image File Format saves an image without any compression.
PNG: An image file format that supports grayscale, 256 color, true color images and alpha transparency.
Leading: The space between the lines of text.
Kerning: The space between each letter
Tracking: Evenly adding or subtracting space between letters in a word or group of words
Magnetic Lasso: A selection tool that creates selections automatically by clinging to edges of contrasting objects as you click the edges
Polygonal Lasso: A selection tool useful for creating a selection that is made up of straight lines
Magic Wand: A selection tool that selects an area based on similarly colored pixels, and may be adjusted for color tolerance.
Inverse Selection: An option in the Select menu that allows the user to select the background of an image, then use that selection to create a new selection with the inverse portion of the image (the part not originally selected
Quick Selection: Selects portions of an image based on similarity of textures or solid blocks of similar color.
Layer Mask: An overlay of a layer that allows you to make visual changes to the layer without actually changing the layer itself. While in this, you can paint white to reveal additional parts of the layer or paint black to conceal.
Adjustments Layer: Create this on an image in the layers panel to make visual changes such as making a photo lighter or darker, sharpening or adjusting the color balance or hue.
Healing Brush: A retouching tool that allows a user to copy an area and drag it across another area of an image to mix pixels and blend color tones to cover blemishes.
Dodge: Use this tool to lighten parts of your image where you click and drag this tool. You can set the exposure amount and choose highlights, midtones or shadows in the options bar.
Burn: Use these to darken parts of your image where you click and drag this tool. You can set the exposure amount and choose highlights, midtones or shadows in the options bar.
Smart Object: Completely preserves the image data so that all editing is nondestructive
Pantone: A color-matching system that is used to standardize colors used in digital and printed images.
Duotone: A color mode that uses two colors, combining highlights and midtones to a black & white image while allowing the user to choose the second color, so that it is the chosen color and white
Pixels: Dots that make up an image
Hue: The color reflected from or transmitted through an object, expressed as a degree (betw. 0 and 360) and identified by a color name
Saturation: (aka "chroma") The strength or purity of the color, representing the amount of gray in proportion to hue; is measured in a percentage from 0% (gray) to 100% (fully saturated)
Brightness: The measurement of a relative lightness or darkness of a color; measured in a percentage from 0% (black) to 100% (white)
Grayscale Mode: A specialized color mode that uses up to 256 shades of gray, assigning a brightness from 0 (black) to 255 (white) to each pixel
Foreground Color: The color applied by painting tools in Photoshop; Black by default and is used to paint, fill, and apply a border to a selection;
Background Color: Color that is revealed by the Eraser Tool when it is used on a layer that has transparency locked; It is white by default and is use to make gradient fills and fill in areas of an image that have been erased
Color Picker: A feature that lets you choose a color from a color spectrum or numerically to define a custom color
Swatches Panel: A visual display of colors that you can choose from
Stroke: Emphasizing an image by placing a border around its edges
Gradient: A blend of colors used to fill a selection of a layer or an entire layer (same as gradient fill)
Grayscale Images: Can contain up to 256 shades of gray, assigning brightness value from 0 (black) to 255 (white) to each pixels (2 words)
Luminosity: The light and dark values within an image when you convert it from color to grayscale
Filters: Photoshop commands that can significantly alter an image's appearance
Sharpen Filter: Increases the contrast of adjacent pixels and can focus a blurry image
Application Bar: A bar at the top of the workspace that contains Photoshop's menus and several other commonly-used tools to help you manage your workspace.
Icon: A picture or symbol that represents the selected tool.
Menus: Lists of commands that are related to each other.
Options Bar: Located just below the Application bar. When you click on any tool in the Tools panel, the tool's options (or settings) appear here.
Panels: Small windows that contain a variety of related settings. Main ones used include: Layers, Channels, and History.
Crop: To cut off
Resolution: Quality level of an image. Measured in pixels per inch (ppi) or dots per inch (dpi)
Fastening Points: Points created by the Magnetic Lasso Tool that hold the selection border to the edges in the image.
Feathering: A fading-out effect created at the edges of a selection.
Flatten: Merge all layers in an image using a single command.
Layers: Parts of Photoshop file that keeps different parts of the design separate from each other.
Scale: To make larger or smaller.
Font: A named set of text and numeric characters that share the same look and feel.
Layer Styles: Special effects such as drop shadows, beveled edges, and colorful outlines that can quickly be applied to an entire layer.
Styles: A variety of effects, such as drop shadows and beveled edges, applied to text or shapes.
JPEG: Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG or .jpg) is an image file format that supports millions of colors and works best for photographs and other images with continuous tones.
PSD: Photoshop document. These files contain all the layers an artist creates so that each layer can be changed or edited later.
History Panel: Shows you all the moves you have done in the current session of Photoshop. It takes the multiple-undo system and puts it in a list you can pick from.
Red Eye Tool: A retouching tool in Photoshop that allows a user to neutralize red tones by blending them with the eye color of a person in an image.
Clone Stamp Tool: A retouching tool that allows a user to copy a selected area and paste it over another area to cover blemishes or other problems in the photo.
Color Balance: The adjustment of the intensity of the colors in an image.
Unsharp Mask: Photoshop effect that helps to sharpen a blurry image by masking the unsharp part. It is in the Filter menu.
RGB: A color mode that is popular for computer graphics and has a maximum of 16.7 million colors.
CMYK: A color mode used for four-color printing. It has a maximum of 16.7 million colors.
Color Mode: Determines the color model used to display and print images. CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black); RGB (red, green, blue) and Grayscale are this.
File Size: The digital size of an image, proportional to the pixel dimensions of the image. To find this, multiply width in pixels by height in pixels.
PDF: Portable Document File enables the printing and viewing of documents. Tjhe document appears the same regardless of which operating system or computer is used.
TIFF: The Tagged Image File Format saves an image without any compression.
PNG: An image file format that supports grayscale, 256 color, true color images and alpha transparency.
Leading: The space between the lines of text.
Kerning: The space between each letter
Tracking: Evenly adding or subtracting space between letters in a word or group of words
Magnetic Lasso: A selection tool that creates selections automatically by clinging to edges of contrasting objects as you click the edges
Polygonal Lasso: A selection tool useful for creating a selection that is made up of straight lines
Magic Wand: A selection tool that selects an area based on similarly colored pixels, and may be adjusted for color tolerance.
Inverse Selection: An option in the Select menu that allows the user to select the background of an image, then use that selection to create a new selection with the inverse portion of the image (the part not originally selected
Quick Selection: Selects portions of an image based on similarity of textures or solid blocks of similar color.
Layer Mask: An overlay of a layer that allows you to make visual changes to the layer without actually changing the layer itself. While in this, you can paint white to reveal additional parts of the layer or paint black to conceal.
Adjustments Layer: Create this on an image in the layers panel to make visual changes such as making a photo lighter or darker, sharpening or adjusting the color balance or hue.
Healing Brush: A retouching tool that allows a user to copy an area and drag it across another area of an image to mix pixels and blend color tones to cover blemishes.
Dodge: Use this tool to lighten parts of your image where you click and drag this tool. You can set the exposure amount and choose highlights, midtones or shadows in the options bar.
Burn: Use these to darken parts of your image where you click and drag this tool. You can set the exposure amount and choose highlights, midtones or shadows in the options bar.
Smart Object: Completely preserves the image data so that all editing is nondestructive
Pantone: A color-matching system that is used to standardize colors used in digital and printed images.
Duotone: A color mode that uses two colors, combining highlights and midtones to a black & white image while allowing the user to choose the second color, so that it is the chosen color and white