Dictionary continued

D

Depth of Field : The distance between the closest and farthest objects in focus within a scene as viewed by a lens at a particular focus.
Diffuse : Light that is reflected from an object's surface, regardless of the angle from witch its viewed.
Dissolve : An animation effect that is a transition between two sequences involving a fade from one directly to the other.
Dither : The mixing of adjacent pixels to simulate additional colors when available colors are limited, such as on an 8-bit monitor or an 8-bit palette.
Dithering : One of many processes for reducing the total number of colors present in an image while retaining visual fidelity. Dithering can be done by interleaving pixels of selected colors to locally approximate the desired color. Dithering can be applied to either a color or a grayscale color space and may be necessary due to a limited number of colors available on the display device.
Dodge : To bleach (lighten) an area of an image.

DPI : (Dots per inch) A unit that is used to measure the resolution of a printer or image setter. Dpi is sometimes used to describe the input resolution of a scanner, but "ppi" is the more accurate term.
Duotone : A grayscale image that is printed using two plates to enhance its tonal depth.

E -F

EPS : Encapsulated PostScript, the file format based on Adobe PostScript. Primarily used to define vector graphics (i.e., geometrical shapes), it can also be used to contain and provide instructions for rendering image (i.e., pixel-based) data. In the case of PhotoShop, an optional PICT or TIFF image for screen display is included too. EPS is a commonly used format for moving files from one application to another and also for color separation.
Feather : Fades an area over a specified number of pixels.
Fill/Flood Fill : These are techniques for coloring areas bounded by line edges. The algorithms that fill interior-defined regions (the largest connected region of pixels whose values are the same as a given starting pixel) are called flood fill algorithms.
Filter : 1) An optical device that selectively attenuates the intensity of light passing through it according to the light's properties. Common filters attenuate light according to either wavelength or polarization state.
2) An algorithm that selectively modifies the intensity or color of image data according to the image's properties. 3) An element (software or hardware) which takes in a stream of data and produces a stream of results, on average one output for each input.
Foreground Color : The color that is applied when a painting tool is used, type is created, or the stroke command is applied.
Four-color Process : The printing process that reproduces colors by combining, cyan (C), magenta (M), yellow (Y), and black (K) inks. This process is alternately called four-color printing, CMYK printing, or process printing.
FPS : Frames Per Second. The rate at which animations are displayed.
Frame : A still two-dimensional image. Often a frame is a raster image as used in the frame buffer of a graphics display system. In computer animation frames per second is a measurement of the number of still frames displayed in one second to give the impression of a moving image.
Frame Rate : The frame rate of a video source is determined by the speed at which it completes the rendering of a new image. This is limited by both the speed at which image data can be created and the rate at which video images can be presented on a display. For example the NTSC system redraws at 30Hz, PAL is 25Hz and computer displays are now usually 72-75Hz.
Frame Size : A term used to refer to the dimensions of the array of pixels forming a frame of an animation, or alternatively the memory requirement and hence indirectly the resolution and dimensions.

G - H

Gamma : The values produced by a monitor from black to white are nonlinear. If you graph the values, they form a curve, not a straight line. Gamma defines the slope of that curve at halfway between black and white. Gamma adjustment compensates for the nonlinear tonal reproduction of output devices such as monitor tubes.
Gamut : The total range of colors produced by a device. A color is said to be "out of gamut" when its position in one device's color space cannot be directly translated into another device's color space.
GIF : Graphic Interchange Format. This file format is commonly used on the internet.
Gradient Fill : In PhotoShop, a graduated blend between the Foreground and Background colors that is produced using the Gradient tool.
Grayscale : A color space where colors are represented by their luminance values only, i.e. saturation and hue are zero. An image that contains black, white, and up to 256 shades of gray, but no color In PhotoShop, Grayscale is a one-channel image mode.

Halftone Screen : A pattern of tiny dots that is used for printing an image to simulate continuous tones.
Hard Proof : The printed proof of a document created to preview how colors will look when reproduced on a specific output device, usually a commercial printing press. A hard proof may be produced using a laminate contract proofing system (e.g., Imation MatchPrint) or a tightly calibrated digital printer designed for proof creation.
Highlight : The area of a glossy object over which specular reflection can be viewed. It is normally the color of the light source, not of the object.
Histogram : A graph showing the number of pixels at each level of brightness in an image.
HSB : A three-coordinate, device-independent color model. The HSB coordinates define colors in terms of Hue, Saturation, and Brightness.
HSL/Hue-Saturation-Lightness : HSL, also known as HSI (Hue-Saturation-Intensity) is a color space used to represent images. HSL is based on polar coordinates, while the RGB color space is based on a three-dimensional Cartesian coordinate system. Intensity is the vertical axis of the polar system, hue is the relative angle and saturation is the planar distance from the axis. HSL is thought to be more intuitive to manipulate than RGB space. For example, in the HSI space, to change red to pink requires only changing the saturation parameter.
HSV/Hue-Saturation-Value : A color space that describes color using three basis components: hue, saturation and brightness.
Hue : The wavelength of light of a pure color that gives a color its name--such as red or blue--independent of its saturation or brightness.

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