Complete List of Terms and Definitions for adobe photoshop

Terms Definitions
chroma See saturation.
Ctrl Z Undo
Ctrl + Increase Zoom
ppi See pixels per inch.
layer set A Photoshoplayer-management tool. Layer sets let you consolidate contiguous layers into a folder on the Layers palette. By highlighting the folder, you can apply certain operations to the layers as a group. For example, the layers in a layer set can be can simultaneously hidden, displayed, moved, or repositioned.
PNG-8 A lossless-compression file format that supports 256 colors and transparency. PNG-8 is not supported by older Web browsers.
equalization A technique for distributing image data across a greater range of pixel values. Typical equalization techniques include gamma correction and adaptive histogram equalization.
scanner An electronic device that digitizes and converts photographs, slides, paper images, or other two-dimensional images into pixels.
leading The typographic term to describe vertical spacing between lines, measured from baseline to baseline.
labels A Photoshop printing option that prints the document and channel name on the image.
lossless compression An image-compression scheme that preserves image detail. When the image is decompressed, it is identical to the original version.
path A vector object that mathematically defines a specific area on an image. Vector objects are composed of anchor points and line segments known as Bezier curves. Paths enable you to create straight lines and curves with precision. If a path’s two endpoints are joined, it encloses a shape. A path can be filled with color, stroked with an outline, or stored in the Paths palette or the Shape library for later use. A path also can be converted into a selection.
gamma A measurement of midtone brightness for a monitor. The gamma value defines the slope of that curve halfway between black and white. Gamma values range from 1.0 to about 2.5. The Macintosh has traditionally used a gamma of 1.8, which is relatively flat compared to television. Windows
PCs use a 2.2 gamma value, which has more contrast and is more saturated.
perspective In Photoshop, a transformation that squeezes or stretches one edge of a selection, slanting the two adjacent sides either in or out. This produces an image that mimics the way you perceive a picture slanted at a distance.
cloning In Photoshop and other image-editing programs, a feature that allows you to copy a part of an image and use that copy to replace another part of the image. Cloning is accomplished with the Clone Stamp and Pattern Stamp tools.
tracking The global space between selected groups of characters in text.
gradient Variations of color that subtly blend into one another. Photoshop gradients blend multiple colors into each other or into transparency over a specified distance.
Paragraph palette The Photoshop palette that contains settings that apply to entire text paragraphs, such as alignment and hyphenation.
one-quarter tone A tonal value located approximately halfway between the highlight and midtone.
plug-in A modular mini program or filter, usually developed by a third-party vendor, that adds functions to Photoshop.
CMYK The colors used in process printing. Each color plate contains tiny dots of cyan, magenta, yellow, or black (CMYK). The densities of the colored dots on each plate influence the surrounding colors when the eye mixes them together.
PNG-24 A lossless file format that supports 24-bit color, transparency, and matting. PNG-24 combines the attributes of JPEG and GIF. PNG-24 is not supported by older Web browsers.
guide In Photoshop, a horizontal or vertical line that can be positioned anywhere on the image’s surface. Guides do not print.
highlight The lightest part of an image, represented on a digital image by pixels with high numeric values or on a halftone by the smallest dots or the absence of dots.
Action A Photoshop script that automates a single operation or a sequence of operations. Photoshop comes with default Actions, and you can create and save custom Actions to a file. When you need a particular Action or Action sequence, you can play it and apply its operations to any image by pressing a function key.
aspect ratio The height-to-width ratio of a selection, an image, or—in the case of digital video—a frame.
Background In Photoshop, the area behind layers. The contents of all layers float on top of the Background. Unlike a layer, the Background is opaque and cannot support transparency. If the document contains more than one layer, the Background is always at the bottom of the stack and cannot be moved or placed in a higher position. When new layers are added to the document, their content always appears in front of the Background.
knockout An area that prevents ink from printing on part of an image, so that the spot color can print directly on the paper. Knockouts keep a spot color from overprinting another spot color or a portion of the underlying image.
Actions palette The Photoshop palette that contains controls for recording and playing back Actions.
ImageReady A companion program to Photoshop, used to create dynamic Web graphics.
monitor profile A description of a monitor’s characteristics used by Photoshop to display images correctly on that monitor. One way to create a monitor profile is to make a visual calibration of your monitor using Adobe Gamma and then save the resulting information as a color profile.
midtone A tonal range of brightness values located approximately halfway between white and black.
metadata Information about the file that is embedded in the document.
tweening From “in betweening,” a method for adding transitions between frames in animations.
digitizer board A special-purpose computer card that transforms video signals into image data. Image sources for this technology include television signals and the output from VCRs and traditional analog video cameras. Digitizer video boards are also called frame grabbers, because they receive the frames sent by the video image sources.
saturation The intensity of a color. Saturation, or chroma, is determined by the percentage of the hue in proportion to gray, from 0 to 100 percent. Zero-percent saturation means that the color is entirely gray.
colorize To convert gray pixels to colored pixels. Before a black-and-white image can be colorized in Photoshop, you must change its mode from Grayscale to a mode that supports color (RGB, CMYK, or Lab). By colorizing, you apply color to the image without affecting the lightness relationships of the individual pixels, thereby maintaining the image’s detail.
continuous-tone image An image containing gradient tones from black to white.
dodge A technique used by photographers in the darkroom to overexpose or lighten specific areas of an image. In Photoshop, the Dodge tool performs a similar function by increasing the brightness values of pixels as you paint with it.
canvas In Photoshop, the surface on which your image resides.
CMYK image A four-channel image containing a cyan, magenta, yellow, and black channel. A CMYK image is generally used to print color separations.
stroking Outlining a selection border with a color. In Photoshop, strokes can vary in width and relative position on the selection border.
Duotone mode A Photoshop mode that displays Duotones, which are images that have been separated into two spot colors. Duotone mode also supports Monotone (images with one color), Tritones (images with three colors), and Quadtones (images with four colors). The Duotone Mode color information is contained on one color channel. Photoshop displays a preview that is an RGB simulation of the ink combinations.
trap A technique used in preparing images for printing color separations. Misalignments or shifting during printing can result in gaps in images. A trap is an overlap that prevents such gaps from appearing along the edges of objects in an image.
raster-based software Photoshop and other programs that create raster images. Raster-based software is best suited for editing, manipulating, and compositing scanned images, images from digital cameras and Photo CDs, continuous-tone photographs, realistic illustrations, and other graphics that require subtle blends, soft edges, shadow effects, and artistic filter effects like Impressionist or watercolor.
red eye An effect from flash photography that appears to make a person’s eyes glow red.
Quadtone An image that has been separated into four spot colors.
Tool palette In Photoshop, the area that contains icons for tools, also called the Toolbox. Some of the tool icons expand to provide access to tools that are not visible, bringing the entire number of tools to 50, plus paint swatches, Quick Mask icons, view modes, and the Jump To command. The Tool palette is a floating palette that you can move or hide.
margin-style background A background that is configured so that the image repeats vertically but not horizontally. This type of background appears as a continuous design down the depth of the page. It is a common visual element that helps unify the design of a Web page.
Bitmap mode A Photoshop mode that displays and converts images that are composed of pixels, each containing 1 bit of information. The pixels are either black or white. Bitmap images are used to create line art and digital halftones. Bitmap image file sizes are smaller than grayscale images, which contain 8 bits per pixel, or color images, which contain 24 bits per pixel. Bitmapped images do not support layers, alpha channels, filters, or any operations involving color.
emulsion The photosensitive layer on a piece of film, paper, or plate.
hue The color of light that is reflected from an opaque object or transmitted through a transparent one. Hue in Photoshop is measured by its position on a color wheel, from 0 to 360 degrees.
Lab color mode A color mode that is device-independent. Lab color consists of three channels: a luminance or lightness channel (L), a green–red component (a), and a blue–yellow component (b). Lab can be used to adjust an image’s luminance and color independently of each other.
digital video (DV) The configuration of video into a pixel-based media that can be interpreted and displayed on a computer monitor.
image size The physical size and resolution of an image. The size of an image specifies the exact number of pixels that compose a picture.
CMYK color mode A color mode that produces a full range of color by printing tiny dots of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black ink. Because the colored dots are so small, the eye mixes them together. The relative densities of groups of colored dots produce variations in color and tonality. CMYK is referred to as a subtractive color system.
printer resolution The number of dots that can be printed per linear inch, measured in dots per inch (dpi). These dots compose larger halftone dots on a halftone screen or stochastic (random pattern) dots on an ink-jet printer.
color separation (process) An image that has been separated into the four process colors: cyan, magenta, yellow, and black (CMYK). The image is then printed on four separate plates, one for each of the process colors.
color mode or model A system of displaying or printing color. Photoshop supports the HSB color model and RGB, CMYK, Lab, Indexed, Duotone, Grayscale, Multichannel, and Bitmap color modes.
Indexed color mode A color mode that uses a maximum of 256 colors to display full-color images. When you convert an image color to Indexed mode, Photoshop stores the color information as a color lookup table. You can then use a specific palette to display the image to match the colors as closely as possible to the original. Because it contains fewer colors, Indexed color mode creates smaller file sizes than the other color modes produce.
Ctrl S Save
ICC International Color Consortium.
Ctrl - Decrease Zoom
CODEC An acronym for the compression/decompression process. Reducing storage requirements and the data rate required to retrieve video from a disk for decompression and playback.
object-oriented software Vector-based illustration applications (such as Adobe Illustrator, Macromedia FreeHand, and CorelDRAW) and page-layout programs (such as QuarkXPress, Adobe PageMaker, and Adobe InDesign). Vector-based illustration software is appropriate for creating graphics such as charts, graphs, maps, cartoons, architectural plans, and other images that require hard edges and smooth blends. Vector-based page-layout software is suitable for creating books, pamphlets, brochures, flyers, and other documents that combine images and text. Photoshop is raster-based software, rather than vector-based illustration software; it does not print object-oriented graphics as vectors.
Droplet A mini application that contains Actions. A Droplet can sit on the desktop or be saved to a disk file. You can apply an operation to a file or group of files by dragging the file or folder onto the Droplet’s icon.
state In Photoshop’s History palette, a stored version of an image. Each time you perform an operation, the History palette produces a state with the name of the operation or tool that was used. The higher the state appears in the stack, the earlier in the process the state was made.
SMPTE-C A movie industry standard, compliant with the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers standards for motion picture illuminants.
Curves A Photoshop color-adjustment tool that allows you to lighten, darken, add contrast, and solarize images.
halftone The reproduction of a continuous-tone image, which is made by using a screen that breaks the image into various-sized dots. The resolution, or number of lines per inch (lpi), of a halftone depends on the printer’s capabilities. The tonal densities of an image are determined by the size of the dots. The larger the dot, the more ink deposited, and the darker the area appears. When you send an image to a printer, Photoshop, in tandem with the printer driver software, automatically converts the tonal information contained in pixels into dot-density information that the printer uses to construct the image.
lossy compression An image-compression scheme that creates smaller files but can affect image quality. When decompressed, the image produced is not identical to the original. Usually, colors have been blended, averaged, or estimated in the decompressed version.
analog Signals made up of continuously varying wave forms.
GIF87a and GIF89a The Graphics Interchange Formats (GIFs), used for Web applications and for saving animations produced in ImageReady. GIF is a lossless-compression format that compresses the image through reduction of the available colors. GIF87a does not support transparency. GIF89a is used to omit the visibility of selected colors on a Web browser.
brightness The relative lightness or darkness of a color, measured from 0 to 100 percent. Brightness is also referred to as value. Colors with low brightness values are dark; colors with high brightness values are light.
pixel An individual square of colored light, which is the smallest editable unit in a digital image. The pixels (short for picture elements) in a digital image are usually so small that, when seen, the colors blend into what appears to be a continuous-tone image.
burn A technique used by photographers in the darkroom to underexpose or darken areas of an image. Photoshop’s Burn tool darkens by lowering the brightness values of pixels as you move the tool over the image.
frame grabber (digitizer board - A special-purpose computer card that transforms video signals into image data. Image sources for this technology include television signals and the output from VCRs and traditional analog video cameras. Digitizer video boards are also called frame grabbers, because they receive the frames sent by the video image sources.
Paths palette The Photoshop palette that contains controls for working paths, including creating deleting paths, filling paths, stroking paths, and saving work paths.
Info palette The Photoshop palette that shows information about the current image. By default, the Info palette displays Actual Color and CMYK fields, the x and y coordinates of the position of the cursor, and the height and width of the selection. This palette can display values in many different modes, including Web, HSB, Lab, Total Ink, and Opacity.
filter A software method for applying effects to images. With filters, you can adjust focus, eliminate unwanted artifacts, alter or create complex selection masks, and apply a wide range of artistic effects.
moiré pattern An undesirable pattern in color printing, resulting from incorrect screen angles of overprinting halftones. Moiré patterns can be minimized with the use of proper screen angles.
Bezier curves Lines and shapes composed of mathematically defined points and segments. Bezier curves are used in vector graphics.
resolution-independent image An image that automatically conforms to the highest resolution of the output device on which it is printed.
clipping group Layers grouped together to create effects. In order to join two layers into a clipping group, the image on the bottom layer must be surrounded by transparency. When a layer is clipped, it fills the shape of the image on the layer below it so that it acts as a mask to clip the layer immediately above it.
snapshot In Photoshop, a saved image’s state. By default, when the image is opened, the History palette displays a snapshot of the image as it appeared when it was last saved. You can save the current image to a snapshot to preserve that state.
dither A method of distributing pixels to extend the visual range of color on-screen, such as producing the effect of shades of gray on a black-and-white display or more colors on an 8-bit color display. By making adjacent pixels different colors, dithering gives the illusion of a third color.
color mapping Operations that can radically alter existing colors in an image. Color mapping provides the means to alter the basic characteristics of color while maintaining the image’s detail.
distort To stretch a selection or layer contents along either of its axes. Unlike skewing, distortion is not restricted to a single border at a time.
timeline The window that provides a schematic view of your program including all video, audio, and superimposed video tracks in nonlinear editing programs like Adobe Premier.
Spectrophotometer A device used to measure the color gamut of a printed page. From the data that the spectrophotometer collects, a profile can be written that can be used as a color working space.
ligature A set of two characters that is designed to replace certain character combinations, such as fl and fi, to avoid spacing conflicts.
Tritone An image that has been separated into three spot colors.
Proof Colors A Photoshop control that allows the on-screen preview to simulate a variety of reproduction processes without converting the file to the final color space. This feature takes the place of the Preview In CMYK feature in earlier Photoshop versions.
calibrated monitor The foundation from which all other color settings are determined. You can use a calibration device or the Adobe Gamma calibration package to calibrate your monitor.
dot gain A phenomenon in printing that causes dots to print larger due to the absorbency of the paper they are printed on. Dot gain creates darker tones or colors. Dot gain is reflected in an increase in the density of light reflected by an image.
color management policies Policies that determine how Photoshop deals with color profiles when opening RGB, CMYK, or Grayscale files.
Duotone An image that uses two inks. Duotone can add a wider tonal range in a grayscale image by using more than one shade of ink to fill in the gaps. Duotone curves let you control the density of each shade in the highlights, midtones, and shadows. Photoshop creates Duotones by applying the various curves that you’ve defined to a single image.
History palette The Photoshop palette that records all of the changes that you make to an image during a session, as a series of individual states. You can use the History palette to revert to former versions of an image and to create special effects. The History palette also works in conjunction with the History Brush and Art History Brush tools.
registration mark A mark that appears on a printed image, generally for color separations, to help in aligning the printing plates.
color correction Changing the colors of pixels in an image—including adjusting brightness, contrast, midlevel grays, hue, and saturation—to achieve optimum printed results.
HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) The programming language used to create Web pages.
font obliqueness Refers to whether the characters in a font lean, as does italic style type.