Julie Éclair’s Image Glossary and Dictionary.

.
April 21, 2015.

.

Below are terms from Art, Photography, Graphics, and Related Subjects. Also included are terms from Julie Eclair’s Multimedia Glossary (unpublished).

A
abstract  – 1. A 20th century style of painting in which nonrepresentational lines, colors, shapes, and forms replace accurate visual depiction of objects, landscape, and figures. The subjects often stylized, blurred, repeated or broken down into basic forms so that it becomes unrecognizable. Intangible subjects such as thoughts, emotions, and time are often expressed in abstract art form.  2. An image or design that is not primarily perceived or understood.  (It does not have fidelity to the natural, i.e., representational, world although sometimes using a simplification or exaggeration of natural form.)

abstract expressionism – A painting movement in which artists typically applied paint rapidly, and with force to their huge canvases in an effort to show feelings and emotions, painting gesturally, non-geometrically, sometimes applying paint with large brushes, sometimes dripping or even throwing it onto canvas. Their work is characterized by a strong dependence on what appears to be accident and chance, but which is actually highly planned. Some Abstract Expressionist artists were concerned with adopting a peaceful and mystical approach to a purely abstract image. Usually there was no effort to represent subject matter. Not all work was abstract, nor was all work expressive, but it was generally believed that the spontaneity of the artists’ approach to their work would draw from and release the creativity of their unconscious minds. The expressive method of painting was often considered as important as the painting itself.

acetate – In the photographic context, a transparent plastic base for photographic film made by treating cellulose with acetic acid. This term is used for various modifications of cellulose acetate, e.g., cellulose diacetate, cellulose triacetate, cellulose acetate propionate, and cellulose acetate butyrate.

acetate decay – Degradation of cellulose acetate film base that may cause distortion, shrinkage, and brittleness, often detected by a vinegar odor. The severity of decomposition can be determined using A-D Strips. (See also Vinegar Syndrome)

achromatic – Color having no chroma — black, white and grays made by mixing black and white. All other colors employ chromatic pigments.

active imagination – 1. Active imagination is a cognitive methodology that uses the imagination as an organ of understanding. Disciplines of active imagination are found within various philosophical, religious and spiritual traditions. It is perhaps best known in the West today through C. G. Jung’s emphasis on the therapeutic value of this activity.  2. Henry Corbin considered imaginal cognition to be a “purely spiritual faculty independent of the physical organism and thus surviving it”.  Islamic philosophy in general, and Avicenna and Corbin in particular, distinguish sharply between the true imaginations that stem from the imaginal realm, and personal fantasies, which have an unreal character, and are “imaginary” in the common sense of this word. Corbin termed the imagination which transcended fantasy imaginatio vera. Corbin suggested that by developing our imaginal perception, we can go beyond mere symbolic representations of archetypes to the point where “new senses perceive directly the order of [supersensible] reality”. To accomplish this passage from symbol to reality requires a “transmutation of the being and of the spirit”. Corbin describes the imaginal realm as “a precise order of reality, corresponding to a precise mode of perception,” the “cognitive Imagination”.  He considered the imaginal realm to be identical with the realm of angels described in many religions, which manifests not only through imaginations but also in people’s vocation and destiny. Corbin (1964) suggests that it is by developing this faculty of cognitive imagination that we can overcome the “divorce between thinking and being”.  3. James Hillman sees that the contents of the unconscious as something natural and organic, not as material to be forced into therapy or overly shaped by some psychological practice. The image rules. His philosophy can be easily heard in his longest piece about Active Imagination (perhaps it could be said that most of his work is but one long writing on Active Imagination). “Active Imagination Is Not A Spiritual Discipline. It is not a discipline because there are no prescribed images that one must follow. One works with the images that arise. Active Imagination Is Not An Artistic Endeavor, Nor A Creative Production Of Paintings And Poems Active Imagination Is Not Done To Silence The Mind, But To Give It Greater Speech Active Imagination Should Not Be Used To Pursue A End, Even If It Goes By The Name Enlightenment, Samadhi, Satori, or Other Statement of Ultimate Spiritual Achievement. This would be giving the process a Spiritual basis rather than following it as a statement of the Soul. Active Imagination Should Be Used For Breaking Free Of The Literalism Of Our Daily Lives. We need to discover within the power to see mythically and poetically. Once contact is made, this view is brought to our world and balances our literalist, mechanistic view of ourselves and the world. <Hillman, James. Healing Fiction, (Spring, 1983), 78-81. 4. The most direct way of explaining what Active Imagination is is this: Active Imagination places us at the threshold between our everyday sort of awareness and the dream world. If we can bring a degree of alertness and openness to the threshold, the dream world will reach out to meet us. The dream world provides us with its unique view on the world and we bring our questions, our capacity for learning, and our ability to be surprised. This marriage, of inner world and outer world, can provide our lives with much needed insight, energy, passion, and meaning. Active Imagination is not hypnosis, contemplation, or meditation. Hypnosis asks us to turn off our alert mind to enter into the world of unconsciousness. Contemplation seeks to sharpen the mind’s reasoning ability. Meditation asks us to move away from the dream world and our everyday mind through focusing on a single word, our breathing, or our movement. Elements of all of these practices are touched upon when practicing Active Imagination. But, Active Imagination relies upon an alert mind, the non-rational, and a high level of inner creative fluidity. This is the only sort of environment that the inner marriage of everyday consciousness and the dream world can exist. Sometimes, Active Imagination occurs naturally, without utilizing a technique such as was brought to the psychotherapeutic mainstream by C. G. Jung. Events that bring a person to relax their everyday awareness (e.g. listening to stories,watching the flames in a fireplace, listening to the sea) can move us into Active Imagination. 5. The active Imagination is the preeminent mirror, the epiphanic place of the Images of the archetypal world; that is why the theory of the mundus imaginalis is bound up with a theory of imaginative knowledge and imaginative function–a function truly central and mediatory, because of the median and mediatory position of the mundus imaginalis. It is a function that permits all the universes to symbolize with one another (or exist in symbolic relationship with one another) and that leads us to represent to ourselves, experimentally, that the same substantial realities assume forms corresponding respectively to each universe (for example, Jabalqa and Jabarsa correspond in the subtle world to the Elements of the physical world, while Hurqalya corresponds there to the Sky). It is the cognitive function of the Imagination that permits the establishment of a rigorous analogical knowledge, escaping the dilemma of current rationalism, which leaves only a choice between the two terms of banal dualism: either “matter” or “spirit,” a dilemma that the “socialization” of consciousness resolves by substituting a choice that is no less fatal: either “history” or “myth.”

aerial perspective – see perspective gradient.

aesthetic – Qualities or characteristics derived from or based upon the senses and how they are affected or stimulated; from the Greek word meaning “of sense perception, artistic;” appreciative of, responsive to, or zealous about beauty.

aesthetic criteria – Standards used for assessing the effectiveness of visual form.  (These may include the quality of the physical perception, emotional makeup of the viewer, and the context in which a particular image is being viewed.)

aesthetic judgment – Assessment and decision-making about the adequacy of visual imagery.  (It is relative, never absolute, and depends upon the character of the form, needs of the viewer, and the environment.)

aesthetic qualities – Cues within artwork, such as literal, visual, and expressive qualities, which are examined during the art criticism process.

aesthetic response – Viewer’s reply, answer, or reaction to artwork after studying the work, describing, analyzing, and interpreting.

aesthetics – Branch of philosophy that provides a theory of the beautiful and of the fine arts; a systematic attempt to explore human feeling, form, beauty, and style expressed in disciplines involving creative effort; dealing with questions of definition, meaning, value, and evaluation in the arts.

afterimage – 1. (b & w) An optical phenomenon in which the eye’s nerves continue to convey an image after an initial image has departed.  Your photo-pigment is “bleached” by constant stimulation. The desensitization is strongest  for cells viewing the brightest part of the figure, but weaker for cells viewing the darkest part of the figure. Then, when the screen becomes white, the least depleted cells respond more strongly than their neighbors, producing the brightest part of the afterimage: the glowing light bulb. This is a negative afterimage, in which bright areas of the figure turn dark and vice versa. Positive afterimages also exist. Most  afterimages last only a few seconds to a minute, since in the absence of strong stimulation, most nerve cells quickly readjust. Desensitization of the retina can be important for survival.  A constant stimulus is usually ignored in favor of a changing one by the brain, because a changing stimulus is usually  more important.  But
desensitization also leads to afterimages. Afterimages are constantly with us.  When we view a bright flash of light, briefly look at the sun, or are blinded by the headlights of an approaching car at night, we see both positive and negative afterimages. The illusion of afterimages appearing to vary in size despite a constant retinal image is precisely  what one would predict if perceived size is governed not only by visual angle but also by distance. The two seemingly different facts, that images of the same size lead to perceptions of different size (Emmert’s law), and that images of different size lead to perceptions of the same size (size constancy), actually, illustrate the same principle: Distance is taken into account in computing  the  size on an perceived object from the size of the image falling onto the retina, which is another example illustrating that we don’t just see what our eye tells us. 2. (color) Typically, the afterimage appears as a likeness of the initial image, except that each of its colors is the complement to those in the initial image. Sometimes called a complementary afterimage or a photogene.  Color afterimages are  similar to black and white afterimages. They are caused by fatigued cells in the retina responding to light. The most interesting color afterimages are  negative afterimages. If you stare at the red color for 30 seconds or more, the cells in your retina that respond to red will fatigue and will fire less. When you  switch over to a white surface, your eyes subtract the red and you see its complementary color green. Color is first encoded at the level of the photoreceptors in each eye.  There are three types of color sensitive photoreceptors (“cones”). Their job is to convert the incoming light into electrical signals that the rest of the brain can use. We have three types of cones, maximally sensitive to  red (R), green (G)  and blue (B). A red stimulus will tend to activate mainly, but not exclusively, the red photoreceptors, green light the green cones and so on. The output of these receptors is converted in the retina into an opponency process.  In this process the output of the eye, the one million fibers making up the optic nerve, encodes color in three separate channels, one for intensity and two for color. One set of neurons encodes black-white differences, corresponding to intensity or luminance  differences in the image (similar to looking at a scene through a black-and-white videocamera). Another set  of neurons responds to red and green color differences and a third set responds to yellow and blue differences. For instance, a red-green cell would increase its activity as a result of stimulation with red (R) light and would decrease it’s activity in response to green (G) light. It can be said to signal +R-G.  Other cells signal the opposite,  that is the presence of green and the absence of red (+G-R).  A blue-yellow cell would signal +B-Y (some signal +Y-B), while luminance cells  signals something like the weighted sum of R, G and B.  Our subjective feeling of color
depends on the relative activity in these three sets of neuronal fibers. Interestingly, the NTSC standard for  television transmission in the United States uses a very similar system with one luminance and two chrominance channels. Once we know about this opponency processing stage, first proposed by the 19th century German psychologist Ewald Hering on the basis of perceptual experiments, the explanation for the color afterimages seen here is relatively simple.  As in other types of negative afterimages, when you stare at a red stimulus, the cells signaling the presence of red will start to fatigue. Thus, when looking at the empty screen these cells will now fire very little. However, because they normally encode through their activity the presence of red or the absence of green, reduction in their activity is interpreted by the brain as the presence of green. Thus, you see a green afterimage. The same applies to the other colors you see: the green will be replaced by a  red afterimage, the yellow by a blue and the blue by a yellow afterimage.  As you continue to observe the afterimage carefully, it fades and its color changes slightly. This is because your different cones (and chromatic mechanisms) recover from adaptation at different rates. Complementary color afterimages are explained in terms of the neuronal processing in the retina; the fact that neurons encode color in terms of opponency processes.  In this manner many of the interesting visual phenomena and illusions associated with the viewing of colors are accounted for.

air mass boundary – A faint emission of light by a planetary atmosphere. Also called nightglow.

albumen print – Introduced in 1850 by L.D. Blanquart-Evrard. The most common photographic print in the 19th century. Made by coating the paper with the egg albumen and sodium chloride, producing a rich sepia color and slightly glossy surface. These prints were often toned with gold chloride to subdue the sepia tone and improve the permanence of the photograph.

allusion – An indirect reference to something or someone presumed to be familiar to the viewer, in order to increase the effect of an image. A citation. Also see appropriation, audience, meaning, metaphor, perception, and subject.

alpha – An Alpha value indicates the transparency of a pixel. Besides its Red, Green and Blue values, a pixel has an alpha value. The smaller the alpha value of a pixel, the more visible the colors below it. A pixel with an alpha value of 0 is completely transparent. A pixel with an alpha value of 255 is fully opaque. With some image file formats, you can only specify that a pixel is completely transparent or completely opaque. Other file formats allow a variable level of transparency.

alpha channel – of a layer is a grayscale image of the same size as the layer representing its transparency. For each pixel the gray level (a value between 0 and 255) represents the pixels’s Alpha value. An alpha channel can make areas of the layer to appear partially transparent. That’s why the background layer has no alpha channel by default.

anti-aliasing – the process of reversing an alias, that is, reducing the “jaggies”. Antialiasing produces smoother curves by adjusting the boundary between the background and the pixel region that is being antialiased. Generally, pixel intensities or opacities are changed so that a smoother transition to the background is achieved. With selections, the opacity of the edge of the selection is appropriately reduced.

ambrotype – This process was in general use from 1855 to around 1865. It is a positive, silver image on glass. Due to the fragility of the glass backing ambrotypes were put in cases similar to those used for daguerreotypes. Although often confused with a daguerreotype, an ambrotype will always appear as a positive no matter the angle of view. A daguerreotype on the other hand will switch from a positive to a negative image depending upon the angle at which it is viewed.

aperature – 1. The easiest and most controllable way to manipulate depth of field is with the aperture, as we’ve briefly covered so far. Lenses with a large maximum aperture, like an Olympus 75mm f/1.8 give you more options in how shallow you want your DOF to be. Prime lenses like that 75mm usually have a larger maximum aperture than zoom lenses. On the opposite end, the majority of lenses have a minimum aperture between f/16 to f/22.  2. an adjustable iris (circle, hole, opening or entrance pupil) inside your lens that adjusts based on your settings and conditions (called the f-stop or f-number) – essentially, it operates in much the same way as the human eye. The first temporary images were created over a thousand years ago when Ibn al-Haytham, a Muslim Persian scientist born in southern Iraq in 965, invented the camera obscura (also known as the pinhole camera). Inverted images were cast onto a dark wall through a small opening, and even though the recordings could not be archived until certain chemical processes and technologies were later invented, it was the first known method of photography, and the first use of an aperture to project images. The lens aperture plays two roles, controlling both focus and exposure: First, it adjusts the depth of field in a scene, measured in inches, feet or meters. This is the range of distance over which the image is not unacceptably less sharp than the sharpest part of the image. Next, it controls the amount of light entering the camera through the lens. The f-stop is the measurement used for the size of the lens opening – with a larger aperture or opening, more light passes through to the image sensor; with a smaller aperture, less light passes through. Some photographers refer to the largest aperture available on your lens as “maximum” or “wide open.” Likewise, smallest aperture is also known as “minimum” or “closed down.” Many loosely interchange the words aperture and f-stop since it’s the same function for the camera, even though one is the lens opening and the other is the measurement of said opening.  Please note, when we talk about a large or small aperture, we’re not referring to a literal size comparison between different lenses. If this were the case, you’d say, “That NASA telescope has a much bigger aperture than my smartphone camera,” simply because it’s physically larger, which isn’t an accurate definition of aperture in photography. We are referring to the ratio of a focal length of the lens divided by the diameter of the aperture – a mathematical equation that determines the f-stop number.

ARAS – This article describes the history of the recently digitized and online accessible Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism (ARAS), from its 1930s origins at the famous Eranos annual conferences of eminent scholars in Ascona, Switzerland to the present. The purpose, function and structure of the collection are explained and illustrated with an example. ARAS is compared with other art image databases, and its unique features are elucidated.  Numerous analytical psychologists and psychotherapists regularly consult the archive to explore their own and their clients’ dreams by analyzing the symbolic imagery of these dreams in a process of self-discovery.  Images to illustrate the topics of these cross-disciplinary meetings formed the beginning of the ARAS archive, and the Eranos heritage became the foundation for developing the nomenclature used in ARAS’s image classification.  ARAS has since developed into a rich collection of 17,000 annotated photographic images of human creative expression, purposefully selected from every culture, spanning the 30,000 years of human history since the Ice Age. It is the manifold expressions of these archetypal images and symbols that make up the ARAS collection. The collection probes the universality of archetypal themes and provides a testament to the deep and abiding connections that unite the disparate factions of the human family. For many years the archive was accessible only by personal visit to one of the three locations: New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles, the digitization of the archive has made it accessible to anyone with a computer connected through a web browser to the Internet.

archetypal images – Archetypal images are often just labeled as examples of symbolism, but they are able to symbolize because of their archetypal origin. Archetypes transcend culture, race and time. Thus, in Jung’s view, the mental events happening in  every individual are determined not merely by personal history, but by the collective history of the species as a whole (biologically encoded in the collective unconscious), reaching back into the primordial mists of evolutionary time. Jung made it a point to distinguish between the archetype-as-such and the archetypal images, motifs and ideas, which the archetype gives rise. One cannot “see” the archetypes themselves-only their indirect manifestation in or as images, motifs and ideas associated with or stemming from the archetypes. In his writings, Jung explained archetypes in the following ways: We must constantly bear in mind that what we mean by “archetype” is in itself irrepresentable, but has effects which make visualizations of it possible, namely, the archetypal images and ideas. (CW 8: 417)The term “archetype” is often misunderstood as meaning a certain definite mythological image or motif … on the contrary, [it is] an inherited tendency [i.e., ability, potential] of the human mind to form representations of mythological motifs-representations that vary a great deal without losing their basic pattern. … This inherited tendency is instinctive, like the specific impulse of nest-building, migration, etc. in birds. One finds these representations collectives practically everywhere, characterized by the same or similar motifs. They cannot be assigned to any particular time or region or race. They are without known origin, and they can reproduce themselves even where transmission through migration must be ruled out. (CW 18: 523; emphasis in original)…besides [the intellect] there is a thinking in primordial images, in symbols which are older than the historical man, which are inborn in him from the earliest times, and, eternally living, outlasting all generations, still make up the groundwork of the human psyche. (CW[Collected Works] 8: 794)
Water
Water has archetypal possibilities in every form it takes.  It can represent
purification, redemption, birth-death-resurrection, sadness, etc.
The Sea
The mother of all life, spiritual mystery and infinity, death and rebirth,
timelessness, eternity, and often the unconscious mind
Rivers
Death/rebirth, the flowing of time, the life cycle, gods
Sun
Creative energy, natural law, the conscious mind, the father principle; the
rising sun is birth, creation, and enlightenment while the setting sun is death.
Colors
Red: blood, sacrifice, violent passion: disorder.
Green: growth, sensation, hope, fertility or negatively death/decay.
Blue: truth, religious feeling security, purity.
Black:  chaos, mystery, the unknown, death, evil, melancholy (sadness), primal
wisdom.
White:  light, purity, innocence, timelessness or death, terror, the
supernatural or blinding truth.
The Egg
The mystery of life.
Yang-yin
Chinese symbol for a union of opposites. Note that the yin-yang is tripolar, showing the light (yin), the     dark (yang), and the circle which contains them.
Serpent
Symbol of energy, pure force, evil, corruption, sensuality, destruction, mystery,
wisdom, the unconscious.
<CW = The Collected Works of Carl Jung.

artist proof – These photographs are printed especially for the artist and excluded from the numbering of a limited edition, but are exactly like the editioned prints in every other respect. Usually appears as “A.P.”

atmospheric perspective – Suggesting perspective in a painting with changes in tone and color between foreground and background. The background is usually blurred and hues are less intense.

audience – Any viewer, reader, or listener, either alone or with others. This often refers to those people for whose gaze a work is intended, although at present the identity of those viewers is largely unknown.

autochrome – Autochrome plates were the invention of Auguste and Louis Lumiere, who patented the process in 1904 and began to market it commercially in 1907. Microscopic grains of potato starch were dyed red, green, and blue-violet, then mixed evenly and coated onto a sheet of glass. A black-and-white emulsion was then flowed over this layer. During exposure, the grains of potato starch on each plate acted as millions of tiny filters. The light-sensitive emulsion was then reversal processed into a positive transparency. When viewed, light passes through the emulsion and is filtered to the proper color by the starch grains. The resulting mosaic of glowing dots on glass gives autochromes the look of pointillist paintings.

axis mundi – Often symbolized by a pole, tree (the World Tree), rope, or ladder, the Axis Mundi – or central axis – was considered to be the point where three worlds converged – Heaven, Earth and the Netherworld. Laura Knight-Jadczyk describes it as such in Secret History:  ‘One of the very ancient aspects of the idea of Celestial Archetypes was the concept of the “Axis Mundi,” or “Center of the World”. This was a point where Heaven, Earth and Hell met and where Time was abolished and passage to one region or another was possible. At any point where there was a convergence of the three realms, a “temple” was considered to exist whether one was constructed there or not. This center was the zone of the sacred – of absolute reality – and was symbolized by trees, fountains, ladders, ropes, and so forth. Interaction with these symbols was considered initiatory and took place in a timeless state. Thus, it has been theorized that religious rituals were developed in an attempt to “connect” to this divine Model or archetype. In this way, a sacrifice was not only an imitation of the original sacrifice of the god, it somehow was seen to be an alignment of the three realms, the creating of a “passage” of some sort along the Axis Mundi. ‘ So, for a moment, during the ritual or sacrifice, the supplicant was identifying him or her self with the primordial gesture and thereby abolishing time, the burden of the Terror of History, and regenerating him or herself and all the related participants. There are endless examples of scapegoats and dying gods and sacrificed kings as well as a host of “substitutes” in terms of a variety of animals and other products offered to the gods. We are going to suggest that it is, indeed, through “sacrifice” that man “identifies with the gods,” and “aligns himself with the Axis Mundi,” but it is in a sacrifice of a very different sort – one that sacrifices our “animal nature,” and that this has been corrupted to mean that an “external” sacrifice or ritual is required. We are going to suggest that this “ladder” or “tree” image is a reflection of our very own DNA, and that it is through the DNA that man regains his “Timeless State.” ‘ One might also compare the Axis Mundi to what Mouravieff describes as the magnetic center. The magnetic center is “fused” by slowly climbing the Staircase in an effort to unite and balance the three centers – our three personal “worlds” – the emotional, intellectual, and moving centers.

B
Bauhaus – A school of art, architecture, and design founded in Germany by Walter Gropius and based between 1919 and 1925 in Weimar, between 1925 and 1932 in Dessau, and between 1932 and 1933 in Berlin, where it was shut down by the Nazis. Named after the medieval Bauhütten, or masons’ lodges, and inspired by the ideas of John Ruskin and William Morris, the Bauhaus is best known for reintroducing workshop training in lieu of traditional studio art education; unifying artistic creativity and manufacturing; emphasizing functionalism in architecture; and revolutionizing streamlined industrial design. After the closure of the Bauhaus, many former students and teachers fled the Nazi dictatorship, spreading the tenets of the school to many parts of the world. Josef Albers, for example, helped to mold the fledgling graphic design program at Yale while Laszlo-Moholy Nagy founded the Institute of Design at IIT in Chicago, often dubbed the “New Bauhaus,” where a generation of prominent American photographers—from Aaron Siskind to Harry Callahan—imparted new vigor to experiments in modernist photography. The so-called “Ulm Bauhaus” (Ulm School of Design, Germany) operated from 1953-1968 under the direction of former Bauhaus student Max Bill, and its innovative curriculum in design education remains influential even today. Related Categories: Line, Form and Color, Black Mountain College, 20th Century Art, Germany, TheBlue Rider, Concrete Art, Western Europe, Linear Forms. Related Artists: László Moholy-Nagy, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Josef Albers, Walter Gropius, Oskar Schlemmer, Herbert Bayer, Wassily Kandinsky, Lyonel Feininger, Johannes Itten, Anni Albers.

binder – The transparent layer on the surface of a traditional photograph in which the image is suspended. For example, gelatin is the binder for silver image particles in photographic media.

binocular rivalry – When two different images are presented to the two eyes simultaneously, a mosaic-like image can be obtained, in which different regions of the image correspond to left and right eye images.

bitmap  – A data file or structure which corresponds bit for bit with an image displayed on a screen, probably in the same format as it would be stored in the display’s video memory or maybe as a device independent bitmap. A bitmap is characterized by the width and height of the image in pixels and the number of bits per pixel which determines the number of shades of grey or colors it can represent. A bitmap representing a colored image (a “pixmap”) will usually have pixels with between one and eight bits for each of the red, green, and blue components, though other color encodings are also used. The green component sometimes has more bits than the other two to cater for the human eye’s greater discrimination in this component.

blind stamp – An identification mark embossed onto the mount of a photograph, or in some cases, such as the photographs of Henri Cartier-Bresson, onto the photographic print itself.

blur – Lack of image, character, or line sharpness.

BMP – is an uncompressed image file format designed by Microsoft and mainly used in Windows. Colors are typically represented in 1, 4 or 8 bits, although the format also supports more. Because it is not compressed and the files are large, it is not very well suited for use in the internet.

body image – 1. At the next level of attachment, the core of the self-image is the body image.  At the deepest level, your self-image is based on physical reality, the body image. When I say “body image,” I include in that the shape of your body, how you feel about it, everything about your body, the organs of your body and the functions of your body. When you let go of the external card-holder identity, you find that then your identity is based on your body image, so you sense yourself, feel yourself, pay attention to yourself and feel that you know yourself more intimately. If you think you’re beautiful, you like yourself; if you think you’re not beautiful, you don’t like yourself. You’re fat or you’re thin, you’ve got the right nose but the wrong mouth, or vice versa. The intimate things become very important, whether you’ve got a penis or a vagina. “How big is my penis?” “Are my breasts big enough?” “Oh, I want a girlfriend with big breasts.” “I’m going to work to get my body in shape.” These are the obvious body image concerns; it is part of the self-image, a kernel around which the rest of the self-image is built. It is attachment to physical things from the image perspective. The image of physical objects is present, not only image in the sense of shape, but also in terms of feeling, function, and relationship to your body.  2. She is stating here that there are two kinds of body-image, or in her words, “the body ego contains two kinds of self-representations”. One body-image is related to the outside, in relation to the external environment. It includes the shape, the contours, the size, the texture, etc. of the body. The other body-image is related to the inside; its boundaries are in relation to the inner environment. It includes inner body and organ sensation. The first body image contributes to the self image especially in its demarcation from the outside. It contributes to the sense of separateness of the self. The second body-image contributes to the self-boundaries more in terms of a feeling of self, and not as much to a sense of separateness. Of course, the sense of demarcation and separateness from the outside contributes, in turn, to this feeling of self. The sense of separateness is, in fact, an important aspect of the sense of identity. Both self-images (or as Mahler calls them, “intrapsychic structures”) ultimately generate, and in fact form, the sense of identity. 3. Your Body Image reflects how you feel your body is aesthetically and how attractive you perceive yourself. Throughout history, humans have regarded the beauty of the human body as important. What we regard as society’s standards may not always correspond to our perception of our own body. Paul Ferdinand Schilder (1886-1940), an Austrian psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, and student of Sigmund Freud, was the first to coin the phrase ‘body image’ in his book The Image and Appearance of the Human body. Schilder contributed greatly towards including psychoanalytic theory in psychiatry. Body image, in medicine and psychology refers to a person’s emotional attitudes, beliefs and perceptions of their own body. The term is used when discussing various disorders and illnesses, such as body dysmorphic disorder, body  integrity identity disorder, eating disorders, and somatoparaphrenia. Every single one of us has a body image. We cannot avoid having feelings about how we look; it is part of human nature. We are influenced by how we imagine others might see us. People’s overall body image can range from extremely negative to very positive. It is normal to like some parts of your body and dislike others. Body image refers to the overall perception, not just certain parts of your body. It refers to how comfortable we feel in our bodies, how much in control we feel, how agile we are, as well as our attractiveness. In our society today, body image has become significantly influenced by the media – TV, the press, the Internet, radio, magazines, etc. [<Web sources]

C
calotype/Talbotype – Invented in 1839 by William Henry Fox Talbot, this was the first practical process of photography. It was revolutionary at the time in that it allowed for making multiple positive prints of a single image. The calotype process was used until around 1850 when it became gradually superseded by the collodian process on albumen paper.

camera obscura – (Latin: “dark chamber”) The camera obscura is a rare device, based on a 15th century design by Leonardo da Vinci.  1. a darkened enclosure having an aperture usually provided with a lens through which light from external objects enters to form an image of the objects on the opposite surface.  2. an optical device that led to photography and the photographic camera. The device consists of a box or room with a hole in one side. Light from an external scene passes through the hole and strikes a surface inside, where it is reproduced, inverted (thus upside-down), but with color and perspective preserved. The image can be projected onto paper, and can then be traced to produce a highly accurate representation. Using mirrors, as in an 18th-century overhead version, it is possible to project a right-side-up image. Another more portable type is a box with an angled mirror projecting onto tracing paper placed on the glass top, the image being upright as viewed from the back. As the pinhole is made smaller, the image gets sharper, but the projected image becomes dimmer. With too small a pinhole, however, the sharpness worsens, due to diffraction. Most practical camerae obscurae use a lens rather than a pinhole (as in a pinhole camera) because it allows a larger aperture, giving a usable brightness while maintaining focus.  3. Should  Vermeer  have  made  use  of  a  camera  obscura,  then  oiled  paper could have provided a convenient and simple ‘offset’ method of transferring monochrome images, from the projection straight onto the canvas. Because the image is corrected as it is transferred, he could have then worked using colour, in the light of his studio, facing his subject, taking information from the lens as and when required. The painter can use his judgement to decide what elements of a projection to use on the canvas, and how to enmesh these in a painting. This  process  of  transfer  provides  plausible  explanations  for  outstanding puzzles  about  Vermeer’s  painting,  not  least  the  extraordinary  tonal polarity and lack of line in his underpainting, the blurred effects, and the manner in which optical phenomena seen only through a lens could have been translated directly onto the top layers of paint. Possibly, it could explain some aspects of Vermeer’s style. Little is known about Vermeer’s life or his working practice. Much is surmise, and the same could be said of the technique outlined here. However, this simple studio method is consistent with what is known of Vermeer’s painting methods, and also reconciles some current theories that are presently at variance. As an innovator, might Vermeer not have made direct use of the camera obscura, the new technology of his age?  4. The San Francisco Camera Obscura projects an image onto a horizontal viewing table via a reflected image from a viewpoint at the top of the building. A metal hood in the cupola at the top of the building slowly rotates, making a full revolution in about six minutes, allowing for a 360° view around the building. Light enters the building via an angled mirror in the metal hood. It then passed through a lens with a 150 in. (381 cm) focal length and is projected onto a parabolic white “table” in a black room. The origin of the lens is uncertain but it appears to have been part of a telescope, likely manufactured by the Clark Lens Company of Cambridge, Massachusetts.

carbon prints – patented in 1864 by Joseph Wilson Swan, offered a permanent image without grain. The process was capable of making exquisite prints with a wide tonal range. Negatives were printed onto a “tissue” containing carbon and other pigments in a gelatin base. The gelatin had previously been made light-sensitive by a bath of potassium bichromate. After washing, the image on the tissue was transferred to a paper base and the backing of the tissue was stripped off.

cartoon – The technical term cartoon refers to the intention with such large drawings to transfer the image to another canvas for the purpose of painting a final image.

catalytic fade – The accelerated fading of one colorant caused by the presence of another colorant upon exposure to light.

CBIR  Content-Based Image Retrieval – Past decades have witnessed an impressive production of multimedia applications based on image understanding. For example, the number of categories in image classifcation has grown from a few to tens of thousands, and deep Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) have been verifed as efficient in large-scale learning. Meanwhile, image retrieval has been transplanted from toy programs to commercial search engines indexing billions of images, and new user inventions such as fine-grained  concept search are realized and proposed in this research field. Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) are based on the theory that a multi-layer network is able to fit many complicated functions. In the early years, neural networks were verified as being efficient in simple recognition tasks. Recent years, the availability of large-scale training data (e.g., ImageNet) and  powerful GPUs make it possible to train deep CNNs which significantly out-perform the BoVW models (see below for BoVW). A CNN is often composed of a number of layers. In each layer, responses from the previous layer are convoluted and activated  by a  differentiable  function. Thus, the network could be formulated as a composed function, and the error signals produced by the difference between supervised and predicted labels could be back-propagated. Some recently proposed tricks are also crucial to help CNNs converge faster and prevent ‘over-fitting’, such as the ReLU activation function and the dropout technique. It is suggested that deeper networks produce better recognition results, and intermediate responses of CNNs could also be transplanted into other image applications. Discussions of different configurations in CNNs are available. Typically, in the development of an image requisition system,  semantic image retrieval  relies  heavily  on  the  related  captions, e.g.,  filenames, categories, annotated  keywords, and other  manual descriptions. Searching of images is predominantly based upon associated  metadata such as keywords, text, etc. The term CBIR describes the process of retrieving desired images from the large collection of database on the basis of features that can  be automatically extracted from the images. The ultimate goal of a CBIR system is to avoid the use of textual descriptions in the hunt for an image by the user.
1. The field of representing, organising and searching images based on their content rather than image annotations, is Feature Extraction in Content-Based Image Retrieval. A number  of  powerful image retrieval algorithms have been proposed to deal with such problems over the past few years. CBIR is the mainstay of current image retrieval systems. In CBIR, retrieval of images is based on similarities in their contents, i.e., textures, colors, shapes, etc., which are considered the lower level features of an image. These conventional
approaches for image retrieval are based on the computation of the  similarity between the users query and the images. In CBIR each image stored in the  database, has its features extracted and compared to the features of the query image. Thus, broadly, it involves two processes, viz, feature extraction and feature matching. Feature extraction involves the image features to a distinguishable extent. Average RGB, Color  Moments, Co-occurence, Local Color  Histogram, Global  Color  Histogram and Geometric Moments are used
to extract features from the test image. Feature matching, on the other hand, involves matching the extracted features to yield results that exhibit visual similarities. Feature vectors are calculated for the given image. The Euclidean distance is used as default implementation for comparing two feature vectors. If the distance between feature vectors of the query image and images in the database is small enough, the  corresponding image in the database is to be considered as a match to the query.  The search is usually based on similarity rather than on an exact match and the retrieval results are then ranked according to a similarity index. Color descriptors are among the most important features used in image analysis and retrieval. Due to its compact representation and low complexity, direct histogram comparison is a commonly used technique for measuring the color similarity. However, it has many serious drawbacks, including a high degree of dependency on color codebook design, sensitivity to quantization boundaries, and inefficiency in representing images with few dominant colors. The availability of a variety of sophisticated data acquisition instruments has resulted in large repositories of image data in different applications like non-destructive testing, technical drawing, medicine, museums and so on. Effective extraction of visual features and contents is needed to provide a meaningful index of and access to visual data. To enable such queries it is necessary to combine methods from pattern recognition (to detect and represent the content based features) and database techniques (to efficiently index and retrieve the relevant images based on those features) as well as learning capabilities to include new data entries. Color is one of the most important features of images. Color features are defined subject to a particular color space or model. A number of color spaces have been used in literature, such as RGB, LUV, HSV, and HMMD. Once the color space is specified, color features can be extracted from images or regions. A number of important color features have been proposed in  the  literatures, including color histogram, color moments(CM), color coherence vector (CCV), and color correlogram, etc. Among them, CM is one of the simplest yet very effective features. The common moments   are, mean,  standard  deviation and skewness. Texture is a very useful characterization for a wide range of images.  It is generally believed that human visual systems use texture for recognition and  interpretation. In  general, color is usually a pixel property while texture can  only be measured from a  group of pixels. A large number of techniques  have  been  proposed  to  extract  texture  features. Based on the domain from which the texture feature is extracted, they can be broadly classified into spatial texture feature extraction methods and spectral texture feature extraction methods. For the former approach, texture features are extracted by computing the pixel statistics or finding the local pixel structures in original image domain, whereas the latter transforms an image into a frequency  domain and then calculates features from the transformed image. Both spatial and spectral features have advantages and disadvantages. Shape features: Shape is known as an important cue for human beings to identify and recognize the real-world objects, whose purpose is to encode simple geometrical forms such as straight lines in different directions. Shape feature extraction techniques can be broadly classified into two groups, viz., contour based and region based methods. The former calculates shape features only from the boundary of the shape, while the latter method extracts features from the entire region. For  more  details of image shape feature extraction and representation, please refer to the literature. In addition, spatial relationships are also considered in image processing, which can describe object-location within an image or the relationships between  objects. It includes two cases: absolute spatial location of regions and relative locations of regions.
2. A process framework for efficiently retrieving images from a collection by similarity. The retrieval relies on extracting the appropriate characteristic quantities describing the desired contents of images. In addition, suitable querying, matching, indexing and searching techniques are required: Image Classification and Retrieval. A content-based image retrieval system operates by matching indices that are based on the contents or structure of an image as opposed to annotations included as part of the descriptions in a database.
Image classification: Train the model on a data set called ‘training set’ and then test using a data set which is disjoint from the training set (most importantly). Image retrieval: Given a query image, get the “closest” image to the query image from the database. Now, the term “closest” can be with respect to color, shape, texture, etc. So what decides “closest” is the feature vector of the image, which user calculates according to a algorithm designed to suit his needs. Major differences between classification and retrieval: Classification needs labels for training data, retrieval does not. Retrieval is a purely distance-based approach. Besides the image features briefly reviewed above, how to partition an image and how to organize the image features are also challenging problems. In general, there are three methods to transform an image into a set of regions: regular grid approach, unsupervised image segmentation, and interest point detectors. Both image classifcation and retrieval receive a query image at a given time.  Classifcation tasks aim to determine the class or category of the query, for which a number of training samples are provided and an extra training process is often required. For retrieval, the goal is to rank a large number of candidates according to their relevance to the query, and candidates are considered as independent units, i.e., without explicit relationship between them.  Both image classification and retrieval tasks could use the Bag-of-Visual-Words (BoVW) model. However, the ways of performing classification and retrieval are, most often, very  different.  Although all the above  algorithms start from extracting patch or regional descriptors, the subsequent modules, including feature encoding, indexing/training and online querying, are almost distinct. To summarize, a process is called retrieval if it does not need labels and it retrieves with respect to some attribute (color, texture, shape etc.). Classification is where you need labels and it is done with respect to category (for example, cars/no cars, people/no people, natural/man-made etc.).
3.  A process framework for efficiently retrieving images from a collection by similarity. The retrieval relies on extracting the appropriate characteristic quantities describing the desired contents of images. In addition, suitable querying, matching, indexing, and searching techniques are required.  Object-based image retrieval, in which searches are based on structured, physical objects, such as stop signs or cars, rather than unstructured texture or color patches. The user specifies an object by providing a small set of example images of a particular object to the system, and the system retrieves all images that contain the specified object. The key challenge in object-based image retrieval is to create a system that can learn the concept online from a small set of examples provided by the user. Most existing region or object based systems rely on segmentation or require that the region of interest occupy a large portion of the entire image. This facilitates fast retrieval but causes these systems to fail when accurate segmentation is not possible or when the object occupies a small portion of the database image. Additionally, most existing techniques discriminate based on a histogram or clustering of color or texture features computed over the entire region. This assumes within-region location-independence of the features (i.e., that regions are homogeneous blobs of color and texture).  The assumption of location-independence within the region enables fairly accurate estimation of the feature distributions from few examples but prevents these systems from achieving high performance when the texture or color contained in the region requires location information to be discriminative. Object-based image retrieval systems retrieve images from a database based on the appearance of physical objects in those images. These objects can be elephants, stop signs, helicopters, buildings, faces, or any other object that the user wishes to find. One common way to search for objects in images is to first segment the images in the database and then compare each segmented region against a region in some query image presented by the user. Such image retrieval systems are generally successful for objects that can be easily separated from the background and that have distinctive colors or textures.  In computer vision, the problem of object categorization from image search is the problem of training a classifier to recognize categories of objects, using only the images retrieved automatically with an Internet search engine. Ideally, automatic image collection would allow classifiers to be trained with nothing but the category names as input. This problem is closely related to that of content-based image retrieval (CBIR), where the goal is to return better image search results rather than training a classifier for image recognition. Traditionally, classifiers are trained using sets of images that are labeled by hand. Collecting such a set of images is often a very time-consuming and laborious process. The use of Internet search engines to automate the process of acquiring large sets of labeled images has been described as a potential way of greatly facilitating computer vision research. Implementations: Field  Programmable  Gate  Arrays  (FPGA)  enabled  efficient ways of retrieving images with a network of imaging devices. CORNITA  enabled image  retrieval on  World  Wide  Web (WWW) using query based on keyword,  images and relevance feedback. Ontological Query  Language (OQUEL) was introduced for querying of images using an ontology which provides a language framework with grammar and extensible vocabulary. Personalizable Image Browsing Engine(PIBE) uses browsing tree, a hierarchical browsing structure for quick search and visualization of large image collections, and Costume (2005) enabled automatic video indexing. Evolutionary searching (2000), feature dependency measure (2002), boosting (2004) and Bayes’ error (2005) were proposed for generic feature selection. Support Vector Machine (SVM), a swiftly growing field within pattern recognition-based  feature detection, is used for facial recognition systems. Multi-Media Information Retrieval (MMIR)  enabled image  retrieval using Informix ‘data blades’, IBM DB2 ‘extenders’ and Oracle ‘cartridges’. An IR framework called OLIVE (2008) provides dual access to web images and used Google images and PIRIA visual search engines. A new graph-based link analysis technique called
Imagination makes use of accurate image annotation. Over the years, several efficient algorithms in CBIR shed light on new interesting facts on  multimedia, computer  vision, information retrieval and human-computer
interaction. It has resulted in a high resolution, high-dimension and  maximum throughput of images searchable by the content. Due to its high resolution and quality of the image retrieved, its application has
expanded in the field of biomedical imaging, astronomy and various other scientific fields.
See also Julie Eclair’s PhotoList  for more implementations of CBIR in search engines.

channel – a component of an image. For instance, the components of an RGB image are the three “primary” colors red, green, blue, and sometimes transparency (alpha). (The actual 3 primary colors are red, yellow, and blue; green is a secondary color.) Every channel is a grayscale image of exactly the same size as the image and, consequently, consists of the same number of pixels. Every pixel of this grayscale image can be regarded as a container which can be filled with a value ranging from 0 to 255. The exact meaning of this value depends on the type of channel, e.g. in the RGB color model the value in the R-channel means the amount of red which is added to the color of the different pixels; in the selection channel, the value denotes how strongly the pixels are selected; and in the alpha channel the values denote how opaque the corresponding pixels are.

chroma – The divergence of a color of a given value from gray of the same value; sometimes referred to as “saturation.” One of the three main characteristics that describe a color (along with hue and value).

chromogenic print – Color print made from a color transparency or negative. The print material has at least three emulsion layers of silver salts. Each layer is sensitized to one of the three primary colors in the spectrum. During the first stage of development a silver image is formed on each layer. Dye couplers are then added which bond with the silver and form dyes of the appropriate colors in the emulsion layers.

cibachrome print – An extremely high-gloss paper manufactured by Ilfochrome and first introduced in 1963. A silver dye-bleach process that forms an image by selectively bleaching dyes already existing within the paper. Renowned as one of the most stable, longest-lasting of all color prints.

cloud street – Rows of cumulus or cumulus-type clouds aligned parallel to the low-level flow. Cloud streets sometimes can be seen from the ground, but are seen best on satellite images.

cloud-free – Areas on satellites images which don’t have clouds, making the land or ocean below visible.

collodion/wet plate – Invented by Frederick Scott Archer in 1848. A sheet or plate of glass was coated with collodion, made lightsensitive, exposed and developed, all before the emulsion dried. The finished negative was usually varnished to preserve and protect it. Collodian wet-plates were most often printed on albumen paper. This was the most commonly used process from the mid-1850s until the 1880s, when it was replaced by the gelatin dry plate process.

collotype – A photomechanically printed image made from a photographic image. This process produced an extremely fine and delicate grain, and was favored by publishers who wanted a means of reproduction that emulated the appearance of an actual photograph.

CMY, CMYK – CMYK is a color model which has components for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black. It is a “subtractive color model”, and that fact is important when an image is printed. It is complementary to the RGB color model. The values of the individual colors vary between 0% and 100%, where 0% corresponds to an unprinted color, and 100% corresponds to a completely printed area of color. Colors are formed by mixing the three basic colors of this model. The last of these values, K (Black), doesn’t contribute to the color, but merely serves to darken the other colors. The letter K is used for Black to prevent confusion, since B usually stands for Blue. This is the mode used in printing. These are the colors in the ink cartridges in your printer. Objects absorb part of the light waves and we see only the reflected part. Note that the cones in our eyes see this reflected light in RGB mode. An object appears Red because Green and Blue have been absorbed. Since the combination of Green and Blue is Cyan, Cyan is absorbed when you add Red. Conversely, if you add Cyan, its complementary color, Red, is absorbed. This system is subtractive (not in the sense of “subtractive color”). If you add Yellow, you decrease Blue, and if you add Magenta, you decrease Green. It would be logical to think that by mixing Cyan, Magenta and Yellow, you would subtract Red, Green and Blue, and the eye would see no light at all, that is, Black. But the question is more complex. In fact, you would see a dark brown. That is why this mode also has a Black value, and why your printer has a Black cartridge. It is less expensive that way. The printer doesn’t have to mix the other three colors to create an imperfect Black, it just has to add Black. Note that, of the three printing colors, only Yellow is primary and basic; the others are complex colors. Black and white are values, not colors, in the sense used in the CMYK model. In art, black and white are the values also, but as well there, can be colors. Note also that all art and painting is based on the RYB “model”; the CMYK models are used only in printing, photography, and computer graphics.

color – 1a. or color (British English; see spelling differences) is the visual perceptual property corresponding in humans to the categories called red, blue, yellow, etc. Color derives from the spectrum of light (distribution of light power versus wavelength) interacting in the eye with the spectral sensitivities of the light receptors. Color categories and physical specifications of color are also associated with objects or materials based on their physical properties such as light absorption, reflection, or emission spectra. By defining a color space colors can be identified numerically by their coordinates. Because perception of color stems from the varying spectral sensitivity of different types of cone cells in the retina to different parts of the spectrum, colors may be defined and quantified by the degree to which they stimulate these cells. These physical or physiological quantifications of color, however, do not fully explain the psychophysical perception of color appearance. There are three primary colors — red, yellow and blue — that when combined produce secondary colors such as green, purple and orange, and all the various shades and variations on the primary and secondary colors. However, these are the primary colors of pigment and different systems apply by convention to the colors that we see on computer screens and the colors that we see in printed media and photographs. 1b. Objectively, that quality of a thing or appearance which is perceived by the eye alone, independently of the form of the thing; subjectively, a sensation, or the class of sensations, peculiar to the organ of vision, and arising from stimulation of the optic nerve. The proper stimulus to the sensation of color is light radiated from a luminous body or reflected from the surface of a non-luminous body; but it can be induced by other means, as by an electric shock. When a ray of white light is analyzed, as by a prism, into parts each of a definite wave-length, the parts show the colors red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet, which form a continuous spectrum, each color shading gradually into the next. (See light and spectrum.) These colors have been termed primary or simple, though in fact they do not excite simple color-sensations. If the colors of the spectrum are recombined, white light reappears. Similarly, if two colors which lie near together in the spectrum, both on the same side of light of wave-length 0.524 micron, are mixed (for example, if two rays of colored light are thrown upon the same spot so as to be reflected from it together), the intermediate colors are nearly produced. If, however, the colors, being on different sides of that point, are taken further and further apart in the spectrum, the mixture becomes gradually whiter (less saturated) until two colors are found which produce pure white light. If the colors are still further removed, a purple results. Those pairs of colors which when mixed produce white or gray light are called complementary colors; such are red and green-blue, orange and blue, yellow and indigo-blue, green-yellow and violet. The sensations produced by the different parts of the spectrum, however, vary with the intensity of the light: thus, orange when highly illuminated looks more yellow than when darker, and the main effect of increasing the illumination of a color is to add a yellow color-sensation, called the color of brightness. If, instead of mixing spectral colors, colored pigments are mixed, very different results are obtained: thus, while spectral blue and yellow produce white, blue and yellow pigments produce green. This is due to the fact that the blue pigment absorbs neatly all the yellow and red light, while the yellow pigment absorbs the blue and violet light, so that only the green remains to be reflected. Colors vary in chroma, or freedom from admixture of white light; in brightness or luminosity; and in hue, which roughly corresponds to the mean wavelength of the light emitted. The numbers which measure these quantities, as well as any other system of three numbers for defining colors, are called constants of color. Pure white light and darkness are not ordinarily regarded as colors; but white and black objects are commonly spoken of as colored, although the former reflect and the latter absorb all the rays of light without separating them into colors properly so called. 1c. One dimension of the color stimulus is related to its intensity, or how bright it appears.  This is the luminance dimension. Another dimension is the intensity of a color.  This is the saturation dimension. The third dimension is the most familiar, and is related to the name associated with a color.  This is the hue dimension.  Hue is not a good dimension for encoding magnitude information.  Thus, we  have used luminance-based and saturation-based colormaps for representing continuous variations in data magnitude.  In the case of ratio data or interval data with a threshold, we have used colormaps which capture the transition explicitly via a perceived discontinuity.
2. Maturana, Uribe, and Frenk found they could not map the visible world of color onto the activity of the nervous system. There was no one-to-one correlation between perception and the world. They could, however, correlate activity in an animal’s retina with its perception of color. If we think of sense receptors as constituting a boundary between outside and inside, this implies that organizationally, the retina matches up with the inside, not the outside. From this and other studies, Maturana concluded that perception is not fundamentally representational. He argued that to speak of an objectively existing world is misleading, for the very idea of a world implies a realm that preexists its construction by an observer. Certainly there is something “out there,” which for lack of a better term we can call “reality.” But it comes into existence only through interactive processes determined solely by the organism’s own organization. (Hayles, 1999, p. 136-137, emphasis in original. )
3. adj.  having or capable of producing colors “color film”, “he rented a color television” ,”marvelous color illustrations”;
4. v. to add color to “The child colored the drawings”, “Fall colored the trees”, “colorize black and white film”;
5. v. affect as in thought or feeling “My personal feelings color my judgment in this case”, “The sadness tinged his life”;
6. v. give a deceptive explanation or excuse for “color a lie”;
7. v. decorate with colors “color the walls with paint in warm tones”;
8. v. modify or bias “His political ideas color his lectures”;
9. n. an outward or token appearance or form that is deliberately misleading “he hoped his claims would have a semblance of authenticity”, “he tried to give his falsehood the gloss of moral sanction”, “the situation soon took on a different color”;
10. n.  a visual attribute of things that results from the light they emit or transmit or reflect “a white color is made up of many different wavelengths of light”;
11a. n.  the timbre of a musical sound “the recording fails to capture the true color of the original music”;
11b. the various rhythmic, melodic, or harmonic characteristics in a composition which constitute its individuality, as variations in rhythm, melodic decorations or figures, intentional discords, etc. The use of the term is traceable to the early use of colored lines to assist in the interpretation of the neumæ, and also of colored notes and other signs in the mensural-music.
12. n.  interest and variety and intensity “the Puritan Period was lacking in color”, “the characters were delineated with exceptional vividness”;
13. n. (physics) the characteristic of quarks that determines their role in the strong interaction “each flavor of quarks comes in three colors”;
14. n. a race with skin pigmentation different from the white race (especially Blacks);
15. n.  any material used for its color “she used a different color for the trim”.
16. (Law) An apparent right; as where the defendant in trespass gave to the plaintiff an appearance of title, by stating his title specially, thus removing the cause from the jury to the court. An apparent or prima facie right, pretext, or ground: especially used in legal phraseology, and commonly implying falsity or some defect of strict right: as, to extort money under color of office; to hold possession under color of title.
17. To change or alter the hue or tint of, by dyeing, staining, painting, etc.; to dye; to tinge; to paint; to stain. “The rays, to speak properly, are not colored ; in them there is nothing else than a certain power and disposition to stir up a sensation of this or that color.”
18. Another type of color is structural color – color that is not due to pigment but rather to molecular textural properties at the level of light wavelength (half a micron or so). For example the sky is blue for the same reason some eyes are blue: the Tyndall effect(Rayleigh scattering) of the shorter wavelengths being reflected back more than the longer wavelengths. There is no “blue pigment” in the sky or the blue iris. Bird feathers that appear blue or iridescent show this color due to diffraction effects produced by the feather’s ultrastructure. The rainbow pattern seen on a CD is another example of structural color.
19. A distinguishing badge, as a flag or similar symbol (usually in the plural); as, the colors or color of a ship or regiment; the colors of a race horse (that is, of the cap and jacket worn by the jockey. “In the United States each regiment of infantry and artillery has two colors , one national and one regimental.”
20. A property depending on the relations of light to the eye, by which individual and specific differences in the hues and tints of objects are
apprehended in vision; as, gay colors; sad colors, etc.
21. Any hue distinguished from white or black, which are values (when pure), not colors.
22. Shade or variety of character; kind; species. “Boys and women are for the most part cattle of this color .”  23. That which covers or hides the real character of anything; semblance; excuse; disguise; appearance. “They had let down the boat into the sea, under color as though they would have cast anchors out of the foreship.”” That he should die is worthy policy;  but yet we want a color for his death.”
24. That which is used to give color; a paint; a pigment; as, oil colors or water colors.
23. The hue or color characteristic of good health and spirits; ruddy complexion. “Give color to my pale cheek.”
25.  v. i  To acquire color; to turn red, especially in the face; to blush.
26. To change or alter, as if by dyeing or painting; to give a false appearance to; usually, to give a specious appearance to; to cause to appear attractive; to make plausible; to palliate or excuse; as, the facts were colored by his prejudices. “He colors the falsehood of Æneas by an express command from Jupiter to forsake the queen.”
27. To hide. “That by his fellowship he color might/ Both his estate and love from skill of any wight.”
28. In painting: The general effect of all the hues entering into the composition of a picture.
29. An effect of brilliancy combined with harmony: said either of a work in different colors or of a work in monochrome, or of an engraving: as, the picture has no color; the engraving is full of color.
30. Any distinguishing hue, or the condition of having a distinguishing hue—that is, a hue different from that which prevails among objects of the kind concerned, whether the prevailing hue be positive, as green, or neutral or negative, as white or black; hence, in a picture or view, or in a fabric or other material dyed or painted, any hue, especially a pure tint (often implying a vivid one), other than black and white; in human beings, from the standpoint of the white races, a hue or complexion other than white, and especially black; in botany, any hue except green.
31. In mining, a particle or scale of gold, as shown when auriferous gravel or sand is panned or washed out with the batea or horn-spoon.
32. In phrenology, one of the perceptive faculties, its supposed function being that of giving the power of perceiving colors or of distinguishing their shades.
33. A general system of light and shadow upon which the modeling and tinting of details is executed; chiaroscuro.
34. Distinct characteristics, peculiarities, or individuality: said of a place, a country, a period, etc.
35. Hence— analogous characteristics in a literary composition.
36. Any very brilliant or decided color.
37. In painting, color in which each hue is lighted or shaded only with a modification of itself, and not with a totally different hue. Thus, a brick wall painted in pure color will be red in both sunlight and shadow, as distinguished from a representation of such a wall as red in the sun, and blue, gray, or brown in the shade.
38. A painting done in such pigments.
39. plural In faro, a system of play by which the cards bet upon are selected according to the color of the first winner or first loser.  40. plural The commission of ensign in the British military service; usually a pair of colors.  41. In calico-printing, any mordant or pigment that is printed on cloth, made into a paste by means of some thickening substance, as starch, gum, etc.  42. Color which has no reflections.
43. color bar – Rules that restrict access on the basis of race or ethnicity are a color bar.
44. horse of a different color – (USA) If something is a horse of a different color, it’s a different matter or separate issue altogether.
45. rose-colored glasses – If people see things through rose-colored (colored) glasses, they see them in a more positive light than they really are.
46. show your true colors – To show your true colors is to reveal yourself as you really are.
47. with flying colors  – If you pass something with flying colors (colors), you pass easily, with a very high mark or grade.
48. proper coloring – Recall that a proper coloring of a graph assigns each vertex a color such that no edge has both endpoints colored the same color. It is known that one can color the vertices of S with r colors in such a way that vertices connected by an edge have distinct colors.
Quotations: “All colors are the friends of their neighbors and the lovers of their opposites.” – Marc Chagall.  “Color possesses me. I don’t have to pursue it. It will possess me always, I know it. That is the meaning of this happy hour: Color and I are one. I am a painter.” – Paul Klee. “Why do two colors, put one next to the other, sing? Can one really explain this? no. Just as one can never learn how to paint.” – Pablo Picasso
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ou9ifLtmyYA   }here, Varela talks about the relationship between color and light. Living Systems Science, Mind, & Buddhist Meditation, 12:29. Jean-Pierre Dupuy and others are interviewed as well.
<OF. color, colur, color, F. couleur, L. color,; prob. akin to celare, to conceal (the color taken as that which covers). See Helmet.

color depth – simply the number of bits used to represent a color (bits per pixel : bpp). There are 3 channels for a pixel (for Red, Green and Blue). GIMP can support 8 bits per channel, referred as eight-bit color. A color model is a way of describing and specifying a color. The term is often used loosely to refer to both a color space system and the color space on which it is based. A color space is a set of colors which can be displayed or recognized by an input or output device (such as a scanner, monitor, printer, etc.). The colors of a color space are specified as values in a color space system, which is a coordinate system in which the individual colors are described by coordinate values on various axes. Because of the structure of the human eye, there are three axes in color spaces which are intended for human observers. The practical application of that is that colors are specified with three components (with a few exceptions). There are about 30 to 40 color space systems in use. Some important examples are: RGB, HSV, CMY(K), YUV, YCbCr, and of course, RYB.  In color reproduction, including computer graphics and photography, the gamut, or color gamut (pronounced /’gæmut/), is a certain complete subset of colors. The most common usage refers to the subset of colors which can be accurately represented in a given circumstance, such as within a given color space or by a certain output device. Another sense, less frequently used but not less correct, refers to the complete set of colors found within an image at a given time. In this context, digitizing a photograph, converting a digitized image to a different color space, or outputting it to a given medium using a certain output device generally alters its gamut, in the sense that some of the colors in the original are lost in the process.

color balance shift – A change in the overall tone of color images.

color bleeding – Movement of the colorant in color images, laterally into adjacent areas in the image plane, through the base (often appearing on the verso of the sheet), or outside the image plane to a contacting sheet.

color fading – A decrease in image density that results in an overall lightening of the image.

color space – (CIE Color Spaces) Color descriptions have been standardized with these attributes as defined by the CIE recommendations (CIE is Commission Internationale de l’Eclairage). The recommendations of the CIE are as follows: Brightness – The attribute of a visual sensation according to which an area  appears to exhibit more or less light. Hue – The attribute of a visual sensation according to which an area appears to be similar to one, or to proportions of two, of the perceived colors red, yellow, green and blue. Colorfulness – The attribute of a visual sensation according to which an area appears to exhibit more or less of its hue.

colorant – A substance, such as a dye or pigment, that colors something else. A colorant may be raw or refined chemical, mineral, or herbal material.

colorimetry – (digital electronic) Colorimetry from digital imaging requires measuring, controlling, and calibrating the color characteristics of all elements in the imaging system. The ideal illumination source is electronic flash with no ambient light, since this has a constant color temperature. Any photogrammetric color measurement will also be influenced by the optical characteristics of the lens (collecting optics) and the imaging sensor (camera operating characteristics). With the high quality photographic lens commonly available, the color is least influenced by this factor, but imaging sensors have wide variations.

contrail – Short for ‘condensation trails’. Long thin artificial clouds that sometimes form behind aircraft. They can sometimes be seen by satellites.

comma cloud – A synoptic scale cloud pattern with a characteristic comma-like shape, often seen on satellite images associated with large and intense low-pressure systems.

contact print – A print that is the same size as the negative used to produce it. A contact print is made by placing a sheet of sensitized material in direct contact with the negative. Nearly all photographic images produced prior to the 1890s were contact prints. The process was also widely used by Edward Weston and others of the modern era.

contrast – A principle of art closely related to emphasis that refers to a way of combining art elements to stress differences between or among them.

cyanotype – Sir John Herschel invented this process in 1840. Herschel was an astronomer and inventor who first used the terms “negative” and “positive” to describe the making of a photographic print. Among the earliest permanent processes, the name cyanotype refers not to the blue tonality of the prints, but rather to the use of ferrous cyanide in the emulsion. In the 1870s it became known as a “blueprint” and is still widely used to reproduce architectural plans.

D
daguerreotype – This, the first published photographic process, was invented by Louis J. M. Daguerre in France in 1839. It soon became the most popular medium in the mid 19th century, producing a unique and permanent direct positive image on a copper plate without the use of a negative. The plate was exposed in the camera for as long as 20 minutes in daylight, which required the sitter to remain very still for long periods of time. The silver surface has a mirror-like shine and, being fragile, were often placed into a special viewing case; sizes vary but are measured from double whole plate (8 x 13 inches) to sixteenth plate (1 5/8 to 2 1/8 inches) with the sixth plate the most common (2 x 3 inches). The daguerreotype process was eventually replaced by the wet collodian process in the 1850s. The daguerreotype process, the first practical form of photography, was made public in August of 1839, but seldom able in its earliest form to produce portraits. This was due to the lengthy exposure time required. A daguerreotype is made on a sheet of silver-plated copper. The silver surface is polished to a mirror-like brilliance. The plate is then sensitized over iodine vapor, exposed in the camera, and developed with mercury vapor. By 1840, experimenters had succeeded at increasing the sensitivity of the process by using chlorine or bromine fumes in addition to the iodine vapor. The earliest daguerreotypes tend to have bluish or slate grey tones; a brown-toning process called “gilding” came into widespread (but not universal) use late in 1840. Daguerreotypes have exceptionally fragile surfaces and for this reason, they were always furnished behind glass in frames or small folding cases.

deformation zone – Cloud bands or lines which form within a deformation field and stretch or dissolve under the influence of elongation.

depth of field – The range of acceptably sharp focus in front of and behind the distance the lens is focused on. Depth of field is the front-to-back zone in a photograph where objects appear acceptably sharp. In front and behind this area, objects begin to lose focus faster and faster the farther away they are from this area of focus.  When we talk about the main characteristics of depth of field, we usually classify it into two categories, shallow depth of field and deep depth of field.    1. A shallow depth  of field simply means that one specific area of your photo is tack sharp while other elements remain blurred. When the aperture is large (ex. f/1.8), the area in front and behind the focus point is very slim or shallow. That means that objects right in front and right behind the plane of focus are already going out of focus. Shallow depth of field is used primarily to isolate the subject from its environment, and it is used a lot in portrait work, macro photography, and sports photography.  2. When the aperture is small (ex. f/16), the image has a deep or large depth of field. This means that the focus range covers a large area front-to-back, from several yards in front of the focus plane to nearly infinity behind it. Large depth of field is most often associated with landscape photography, but you can also see it in architectural photography. It is also known as the storytelling DOF because you can have multiple visual storylines or characters at various points of the photo. 3. There are four factors that affect depth of field: aperture, distance between you and the subject, focal length, and the sensor size. Aperture is the easiest way to control depth of field, while sensor size is the only factor you cannot change unless you switch your camera body.

drought – An area on a satellite image which shows a lack of soil moisture.

drypoint – Drypoint etching is an intaglio technique used in preparing metal plates for printmaking by means of which lines are scratched directly into the plate. Thicker lines are made by applying more pressure to the burin (graver) or etching needle (also a roulette, chalk roll and matting wheel). Thus incising the cold metal creates ragged ridges, called the burr, thrown up along to edge the furrows cut into it. The burr is removed in copperplate engraving but not in drypoint, where it is kept to produce soft, blurred line and painterly effects. Then the plate is coated with ink and whisked to ensure that the burr as well as the line itself absorbs ink. Prints are made by pressing the plate with a great deal of pressure on to the paper, on which the line is represented as a raised deposit (albeit less pronounced than the line produced by mordant etching). Surfaces are created by many different lines being concentrated. Unlike the more usual mordant etching, however, this is not achieved by biting with acid. The burr plays a paramount role in drypoint. It only takes up a limited amount of ink, which, in the print shows up in addition to the actual line as velvety shading. This feature of drypoint is lost after several prints have been pulled and the burr has been broken off or flattened by the pressure exerted by the printing press. That is why collectors prefer first state prints. First used around 1480, the drypoint technique attained its apogee in Rembrandt’s work. Consummate masters of drypoint in the 20th century were Edvard Munch, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Max Beckmann and Pablo Picasso.

dust – particles, usually sand, carried in the atmopshere. Also includes: haboob, sandstorm.

dye transfer – One of the most permanent and beautifully rendered of all color printing processes, this method required three separate sheets of negative film to be produced through red, green and blue filters. These separation negatives were then projected or contact-printed to make three matrices dyed in cyan, magenta and yellow dyes. Each matrice was then brought into registered contact with a sheet of transfer paper that absorbed the dye, producing a finished print made up of a combination of dye images. The film used to produce this very caustic process was discontinued in 1996.

E
editioning – A limitation on the number of prints produced of a photograph from a single image. This number is set by the artist and noted on the photograph itself, usually appearing as a fraction, such as 1/25.

ektacolor RC print – Photographs produced from color negatives printed on paper coated with a resined plastic. The most commonly produced color print of the modern era.

electronic visual display – informally a screen, is a display device for presentation of images, text, or video transmitted electronically, without producing a permanent record. Electronic visual displays include television sets, computer monitors, and digital signage. They are also ubiquitous in mobile computing applications like portable Information and communications technology devices. Electronic visual displays can be observed directly (direct view display) or the displayed information can be projected to a screen (transmissive or reflective screen). This usually happens with smaller displays at a certain magnification. A different kind of projection display is the class of “laser projection displays” where the image is build up sequentially either via line by line scanning or by writing one complete column at a time. For that purpose one beam is formed from three lasers operating at the primary colors and this beam is scanned electro-mechanically (galvanometer scanner, micro-mirror array)) or electro-acousto-optically.

electrophotography – Printing process in which the image is formed by transfer of charged toner to paper and then fixed by heat, pressure, or evaporation.

empty space –

See also Makeup On Empty Space.

emulsion – The light-sensitive coating, consisting of silver-halide crystals suspended in a gelatin. Applied to photographic paper, plates and film, in which the final photographic image is suspended and protected. In albumen and collodion prints, the silver halides rested on the surface of these substances. With salt prints, platinum and palladium prints, the emulsion is absorbed into the paper itself.

engraving – and etching, drypoint and Aquatint. Engraving (printing) is the generic term to designate any work engraved  on a metal support.  To achieve a dry point, the artist works with a pencil in which the tip is steel (see drypoint) on a metal plate by scratching it in the lining. In the case of an etching, the plate is covered with a varnish insulation and the artist engraves through this varnish. The plate is then immersed in an acid (etching) which will attack the etched parts only because the varnish will protect the rest of the plate against the bite of the acid. The aquatint is used to achieve wash effects. We coated the plate of grains of resin that is heated then, by heating the grains of resin will weld but not very homogeneous : there will be holes between the grains melted. The metal plate is then immersed in acid and going to be attacked in the place of these holes which according to their size and the effect of the bite of the acid will be able to go from grey up to a very deep black. For these three techniques, they are then pressed by putting down a sheet of paper on the support. [trans. from French]

Eranos – Olga Fröbe’s great interest was spiritual research, and she built a lecture hall and a guesthouse on her grounds in 1928. After a short and unsuccessful attempt at running a school for spiritual research, she developed the idea of founding a meeting place for East and West. In 1932 she went to Marburg to visit Rudolf Otto, the prominent German theologian, scholar of mysticism and one who compared of Eastern and Western religions. Otto was very receptive to her plan for a lecture program and proposed the name “Eranos,” which in Greek means a shared feast. For the next sixty-six years this annual lecture program, begun in August 1933 and called the “Eranos Tagungen” (Eranos meetings), would assemble many of Europe’s leading intellectuals in Ascona to give scholarly lectures about their latest insights in the fields of religion, philosophy, history, art and science. The imaginative and inspiring force of mind and the unfailing rigor of scholarship2 brought forward ideas often “on the edge.” The lectures were published after each year’s conference in the Eranos- Jahrbuch (Eranos Yearbook). Psychiatrist and founder of analytical psychology Carl Gustav Jung (Figure 3), reluctant at first, decided to participate when he saw the lecturer list and realized that “those are all my friends!” Jung would become a regular contributor each year to the two-week conference in late August. Jung remained a fundamental figure in the organization of the conferences due to the fertile influence of his analytical psychology-referred to as a “spiritus rector” by Eliade in 1955. Although the symposia were not “Jungian,” they focused on the core idea of “archetypes” in human life. A conference typically included anywhere from seven to twelve half-day lectures, delivered in German, French or English, and attended by up to two hundred persons. The afternoons were open for informal discussions, sailing on the lake, excursions in the area or reading. An equal representation of first-time speakers and speakers with previous Eranos history assured renewal and continuity through the years.  The scholars from the early years and their expertise demonstrate the cross-cultural nature of Eranos : Heinrich Zimmer (Indian religious art), Károly Kerényi (Greek mythology), Mircea Eliade (history of religions), Jung and Erich Neumann (analytical psychology), Gilles Quispel (Gnostic studies), Gershom Scholem (Jewish mysticism), Henry Corbin (Islamic religion), Adolf Portmann (biology), Herbert Read (art history), Max Knoll (physics) and Joseph Campbell (comparative mythology) . Olga Fröbe later explained that “Those who feel the truth of the old Chinese conception that all that happens in the visible world is the expression of ideas or images in the invisible might do well to consider Eranos from that point of view.” She traveled to the great libraries in Athens, Rome, Paris, London and elsewhere in Europe, finding and purchasing photographs of ancient frescoes and other paintings, sculpture, manuscript illumination and primitive folk art. These she classified according to archetypal themes in what became known as the “Eranos Archive”.

EXIF – Exchangeable Image File Format (official abbreviation Exif, not EXIF) is a specification for the image file format used by digital cameras. It was created by the Japan Electronic Industry Development Association (JEIDA). The specification uses the existing JPEG, TIFF Rev. 6.0, and RIFF WAVE file formats, with the addition of specific metadata tags. It is not supported in JPEG 2000 or PNG. Version 2.1 of the specification is dated June 12, 1998 and version 2.2 is dated April 2002. The Exif tag structure is taken from that of TIFF files. There is a large overlap between the tags defined in the TIFF, Exif, TIFF/EP and DCF standards. Also see ExifTool from my PhotoList.

F
fading – Loss of colorant resulting in image lightening or color shift.

ferrotyping – A change in surface gloss due to intimate contact with another surface under high humidity.

figure – The definitions of “figure,” “figurative,” and “figural” in the Oxford English Dictionary call attention to conflicts these terms raise within discussions of artistic and linguistic media. Something figurative is a representation, an imitation, and a pretender even. Something figural is an emblem and an ideal, that is, something that embodies an abstract concept. A figure may be both. Plato’s thought embodies this contradiction, for he sees all figures as imitations of forms, while he explicitly employs a figure of speech in order to make this claim. In this way, a figure for Plato is both a degraded copy and a potential tool through which to reach the ultimate truth. The Medieval position is in line with that of Plato: the goal is to avoid mere imitations and reach the higher truth while still using a type of representation to do so. Deleuze reconciles this paradox by distinguishing between two kinds of representation, one that imitates appearance, and one that imitates ideas, the latter of which Plato and the Church would be more comfortable with, thus justifying their use of figures. Deleuze also explains the shift of the term figurative within the realm of modern philosophy and art: the goal is to celebrate the simulacrum, which resembles without any internal similarity or any reference to a higher idea, rendering the figure as metaphor useless in modern art. Similarly, Michael Fried’s discussion on minimalism shows that both the figural and figurative are denounced in the modern age. However, he finds a latent figurative quality in literalist art that suggests that quality is inescapable. The figure, then, skirts the boundary between copy and essence and, as suggested by Medieval thought, can be seen as reconciliation of the fact that we cannot live with or without images. a form or shape, often that of the human body in particular. Indeed, one may distinguish figure painting from still life or landscape painting in order to stress its human subject. Though a figure may be something tangible, it may also be a represented form, that is, an image or likeness produced by the hand of an artist. This second meaning is reflected in the etymology of the word: the Latin verb fingere, meaning “to mould” or “to fashion” (Crane). A figure of speech may be understood as a likeness created through language rather than visual art, such as metaphor, metonymy, or simile, all of which liken one thing to another. A figure may also be a form given to an abstract concept that typifies that concept, as `when we call someone a “figure of perfection.” A figure further approaches the symbolic realm when it signifies a written character, such as a letter of the alphabet, a musical note, or a numerical notation (OED). In perceptual theory, the figure is opposed to the ground: the visual system organizes the data it receives by separating objects (figures) from their background (ground) based on contrasting value and color. This binary applies not only to human perception of the real world, but of visual art as well, a fact that is exploited in optical art.

figural – 1. containing images of humans, animals, or the real objects.  2. appearing like a realistic person or object, as in a figural design. 3. Representing a person or an animal.  4. Represented by figure or delineation; consisting of figures; as, figural ornaments.  4. the figural is connected to perception, while the literal is understood in terms of its connection to letters and language. Images are the meeting point of these two contrary qualities, the visual and the discursive, in the sense that discourse and reasoning parallels this dichotomy with Ferdinand de Saussure’s distinction between the signifier, which is a sound-image, and the signified, which is a concept. The signifier is necessarily sensory and may either be purely discursive, in the case of a hieroglyph or pictogram, or purely figural, in the case of the “painterly trace,” which is most non-semantic in the case of abstract expressionism. medieval art suppressed the power of the image to generate meaning, subordinating it always to the text, to the Word. The Renaissance initiated an opposite relationship, which it understood as bringing art closer to reality.

figural void – a space, room, or group of rooms whose walls, ceilings, and/or floors have been 3-dimensionally elaborated to yield a sculpted interior or void. The resulting void then stands out (as “figure”) from the surrounding spaces (the “field” or ground”). The figural void is rendered hierarchically, spatially, and perceptually more significant than the surrounding “background” spaces.

figurative –  1. The adjectives “figurative” and “figural” derive from the above noun, though the former often expresses the more tangible connotations of the word while the latter expresses the symbolic ones. A figurative representation may be entirely pictorial and plastic, such as a hieroglyphic language in which the shapes of the characters are derived from recognizable objects. Similarly, in visual art the word figurative is used to describe an image with a recognizable source in the real world, though it need not be entirely faithful to its referent: “‘Figurative’ is a comparatively new word in the critical vocabulary of contemporary art. It implies a kind of painting that is not abstract and…not necessarily representational” (1960 Guardian 2 Feb. 7/4). In terms of language, figurative is opposed to literal, as it describes the presence of figures of speech. In both art and language, figural denotes representation by means of an emblem, that is, something that is typical, ideal, or general, rather than literal and particular. For example, the Bible employs typological, or figural, means to communicate ideas. It is argued that medieval art is figural because “every particular signified precisely ‘something other’” (1959 Encounter Nov. 78/2). (OED). 2a. representing by means of a figure, symbol, or likeness; based on or making use of figures of speech; metaphorical: figurative language. Metaphorical or tropical, as opposed to literal; using figures; as of the use of “cats and dogs” in the phrase “It’s raining cats and dogs”. Synonymous with metaphorical, it means to be representative of something else or another meaning beyond the basic understanding. The figurative meaning of an idiom is the implied meaning, or in other words, not the literal definition of the words. 2b. Containing many figures of speech; ornate. 3. Represented by a figure or resemblance; symbolic or emblematic.  4. Of or relating to artistic representation by means of animal or human figures.  <Middle English ; from Old French figuratif ; from Late Latin figurativus ; from Classical Latin figuratus, past participle of figurare, to form, fashion ; from figura, figure.

figurative language – Language that has meaning beyond the literal meaning; also known as “figures of speech.” Examples: simile – comparison of two things using the words “like” or “as,” e.g. “Her smile was as cold as ice.” metaphor – comparison of two things essentially different but with some commonalities; does not use “like” or “as,” e.g. “Her smile was ice.” hyperbole – a purposeful exaggeration for emphasis or humor. personification – human qualities attributed to an animal, object, or idea, e.g. “The  wind exhaled.”

Floyd-Steinberg dithering – a method of dithering which was first published in 1976 by Robert W. Floyd and Louis Steinberg. The dithering process begins in the upper left corner of the image. For each pixel, the closest available color in the palette is chosen and the difference between that color and the original color is computed in each RGB channel. Then specific fractions of these differences are dispersed among several adjacent pixels which haven’t yet been visited (below and to the right of the original pixel). Because of the order of processing, the procedure can be done in a single pass over the image. When you convert an image to Indexed mode, you can choose between two variants of Floyd-Steinberg dithering.

focal length – In photography, the distance between the lens (its rear nodal point) and the focal plane (the film’s or paper’s surface); the distance between the optical center of a lens or curved mirror and the far distant point where light rays converge upon an object. Relates the distance between an image source and a lens ds and the distance of the lens to the image di by the lenses focal length f.

focal plane – In photography, an image line at right angle to the optical axis passing through the focal point. This forms the plane of sharp focus when a camera is set on infinity.
focal point – The portion of an artwork’s composition on which interest or attention centers. The focal point may be most interesting for any of several reasons: it may be given formal emphasis; its meaning may be controversial, incongruous, or otherwise compelling.

focus – A point of convergence, such as the point at which rays of light converge in an optical system, or from which they diverge; also called focal point. The clarity of an image, such as when rendered by an optical system; or to make an image clear. The typical camera has a focus ring around its lens.

fogging – The generation of unwanted non-image density in non-reversal photographic materials or unwanted loss of image density in reversal photographic materials. This may be caused by exposure to radiation or chemicals, by aging, or by excessive or unwanted reactions during processing.

G
gamma – a non-linear operation which is used to encode and decode luminance or color values in video or still image systems. It is used in many types of imaging systems to straighten out a curved signal-to-light or intensity-to-signal response. For example, the light emitted by a CRT is not linear with regard to its input voltage, and the voltage from an electric camera is not linear with regard to the intensity (power) of the light in the scene. Gamma encoding helps to map the data into a perceptually linear domain, so that the limited signal range (the limited number of bits in each RGB signal) is better optimized perceptually. 2. Gamma is used as an exponent (power) in the correction equation. Gamma compression (where gamma < 1) is used to encode linear luminance or RGB values into color signals or digital file values, and gamma expansion (where gamma > 1) is the decoding process, and usually occurs where the current-to-voltage function for a CRT is non-linear. For PC video, images are encoded with a gamma of about 0.45 and decoded with a gamma of 2.2. For Mac systems, images are typically encoded with a gamma of about 0.55 and decoded with a gamma of 1.8. The sRGB color space standard used for most cameras, PCs and printers does not use a simple exponential equation, but has a decoding gamma value near 2.2 over much of its range.

gelatin silver print – Introduced in the 1870s, this is the most common of all printing processes in which paper is coated with gelatin that contains light sensitive silver salts. This is the standard contemporary black and white print method used today and is also referred to as a silver gelatin print, or simply as a silver print.

giclée – French for “sprayed ink.” A sophisticated printmaking process, today typically produced on an IRIS ink-jet printer, capable of producing millions of colors using continuous-tone technology. Also a print resulting from this process, also called an Iris print. Giclées are often made from photographic images of paintings in order to produce high quality, permanent reproductions of them. The extra-fine image resolution possible in this printing process permits retention of a high degree of fine detail from the original image, rendering deeply saturated colors having a broad range of tonal values. A giclée should be printed either on a fine fabric or archival quality white paper using bio-degradable water-soluble inks. After the process of printing it, a giclee specialist should examine the painting with special materials to make any necessary corrections, and apply a final, thin, transparent coating for maximum permanence. (pronounced gee-CLAY) [Thanks to Stanislav Tsiperson of Art Collection Group.]

GIF – GIF™ stands for Graphics Interchange Format. Unlike JPG, the GIF format is good, lossless compression for images with low color depth (up to 256 different colors per image). Since GIF was developed, a new format called Portable Network Graphics (PNG) has been developed, which is better than GIF in all respects, with the exception of animations and some rarely-used features. GIF was introduced by CompuServe in 1987. It became popular mostly because of its efficient, LZW compression. The size of the image files required clearly less disk space than other usual graphics formats of the time, such as PCX or MacPaint. Even large images could be transmitted in a reasonable time, even with slow modems. In addition, the open licensing policy of CompuServe made it possible for any programmer to implement the GIF format for his own applications free of charge, as long as the CompuServe copyright notice was attached to them. Colors in GIF are stored in a color table which can hold up to 256 different entries, chosen from 16.7 million different color values. When the image format was introduced, this was not a much of a limitation, since only a few people had hardware which could display more colors than that. For typical drawings, cartoons, black-and-white photographs and similar uses, 256 colors are quite sufficient as a rule, even today. For more complex images, such as color photographs, however, a huge loss of quality is apparent, which is why the format is not considered to be suitable for those purposes. One color entry in the palette can be defined to be transparent. With transparency, the GIF image can look like it is non-rectangular in shape. However, semi-transparency, as in PNG, is not possible. A pixel can only be either entirely visible or completely transparent. The first version of GIF was 87a. In 1989, CompuServe published an expanded version, called 89a. Among other things, this made it possible to save several images in one GIF file, which is especially used for simple animation. The version number can be distinguished from the first six bytes of a GIF file. Interpreted as ASCII symbols, they are “GIF87a” or “GIF89a.  GIF is better than JPG for images with only a few distinct colors, such as line drawings, black and white images and small text that is only a few pixels high. With an animation editor, GIF images can be put together for animated images. GIF also supports transparency, where the background color can be set to transparent in order to let the color on the underlying Web page to show through. The compression algorithm used in the GIF format is owned by Unisys, and companies that use the algorithm are supposed to license the use from Unisys. GIF format files of simple images are often smaller than the same file would be if stored in JPEG format, but GIF format does not store photographic images as well as JPEG.

glass deterioration – Degradation of glass supports caused by exposure to high humidity. May result in a hazy appearance, formation of liquid droplets, or layer separation in photographic glass plates.

glass plate – A transparent plate of glass was coated with an emulsion containing light sensitive silver salts, then placed in the camera and exposed. It was then immediately developed and later varnished to preserve and protect it. In the late 1890s when Edward S. Curtis began photography for The North American Indian he was using 14 x 17″ glass plates. By the end of the project some thirty years later technology had progressed to the point where he could use 6 x 8″ plates and still retain the desired quality and sharpness.

gloss – Reflectivity of the print’s surface. Sometimes referred to as “sheen.”

gloss defects – Loss or gain in the gloss of a print in discrete areas or over the entire surface of the print.

graphic – Any image that is especially linear in character, such as a drawing, and any image made by or for printmaking or digital imaging. Also see -graph, graphic arts, and graphic design.

graphic artist – A person who makes drawings or fine prints, such as block prints, bookplates, intaglio prints, lithographs, and serigraphs.

graphic arts – Visual arts that are linear in character, such as drawing and engraving, and other forms of printmaking, such as lithography and serigraphy.

graphic images – are normally not continuous tone (gradients are possible in graphics, but are seen less often). Graphics are drawings, not photos, and they use relatively few colors, maybe only two or three, often less than 16 colors in the entire image. In a color graphic cartoon, the entire sky will be only one shade of blue where a photo might have dozens of shades. A map for example is graphics, maybe 4 or 5 map colors plus 2 or 3 colors of text, plus blue water and white paper, often less than 16 colors overall. These few colors are well suited for Indexed Color, which can re-purify the colors. Don’t cut your color count too short though – there will be more colors than you count. Every edge between two solid colors likely has maybe six shades of anti-aliasing smoothing the jaggies (examine it at maybe 500% size). Insufficient colors can rough up the edges. Scanners have three modes to create the image: color (for all color work), grayscale (like B&W photos), and line-art. Line art is a special case, only two colors (black or white, with no gray), for example clip art, fax, and of course text. Low resolution line art (like cartoons on the web) is often better as grayscale, to add anti-aliasing to hide the jaggies.  JPG files are very small files for continuous tone photo images, but JPG is poor for graphics, without a high Quality setting. JPG requires 24-bit color or 8-bit grayscale, and the JPG artifacts are most noticeable in the hard edges of graphics or text. GIF files (and other indexed color files) are good for graphics, but are poor for photos (too few colors possible). However, graphics are normally not many colors anyway. Formats like TIF and PNG can be used either way, 24-bit or indexed color – these file types have different internal modes to accommodate either type optimally.

gray scale – The range of neutral values, or shades of gray in an image. The gray scales of scanners and terminals are determined by the number of grays, or steps between black and white, that they can recognize and reproduce.

H
halftone – 1. A photo-mechanical reproduction process of a photograph made on a printing press. An original photographic image is re-photographed through a screen that transforms the continuous tones of the image into a series of dots, relative to the amount of darkness in the original. The new image is then transferred onto a printing plate. The amount of ink deposited onto the plate is determined by the density of the dot pattern. This process was sometimes used in Alfred Stieglitz’s Camera Work.  2. halftone art – Printed imagery in which shades of gray are represented by a minute pattern of dots of variable size.

halo – A nimbus; a circle of radiant light around the images of the heads of God, Christ, the Virgin Mary, or a saint. A type of gloriole or glory. It indicates divinity or holiness, though originally it was placed around images of the heads of kings and gods as a mark of distinction.

header – In digital imaging, technical information packaged with an image file, which may be of use in displaying the image (e.g. length and width in pixels),  identifying the image (e.g. name or source), or identifying the owner.

healing art – The images I create always have a story, a message I am trying to get across or imagery to make the viewer stop and think and color plays a big part in ‘developing the mood’.I define my healing art as images that are designed to impart healing energy through intent, design, color harmony and the infusion of healing energies using Reiki and holographic healing techniques. Many of my paintings start with sacred geometry. I go through a meditative process of creating a sacred geometry underlay for my painting which sets the size and placement of what I am creating – you can’t see this in the final image of course because it has been painted over! The key element to my work though is the use of color and color harmony and I apply this in m painting and my mixed media work. In the previous articles I have reviewed how colors influence our mood and emotions and how we are often drawn to those that we need to create balance in our lives. At one level with healing art I may be trying to stimulate a particular chakra, or energy centre in the body, with the use of color.  On one day a viewer will be drawn to that color as it provides something the body needs.  On another day they will show no interest in that color. More generally, however, the images work at a more subtle level using color harmony to provide a satisfying balance or unity of colors.  Much of this is based on the color wheel of course.  This can involve monochromatic images using the same color family, complementary colors or perhaps two complementary colors next to and opposite one another on the color wheel.  Another is to use three or more colors that sit next to each other on the wheel.  There are many variations.

HMMD – HMMD color space, is supported in MPEG-7. The hue has the same meaning as in the HSV space, and max and min are the maximum and image minimum among the R, G, and B values, respectively. The diff component is defined as the difference between max and min. Only three of the four components are sufficient to describe the HMMD space. This color space can be depicted using the double cone structure. In the MPEG-7 core experiments for image retrieval, it was observed that the HMMD color space is very effective and compared favorably with the HSV color space. Note that the HMMD color space is a slight twist on the HSI color space, where the diff component is scaled by the intensity value.

holography – A medium for producing a three-dimensional image of an object by recording on a photographic film the pattern of interference formed by a split laser beam and then illuminating the pattern either with a laser or with ordinary light. The resulting object is a hologram, also known as a holograph.

hot spot – In a satellite image, pixel or small group of pixels with brightness temperatures significantly above those in the neighborhood.

HSV –  HSV is a color model which has components for Hue (the color, such as blue or red), Saturation (how strong the color is) and Value (the brightness). The RGB mode is very well suited to computer screens, but it doesn’t let us describe what we see in everyday life; a light green, a pale pink, a dazzling red, etc. The HSV model takes these characteristics into account. HSV and RGB are not completely independent of each other.
Hue: This is the color itself, which results from the combination of primary colors. All shades (except for the gray levels) are represented in a chromatic circle: yellow, blue, and also purple, orange, etc. The chromatic circle (or ”color wheel”) values range between 0° and 360°. (The term ”color” is often used instead of ”Hue”. The RGB colors are called ”primary colors” in the RGB model.) Saturation: This value describes how pale the color is. A completely unsaturated color is a shade of gray. As the saturation increases, the color becomes a pastel shade. A completely saturated color is pure. Saturation values go from 0 to 100, from white to the purest color. Value – This value describes the luminosity, the luminous intensity. It is the amount of light emitted by a color. You can see a change of luminosity when a colored object is moved from being in the shadow to being in the sun, or when you increase the luminosity of your screen. Values go from 0 to 100. Pixel values in the three channels are also luminosities: ”Value” in the HSV color model is the maximum of these elementary values in the RGB space (scaled to 0-100).

hydrolysis – Chemical reaction between water and colorants, image layers, and/or papers resulting in their degradation. Acids, alkalies, and/or heat can accelerate these reactions.

hypermedia – A type of computer imagery which employs a programming technique allowing users to switch between a variety of other screen images, each of which might be derived from information stored either on the same or on networked computers. The World Wide Web (WWW) is an important example of hypermedia. Another is a program called Hyperstudio. Any place on a computer screen image which serves to facilitate switching to another screen image is called a hyperlink, or a link.

I
icon – 1. An icon (from Greek εἰκών eikōn “image”) is generally a flat panel painting depicting Jesus Christ, Mary, saints and/or angels, which is venerated among Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and in certain Eastern Catholic Churches. Icons may also be cast in metal, carved in stone, embroidered on cloth, painted on wood, done in mosaic or fresco work, printed on paper or metal, etc. Icons are often illuminated with a candle or jar of oil with a wick. (Beeswax for candles and olive oil for oil lamps are preferred because they burn very cleanly, although other materials are sometimes used.) The illumination of religious images with lamps or candles is an ancient practice pre-dating Christianity.  2. a confession of faith, both in the reality of the incarnation — that God has indeed become man — and also that man has remained man in this union with God.  3. Miniature portrait of a holy personage.  4a. A sign fit to be used as such because it possesses the quality signified. 4b. A meaning which is based upon similarity or appearance (for example, similarity in shape).  5.  A sign that directly signifies the signified, for example, a picture, photograph, or map. 6. A relationship where a sign gets it’s meaning through resemblance to what it references. 7. a small graphical representation of a program or file that, when clicked on, will be run or opened. Icons are used with Graphical User Interface (GUI (pronounced gee-you-eye)) Operating Systems, such as Microsoft Windows and the Apple Mac OS, to help quickly identify a type of file or program associated with the icon. An icon is a picture that consists of a bitmapped image combined with a mask or an alpha channel to create transparent areas in the picture. Icons are used throughout the user interface to represent objects such as files, folders, shortcuts, applications, and documents. You can also use icons in applications (toolbars), in web pages, for favorites and bookmarks (see favicon.ico), to illustrate your documents. Icons are a varied lot; they come in many sizes and color depths. An icon resource, which can be stored in an .ico or .icns files or embedded in an .exe or .dll file, can contain multiple icon images, each with a different size and/or color depth. Each icon image features its own size – you generally have standard sizes such as 16×16, 24×24, 32×32, 48×48, 128×128 for Macintosh icons, 256×256 with Windows Vista and Mac OS X, 512×512 (Leopard)  – and its own color depth (a.k.a. pixel format, it means the number of colors used to draw the picture) from monochrome to 16.8M including 16 and 256 colors formats (see below).

iconocentrism, iconocentric – the belief or attitude that images (or icons) are or should be the central element in the universe. Images play the most important role, other things (the deity, people, objects, or text, perhaps) being subservient to them. Iconocentric is the adjective form.

iconoclast, iconoclasm – Originally, one who destroys sacred religious images (or icons). The original iconoclasts destroyed countless works of art — religious images which were the subject of controversy among Christians of the Byzantine Empire, especially in the eighth and ninth centuries, when iconoclasm was at its height. Those who opposed images did not simply destroy them, although many were demolished; they also attempted to have the images barred from display and veneration. During the Protestant Reformation images in churches were again felt to be idolatrous and were once more banned and destroyed. In the nineteenth century “iconoclast” took on the secular sense that it has today: one who breaks traditions, doctrines, convictions, practices, etc. Dada artist Marcel Duchamp (French, 1887-1968) is the modern archetype of the iconoclast.

iconoduly, iconodulic, iconodule, and iconodulist – Iconoduly is the worship or veneration of images (or icons); iconolatry. Iconodulic is the adjective form. An iconodule or an iconodulist is one who worships or serves images. This is the opposite of an iconoclast. (pr. i:’cuh-nah”dyoo-lee, i:’cuh-nah”dyoo-lick, and i:’coh-nah”dyoo-list).

iconography, iconograph, iconographer – Iconography is the pictorial representation of a subject, or the collected images (or icons) illustrating a subject — pictures, diagrams, etc. Iconography can mean the description of representational works of art. Also, the study of subject matter and symbolism in the visual arts, as in collections of pictures constituting a complete visual record of a subject, or a visual dictionary.

iconology – The branch of knowledge which deals with the subject of icons (or images); also the subject matter of this study, icons collectively, or as objects of investigation. Or, symbolical representation; symbolism.

iconophor, iconophoric, meta-iconophor – An iconophor is an image whose first distinctive feature consists of the letter which begins the name of its referent. “Iconophoric” is the adjective form. A meta-iconophor is an image whose first distinctive feature consists of the letter which begins the name of a referent that is connoted, not denoted by the image.

iconoplast – A person who makes images (or icons).

illusion – But, we may ask, as the world that we see has no reality, as it is an illusion, why do we see that illusion; what is the cause of that illusion which torments us? One uses the word “illusion” conventionally, but its true meaning is not realized until the reality of life is understood, until the innermost or eternal life is realized. It is when we understand this that everything seems an illusion; illusion is something which seems to exist but yet does not exist in any form. The nature of all things which seem to exist and do not last is like this: their existence is transitory, and to a certain extent the effect produced by them upon our soul is intoxication. We are so hypnotized by all we see, that momentarily we forget it is not lasting. Therefore the way of the mystic is to close his eyes and also his heart to that which is not lasting, in order to have a chance of finding out that there is a life which is not transitory. He practices every kind of meditation and concentration to free his mind of this intoxication which is continually coming over him. Man spends all his efforts to gain this intoxication, and in the end there is only disappointment.

illustration – 1a. a drawing or picture in a book, magazine, etc. especially one that explains something: 50 full-colour illustrations. 1b. picture illustrating a book, newspaper, etc.  2. the process of illustrating something: the art of book illustration. 3. The action or fact of illustrating something: by way of illustration, I refer to the following case.  4. a story, an event or an example that clearly shows the truth about something: Let me, by way of illustration, quote from one of her poems. 5. An illustrative example: this accident is a graphic illustration of the disaster that’s waiting to happen.   6. a visual representation (a picture or diagram) that is used make some subject more pleasing or easier to understand; a design or picture in a book, magazine or other print or electronic medium that explains the text or shows what happens in a story.  <late Middle English (in the sense ‘illumination; spiritual or intellectual enlightenment’): via Old French from Latin illustratio(n-), from the verb illustrare, from in- ‘upon’ + lustrare ‘illuminate’.

image – 1. An image or representation; a portrait or pretended portrait.  2a. (psychology) personality reflection: The question that faces us next is how we may know what the Personality is in itself. We certainly feel it within us. We are aware of it’s attitudes, it’s desires, and it’s actions; but we are not at all able to represent it. Thinking about oneself evokes a certain image; of a clothed body, or a face which strives to be dignified and charming. The image is only a reflection of the Personality.  2b. Consider an image not as what I see, but theway in which I see; that  the mind is in the imagination rather than the imagination being in the mind; that images have me, rather than me having the images. I am in the image versus the image being in me. Though I do not always question what image my psyche is presenting or what I amdoing with/within it/what it is doing with me. What dance is this? This attitude reflects deeply an imaginal (world of image, mundus imaginalis (Corbin, see infra), a mythic sensibility within which my horizons immediately broaden beyond the literal. In terms of ‘image as a way of seeing’, having a mythic sensibility, I would say re-conceptualize my notion of ‘self’.  Self as process, the manifestations of which can be seen in image. Or, as Hillman hascoined this: ‘image as a way of seeing’. 3a. (literature)A concrete representation of a sense impression, a feeling, or an idea. Imagery refers to the pattern of related details in a work. In some works one image predominates either by recurring throughout the work or by appearing at a critical point in the plot. Often writers use multiple images throughout a work to suggest states of feeling and to convey implications of thought and action. Some modern poets, such as Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams, write poems that lack discursive explanation entirely and include only images. Among the most famous examples is Pound’s poem “In a Station of the Metro”: The apparition of these faces in the crowd; / Petals on a wet, black bough.  3b. If poetry is distilled language, then images carry much more of that condensed meaning. Images can be literal and represent the actual things being described, or they can be figurative and carry additional meaning. Symbolic images are those that represent something beyond the image itself. The road in Frost’s poem is more than a road; it’s a symbol of the path of life. Juxtaposed images contrast with each other for effect. Upon discovering symbols or juxtaposition, ask yourself, ‘What is the effect of this image on the reader?’ Poems chosen for the AP Literature exam often have layers of meaning, so expect the effect of any image to be complex. That’s the depth of meaning brought by distilled language.  4. (psychology)Another key point Hillman makes is the primacy of image in the life of the psyche:  Speaking of Jung he says: “He considered the fantasy images that run through our daydreams and night dreams, which are present unconsciously in all our consciousness, to be the primary data of the psyche.  Everything we know and feel and every statement we make are all fantasy-based, that is, they derive from psychic images….Every notion in our minds, each perception of the world and sensation in ourselves must go through a psychic organization in order to ‘happen’ at all.  Every single feeling or observation occurs as a psychic event by first forming a fantasy-image.”  5. A picture, idea, or impression of a person, thing, or idea; or a mental picture of a person, thing, or idea. The word imagery refers to a group or body of related images. Quotes “The soul never thinks without a mental picture.” Aristotle (384-322 BCE), Greek philosopher. S.H. Butcher, Aristotle’s Theory of Poetry and Fine Art. “The air as soon as it is light, is filled with innumerable images to which the eye serves as a magnet.” Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), Florentine Renaissance painter, designer, engineer, inventor, etc., Treatise on Painting, 1651.  6.  A sensory quality reinstated by the mind in the absence of sensory stimulation. Medieval: Image and Similitude are frequently used by the medieval scholars. Neither of them needs mean copy. Sometimes the terms are nearly synonymous with sign in general. The alteration of the sense organs when affected by some external object is an image of the latter (species sensibilis); so is the memory image or phantasm. The intelligible species resulting from the operation of the active intellect on the phantasm is not less an image of the universal nature than the concept and the word expressing the latter is. Images in the strict sense of copies or pictures are only a particular case of image or similitude in general. The idea that Scholasticism believed that the mind contains literally “copies” of the objective world is mistaken interpretation due to misunderstanding of the terms. 7. In information technology, the term has two usages: a. An image is a picture that has been created or copied and stored in electronic form. An image can be described in terms of vector graphics or raster graphics. An image stored in raster form is sometimes called a bitmap. An image map is a file containinginformation that associates different locations on a specified image with hypertext links. b.  An image is a section of random access memory ( RAM ) that has been copied to another memory or storage location.  <Lat. imago, likeness.

image file formats – The most common image file formats, the most important for cameras, printing, scanning, and internet use, are JPG, TIF, PNG, and GIF. JPG is the most used image file format. Digital cameras and web pages normally use JPG files – because JPG heroically compresses the data to be very much smaller in the file. However JPG uses lossy compression to accomplish this feat, which is a strong downside. A smaller file, yes, there is nothing like JPG for small, but this is at the cost of image quality. This degree is selectable (with an option setting named JPG Quality), to be lower quality smaller files, or to be higher quality larger files. In general today, JPG is rather unique in this regard, using lossy compression allowing very small files of lower quality, whereas almost any other file type uses lossless compression (and is larger).  The meaning of Lossy is discussed eblow. Frankly, JPG is used when small file size is more important than maximum image quality (web pages, email, memory cards, etc). But JPG is good enough in many cases, if we don’t overdo the compression. Perhaps good enough for some uses even if we do overdo it (web pages, etc). But if you are concerned with maximum quality for archiving your important images, then you do need to know two things: 1) JPG should always choose higher Quality and a larger file, and 2) do NOT keep editing and saving your JPG images repeatedly, because more quality is lost every time you save it as JPG (in the form of added JPG artifacts… pixels become colors they ought not to be – lossy).  TIF is lossless (including LZW compression option), which is considered the highest quality format for commercial work. The TIF format is not necessarily any “higher quality” per se (the same RGB image pixels, they are what they are), and most formats other than JPG are lossless too. TIF simply has no JPG artifacts, no additional losses or JPG artifacts to degrade and detract from the original. And TIF is the most versatile, except that web pages don’t show TIF files. For other purposes however, TIF does most of anything you might want, from 1-bit to 48-bit color, RGB, CMYK, LAB, or Indexed color. Most any of the “special” file types (for example, camera RAW files, fax files, or multipage documents) are based on TIF format, but with unique proprietary data tags – making these incompatible unless expected by their special software. GIF was designed by CompuServe in the early days of computer 8-bit video, before JPG, for video display at dial up modem speeds. GIF discards all Exif data, and while GIF is fine for video screen purposes, GIF does Not retain printing resolution values. GIF always uses lossless LZW compression, but it is always an indexed color file (1 to 8-bits per pixel). GIF can have a palette of 24-bit colors, but only 256 of them maximum (which colors depend on your image colors). GIF is rather limited colors for color photos, but is generally great for graphics. Repeating, don’t use indexed color for color photos today, the color is too limited. GIF offers transparency and animation. PNG and TIF files can also optionally handle the same indexed color mode that GIF uses, but they are more versatile with other choices too (can be RGB or 16 bits, etc). But GIF is still very good for web graphics (i.e., with a limited number of colors). For graphics of only a few colors, GIF can be much smaller than JPG, with more clear pure colors than JPG). Indexed Color is described at Color Palettes (second page of GIF link below). PNG can replace GIF today (web browsers show both), and PNG also offers many options of TIF too (indexed or RGB, 1 to 48-bits, etc). PNG was invented more recently than the others, designed to bypass possible LZW compression patent issues with GIF, and since it was more modern, it offers other options too (RGB color modes, 16 bits, etc). One additional feature of PNG is transparency for 24 bit RGB images. Normally PNG files are a little smaller than LZW compression in TIF or GIF (all of these use lossless compression, of different types), but PNG is slower to read or write. That patent situation has gone away now, but PNG remains excellent lossless compression. Less used than TIF or JPG, but PNG is another good choice for lossless quality work. Camera RAW files are very important of course, but RAW files must be processed to regular formats (JPG, TIF, etc) to be viewable and usable in any way. However, the point is that RAW offers substantial benefit in doing that, one of which is we can choose our settings AFTER we can see the image, and what it needs, and what helps it. The debate goes on, some cannot imagine NOT taking advantage of the greater opportunities of RAW. Others think any extra step is too much trouble, and are satisfied with JPG – my own biased opinion is they just don’t know yet.   We could argue that there really is no concept of RAW files from the scanner. Vuescan does offer an output called RAW, which is 16 bits, includes the fourth infrared noise correction channel data if any, and defers gamma correction. Vuescan itself is the only post-processor for these. But scanner color images are already RGB color, instead of Bayer pattern data like from cameras. Camera RAW images are not RGB (the meaning of RAW), and must be converted to RGB for any use. Photos are continuous tones, 24-bit color or 8-bit Gray, no text, few lines and edges. Graphics are often solid colors, with few colors, limited to 256 colors, with text or lines and sharp edges. For Unquestionable Best Quality: TIF, LZW, or PNG (lossless compression and no JPG artifacts); PNG, LZW, or TIF,  (lossless compression, without JPG artifacts). Smallest File Size: JPG with a higher quality factor can be both small decent quality. TIF, LZW, or GIF or PNGs (graphics/logos without gradient normally permit indexed color of 2 to 16 colors for smallest file size). Major considerations to choose the necessary file type include: Compression quality – Lossy for smallest files (JPG), or Lossless for best quality images (TIF, PNG). Full RGB color for photos (TIF, PNG, JPG), or Indexed Color for graphics (PNG, GIF, TIF). 16-bit color (48-bit RGB data) is sometimes desired (TIF and PNG). Transparency or Animation is used in graphics (GIF and PNG). Documents – line art, multi-page, text, fax, etc – this will be TIF. CMYK color is certainly important for commercial prepress (TIF).  The only reason for using lossy compression is for smaller file size, usually due to internet transmission speed or storage space. Web pages require JPG or GIF or PNG image types, because some browsers do not show TIF files. On the web, JPG is the clear choice for photo images (smallest file, with image quality being less important than file size), and GIF is common for graphic images, but indexed color is not normally used for color photos (PNG can do either on the web). Other than the web, TIF file format is the undisputed leader when best quality is desired, largely because TIF is so important in commercial printing environments. High Quality JPG can be pretty good too, but don’t ruin them by making the files too small. If the goal is high quality, you don’t want small. Only consider making JPG large instead, and plan your work so you can only save them as JPG only one or two times. Adobe RGB color space may be OK for your home printer and profiles, but if you send your pictures out to be printed, the mass market printing labs normally only accept JPG files, and only process sRGB color space. Differences in photo and graphics images: Photo images have continuous tones, meaning that adjacent pixels often have very similar colors, for example, a blue sky might have many shades of blue in it. Normally this is 24-bit RGB color, or 8-bit grayscale, and a typical color photo may contain perhaps a hundred thousand RGB colors, out of the possible set of 16 million colors in 24-bit RGB color. Graphic images are normally not continuous tone (gradients are possible in graphics, but are seen less often). Graphics are drawings, not photos, and they use relatively few colors, maybe only two or three, often less than 16 colors in the entire image. In a color graphic cartoon, the entire sky will be only one shade of blue where a photo might have dozens of shades. A map for example is graphics, maybe 4 or 5 map colors plus 2 or 3 colors of text, plus blue water and white paper, often less than 16 colors overall. These few colors are well suited for Indexed Color, which can re-purify the colors. Don’t cut your color count too short though – there will be more colors than you count. Every edge between two solid colors likely has maybe six shades of anti-aliasing smoothing the jaggies (examine it at maybe 500% size). Insufficient colors can rough up the edges. Scanners have three modes to create the image: color (for all color work), grayscale (like B&W photos), and lineart. Line art is a special case, only two colors (black or white, with no gray), for example clip art, fax, and of course text. Low resolution line art (like cartoons on the web) is often better as grayscale, to add anti-aliasing to hide the jaggies. JPG files are very small files for continuous tone photo images, but JPG is poor for graphics, without a high Quality setting. JPG requires 24-bit color or 8-bit grayscale, and the JPG artifacts are most noticeable in the hard edges of graphics or text. GIF files (and other indexed color files) are good for graphics, but are poor for photos (too few colors possible). However, graphics are normally not many colors anyway. Formats like TIF and PNG can be used either way, 24-bit or indexed color – these file types have different internal modes to accommodate either type optimally. Some digital images are dimensioned in pixels (not bytes, and definitely not inches). And a pixel is simply a color definition, the color that this tiny dot of image sampled area ought to be. Put all those colored dots together, and our brain sees the image. The losses of image data we are speaking about is about the altered color of the pixels. Image data consists of pixels, and pixels are “colors”, simply the storage of the three RGB data components (see What is a Digital Image Anyway?). Any 24-bit RGB image will use three bytes / pixel ). So – for example- any 10 megapixel camera image data will occupy 3×10 = 30 million bytes, by definition of RGB color. This number is the “data size” (when opened into computer memory for use). A TIF file will be near that size (and is lossless), but JPG is normally compressed very heavily (lossy, not lossless) to store in a JPG file of perhaps 1/10 this size (variable with JPG Quality setting), which is “file size” (not image size and not data size). This example image size is still 10 megapixels (dimensioned in pixels, width x height), and the data size is 30 million bytes, but the JPG file size might be 3 MB (lossy compression takes a few liberties). The image will still come out of the JPG file as the same 10 megapixels and the same 30 million bytes when the 3 MB JPG file is opened. We hope its quality also comes out about the same – the JPG losses are altered color values of some of the pixels). Image size (pixels) determines how we can use the image – everything is about the pixels.  All photo editor programs will support these file formats. JPEG always uses lossy JPG compression, but its degree is selectable, for higher quality and larger files, or lower quality and smaller files. JPG is for photo images, and is the worst possible choice for most graphics or text data. TIF: Versatile, many formats supported. Mode: RGB or CMYK or LAB, and others, almost anything. 8 or 16-bits per color channel, called 8 or 16-bit “color” (24 or 48-bit RGB files). Grayscale – 8 or 16-bits, Indexed color – 1 to 8-bits, Line Art (bilevel)- 1-bit. For TIF files, most programs allow either no compression or LZW compression (LZW is lossless, but is less effective for color images). Adobe Photoshop also provides JPG or ZIP compression in TIF files too (but which greatly reduces third party compatibility of TIF files). “Document programs” allow ITCC G3 or G4 compression for 1-bit text (Fax is G3 or G4 TIF files), which is lossless and tremendously effective (small). Many specialized image file types (like camera RAW files) are TIF file format, but using special proprietary data tags. 24-bits is called 8-bit color, three 8-bit bytes for RGB (256 x 256 x 256 = 16.7 million colors maximum.) Or 48-bits is called 16-bit color, three 16-bit words (65536 x 65536 x 65536 = trillions of colors conceptually). PNG: RGB – 24 or 48-bits (called 8-bit or 16-bit “color”); Alpha channel for RGB transparency – 32 bits; Grayscale – 8 or 16-bits; Indexed color – 1 to 8-bits; Line Art (bilevel) – 1-bit.Supports transparency in regular indexed color, and also there can be a fourth channel (called Alpha) which can map RGB graduated transparency (by pixel location, instead of only one color, and graduated, instead of only on or off). The APNG version also supports animation (like GIF), showing several sequential frames fast to simulate motion. PNG uses ZIP compression which is lossless, and somewhat more effective color compression than GIF or TIF LZW. For photo data, PNG is somewhat smaller files than TIF LZW, but larger files than JPG (however PNG is lossless, and JPG is not. PNG is a newer format than the others, designed to be both versatile and royalty free, back when the patent for LZW compression was disputed for GIF and TIF files. GIF: Indexed color – 1 to 8-bits (8-bit indexes, limiting to only 256 colors maximum); Color is 24-bit color, but only 256 colors. One color in indexed color can be marked transparent, allowing underlaying background to be seen (very important for text, for example). GIF is an online video image, the file contains no dpi information for printing. Designed by CompuServe for online images in the days of dialup and 8-bit indexed computer video, whereas other file formats can be 24-bits now. However, GIF is still great for web use of graphics containing only a few colors, when it is a small lossless file, much smaller and better than JPG for this. GIF files do not save the dpi number for printing resolution. GIF uses lossless LZW compression. GIF also supports animation, showing several sequential frames fast to simulate motion. Note that if your image size is say 3000×2000 pixels, then this is 3000×2000 = 6 million pixels (6 megapixels). Assuming this 6 megapixel image data is RGB color and 24-bits (or 3 bytes per pixel of RGB color information), then the size of this image data is 6 million x 3 bytes RGB = 18 million bytes. That is simply how large your image data is (see more). Then file compression like JPG or LZW can make the file smaller, but when you open the image in computer memory for use, the JPG may not still have the same image quality, but it is always still 3000×2000 pixels and 18 million bytes. This is simply how large your 6 megapixel RGB image data is (megapixels x 3 bytes per pixel). The most common image file formats, the most important for general purposes today, are JPG, TIF, PNG and GIF. These are not the only choices of course, but they are good and reasonable choices for general purposes. Newer formats like
JPG2000 never acquired popular usage, and are not supported by web browsers, and so are not the most compatible choice.PNG and TIF, LZW are lossless compression, so their file size reduction is not as extreme as the wild heroics JPG can dream up. In general, selecting lower JPG Quality gives a smaller worse file, higher JPG Quality gives a larger better file. Your 12 megapixel RGB image data is three bytes per pixel, or 36 million bytes. That is simply how big your image data is. Your JPG file size might only be only 5-20% of that, literally. TIF LZW might be 65-80%, and PNG might be 50-65% (very rough ballpark for 24-bit color images). We cannot predict sizes precisely because compression always varies with image detail. Blank areas, like sky and walls, compress much smaller than extremely detailed areas like a tree full of leaves. But the JPG file can be much smaller, because JPG is not required to recover the original image intact, losses are acceptable. Whereas, the only goal of PNG and TIF LZW is to be 100% lossless, which means the file is not as heroically small, but there is never any concern about compression quality with PNG or TIF LZW. They still do impressive amounts of file size compression, remember, the RGB image data is actually three bytes per pixel. Camera RAW files is one way to bypass this JPG issue, at least until the last one final save as JPG when required. And it offers additional processing advantages too. Better easier tools in RAW than JPG has, the RAW data has wider range than JPG has. Much the same controls as in the camera, which you would have needed anyway, but this step is done after you see the camera results, to know exactly what it still needs, and can simply tweak and judge it by eye (as opposed to settings in the camera done in advance, as hopeful wishing). We hear: But RAW images require an editing step first. Some people do seem terrified of the word “edit”, but no matter what, we do always have to stop and look at our images on the computer, every one of them. That is the same extra step. Surely we have to crop them a bit, and resample smaller, and many of mine will need a slight Exposure or White Balance tweak to be their best. It makes a tremendous difference. That is the same editing, a few seconds each, a few clicks, and then the file must be saved again. You might as well do this step in the RAW software, which has better easier tools to do it, and more range to do it., and of course, we can SEE the image now. If your session included 100 images of same lighting situation, just select them all, edit ONE of them (say White Balance and Exposure, even Cropping, etc), and the same edit clicks are applied to all of the selected RAW images in one click. Extremely convenient.  And no JPG artifacts of course, no losses, and any changes can easily be undone anytime later, with full recovery of our original RAW master copy. RAW is the trivial, easy, and good way, Day and Night good, if you care about these things. We all have our own notions, but here is a popular opinion about the ultimate,  in quality, in versatility, in convenience. RAW files are popular indeed, from most DSLR cameras. When we take any digital picture, the camera has a RAW sensor, but normally processes and outputs the image as a JPG file. But often we can choose to output the original RAW image instead, to defer that JPG step until later. We cannot view or use that RAW file any way other than to process it in computer software and then output a final TIF or JPG image, however postponing this processing offers a few serious advantages, better editing options, and we can bypass all JPG artifacts entirely, until the one final output Save for whatever purpose. RAW allows us to tweak exposure and color, and defer White Balance decisions until later when we can see the image first, and judge any trial results. The 12-bit RAW file offers greater range for any of our adjustments, often on multiple files simultaneously. And RAW always preserves the intact original version, so we can easily back out any editing changes we made, crop size for example. An argument is made that processing RAW requires this extra step, but of course, same is true of any editing that is required. RAW is the easy way, with the best results.

image recognition – 1. Image recognition technologies strive to identify objects, people, buildings, places, logos, and anything else that has value to consumers and enterprises. Smartphones and tablets equipped with cameras have pushed this technology from mainly industrial applications (for example, sorting fruit) to consumer applications. For example, logos, cars, landmarks, wine labels, and book and album covers can be identified by consumer smartphones, using a mobile app that accesses image recognition software in the cloud.  Image recognition has the potential to transform a picture into a hyperlink to something on Internet (for example, information, service, coupon or video).  This definition of image recognition does not include video analytics or video search, although video analysis frequently incorporates image recognition technologies.

imagery – 1. The pattern of related comparative aspects of language, particularly of images, a literary work. Imagery of light and darkness pervade James Joyce’s stories “Araby,” “The Boarding House,” and “The Dead.” So, too, does religious imagery. 2a. (mental) Very often, imagery are understood by their subjects as echoes, copies, or reconstructions of actual perceptual memories from their past; at other times they may seem to anticipate possible, often desired or feared, future events. Thus imagery has often been believed to play a very large, even pivotal, role in both memory  and motivation. It is also commonly believed to be centrally involved in visuo-spatial reasoning and inventive or creative thought. Indeed, according to a long dominant philosophical tradition, it plays a crucial role in all thought processes, and provides the semantic grounding for language. Mental imagery (varieties of which are sometimes colloquially refered to as “visualizing,” “seeing in the mind’s eye,” “hearing in the head,” “imagining the feel of,” etc.) is quasi-perceptual; it resembles perception , but occurs in the absence of the appropriate external stimuli. It is also generally understood to bear intentionality (i.e., mental images are always images of something or other), and thereby to function as a form of mental representation. Traditionally, visual mental imagery, the most discussed variety, was thought to be caused by the presence of picture-like representations (mental images) in the mind, soul, or brain, but this is no longer universally accepted.  2b. (mental) The idea that mental imagery may have a role in reasoning goes back a long way – one of the earliest attempts to study empirically the role that such imagery played in thinking was carried out by Sir Francis Galton in 1883, when hesurveyed a large number of people for their use of mental imagery, using his “breakfast table” visualization test. This persuaded many people that mental images themselves had many of the properties of visual stimuli—and in particular that they possessed metrical spatial properties, such as size and inter-object distances. The consensus that soon emerged was that mental images were very similar to real visual stimuli, except that they were generated by the mind instead of by stimulation of the retina. As claims of the similarity between vision and imagery multiplied, it became clear to some writers that something was amiss.  It was beginning to look more and more like the peripheral visual apparatus as well as the visible world itself were being moved inside the mind.  For example, experiments showed that “small” mental images were harder to see (and took longer to report details from) than “large” images, that the mind’s eye could “squint,” that it exhibited the “oblique effect” (in which oblique lines were harder to distinguish than similarly spaced horizontal or vertical lines), that it showed an acuity profile similar to that of the real eye, and so on.  Since many of these properties arise in vision because of the neuroanatomy of the eye and its connections to the visual cortex, it appeared that the “mind’s eye” might share all these properties (presumably it had a blind spot and in some cases might even need corrective glasses)!  What was happening was that the pull of our subjective idea of “seeing with our mind’s eye” was blinding us to the fact that our idea of imagery is an idea of seeing a possible world,  not of examining causal information-processing mechanisms within the brain.  Even more importantly, it was blinding us to alternative (and in most cases rather obvious) explanations of many of the empirical phenomena. The alternative that was being overlooked is that when one is asked to “imagine” something, the natural interpretation of this task is that one should try to recreate as many aspects as one can, or as one believes to be relevant, of a situation in which one is actually viewing the imagined situation unfold.  This “simulation based on tacit knowledge” explanation seems to fit the great majority of mental imagery findings reported in the literature. Research has been taken to show that even the most peripheral part of the visual cortex (area V1) is active during episodes of mental imagery. Many writers jumped to the conclusion that these results showed the existence of spatial patterns in the brain that underwrite a pictorial form of “mental images”. But this is far from being the case. Even if the neuroscience evidence were not problematic, the arguments against a picture theory that had been discussed over the past 30 years (not to mention Locke’s argument against Berkeley’s claim that ideas are images) remain unanswered. The interpretation placed on the neuroscience evidence by picture theorists is highly problematic and when the evidence is examined even cursorily it is found to provide no support at all for the picture theory of “mental imagery”. While the finding that some part of the visual system is active in mental imagery is (if sustained) itself quite interesting, it tells us nothing about the nature and form of the representation underlying mental images; representations in vision and  imagery could have exactly the same form without either being pictorial (they could, for example, both take the form of symbol structures). But more importantly, the argument from activity in the visual cortex during imagery ignores the very significant (indeed, decisive) differences between retinal/cortical “images” and “mental images”.

imaginal – Hillman did more than offer poetic metaphor; his goal was nothing less than a return to an earlier, three part formulation  of the human person, embraced by the ancients but lost to modernity.  People in earlier times conceived of soul as an intermediate faculty that inhabits an imaginal realm between the physical world of body and the disembodied heights of pure spirit.  Imaginal not imaginary, a disparaging term which suggests that soul, vision, dream, and myth are not real.  In his key work, Revisioning Psychology, 1975, he said: “First, ‘soul’ refers to the deepening of events into memories; second, the significance soul makes possible, whether in love or in religious concern, derives from its special relation with death.  And third, by ‘soul’ I mean the imaginative possibility in our natures, the imagining through reflective speculation, dream, image and fantasy – that mode which recognizes all realities as primarily symbolic or metaphorical.”

imaginal figures – 1. “To mythic consciousness, the persons of the imagination are real ” (In the Words of Hillman, accessed March 7, 2009).By encouraging imaginal figures to flow forth in and through the image towards the ‘maker’ of the image – moving from the image rather than towards it – the development, recognition and appreciation of its autonomy will become manifest, and a process of reciprocity between self and ‘other’ (image) becomes possible. This is an important point in terms of considering the ‘organism’ of  psyche as being that of generator and metabolizer of image with the capacity to include and engage beyond its present parameters. A growing organism. The nature of psyche is image. As an image-making organism, the psyche spontaneously produces images from the unconscious. These images then move quite naturally towards making some sort of sense or meaning on behalf of the personality. A simple analysis of this meaning-making process would include tracking the connecting of spontaneous images towards story, a linking of images into a cohesive narrative of sorts, which then creates a sense of continuity and hence, self. Again, self as process. Attached to each of these spontaneous images of course, are a myriad of emotions. These emotions are often not readily discernible, as their affective nature can tend to overwhelm as they diffuse the situation that triggered them. They can however, be traced back through the images and/or stories they are expressed through, archetypal images perhaps, which then act functionally as containers – much like a still frame that both holds and offers expression to emotions symbolically. In children this symbolic function operates intuitively in learning how to ‘interpret’ their world, both internally and externally. Each child’s developing symbolic function is primary in the learning of imaginal love. 2. Corbin in particular, focused on the necessity of there needing to be an other; an angel, or spiritual twin, which, in an ongoing relationship fostered through a practice, reveals to us the unknown, or unconscious, so necessary for keeping the soul alive and in motion. By an “other,” I take him to mean any sense of otherness in our lives, of either day world or dream world, which by their difference from us cause a triangulation that reveals another option, or a third dimension. Love often does this. It opens us up to each other in ways that reveal something new. But for Corbin, the angel is not human, but encountered in a contemplative state he referred to as active imagination. “As an essential correlate of imaginal loving, this Angel also individuates. Meeting one’s angel corresponds to what Jung called individuation. But as Corbin tells us, and Hillman has repeatedly reaffirmed, it is not my individuation that is at stake but the individuation of the Angel.”

imagination – 1. Let us imagine the anima mundi [world soul] neither above the world encircling it as a divine and remote emanation of spirit, a world of powers, archetypes, and principles transcendent to things, nor within the material world as its unifying panpsychic life-principle. Rather let us imagine the anima mundi as that particular soul-spark, that seminal image, which offers itself through each thing in its visible form. I challenge psychotherapy’s cool green consulting rooms, the soothing images and framed diplomas, because they are calming and cooling the valuable madness in our society so that psychology has become part of Henry Miller’s Air-Conditioned Nightmare, his phrase for the U.S.A. Soul enters only via symptoms, via outcast phenomena like the imagination of artists or alchemy or “primitives,” or of course, disguised as psychopathology. That’s what Jung meant when he said the Gods have become diseases: the only way back for them in a Christian world is via the outcast .Do you see the complete harmony between central dictatorship, fascism, political callousness, and the self-centeredness of the spiritual point of view? A terrorist is the product of our education that says that fantasy is not real, that says aesthetics is just for artists, that says soul is only for priests, imagination is trivial or dangerous and for crazies, and that reality, what we must adapt to, is the external world, a world that is dead. A terrorist is a result of this whole long process of wiping out the psyche. 2. There is a secret love hiding in each problem. Hard to believe, but the hypochondrias are taking care of us, the depressions are slowing us down, obsessions are ways of polishing the image, paranoid suspicions are ways of trying to see through–all these moves of the pathological are ways we are being loved in the peculiar way the psyche works. The psyche is highly flammable material. So we are always wrapping things in asbestos, keeping our images and fantasies at arm’s length because they are so full of love. Our life is psychological, and the purpose of life is to make psyche of it, to find connections between life and soul. To mythic consciousness, the persons of the imagination are real. By means of personifications my sense of person becomes more vivid for I carry with me at all times the protection of my daimones: the images of dead people who mattered to me, of ancestral figures of my stock, cultural and historical persons of renown and people of fable who provide exemplary images–a wealth of guardians. They guard my fate, guide it, probably are it. “Perhaps–who knows,” writes Jung, “these eternal images are what men mean by fate.” We need this help, for who can carry his fate alone? When we are told what is healthy we are being told what is right to think and feel. When we are told what is mentally ill we are being told what ideas, behavior, and fantasies are wrong .If the fundamental principle of psychological life is differentiation, then no single perspective can embrace psychological life, and norms are the delusions that parts prescribe to one another.  3. Pathologizing forces the soul to a consciousness of itself as different from the ego and its life–a consciousness that obeys its own laws of metaphorical enactment in intimate relation with death. Literalism prevents psychologizing by making psychology of it. As truths are the fictions of the rational, so fictions are the truths of the imaginal. If our civilization suffers from hybris, from ego inflation and superbia, psychology has done its part. It has been looking at soul in the ego’s mirror, never seeing psyche, always seeing man. And this man has been monotheistic Reformational man, enemy of images. 4.  A “half moon” moon hovers in the late afternoon sky. My imagination wraps around the back of that lovely, luminous body. It is spherical and dark on the back side. I visualize the entire moon and know that only one-quarter of it is lit, my imagination revealing to me what is most real. Imagination, it follows, is not necessarily unreal, as is often assumed. It is not right or wrong, real or not real. Rather, imagination is a mode of consciousness, a unique capacity of the mind, shimmering behind everything we see and do. We imagine carrots before cooking them for dinner, a bath before we bathe. “In the beginning is the image, first imagination then perception,” says James Hillman. In somewhat scientific terms, our imaginations saturated with memory descend from the visual cortex in bundles of neural tracks, meeting incoming signals in the center of the brain. There sensations mix with imagination and are matched and filtered. Imagination thus comprises close to half of any perceptual cycle, its primary function being to act as a bridge between inner and outer landscapes. By bridging between ourselves and things of the world, imagination as if gluing the world together for us creates meaning. We merge the sensations of an old oak with our previous images of oak, and perhaps with images of what the world must have been like at the moment of its sprouting. In our imaginations, we discover a facet of time, the way it unfolds backward across the history of a land. We begin to wonder at the plants that grew there and the animals who lived there, the fact of a wooded hillside before houses and cell phone towers. We see an image enriched by time, perhaps embellished by the stories of our families living there as they grew and shifted over generations, with aunts and uncles, and the stories of their mothers and fathers, woven into a tapestry of place and belonging. A finely tuned imagination is informed by the physical world, drawing from the past and present, and from the edges of our awareness. If we had actually grown up in such a world, we would call these images our memories. We would see photographs of cooking with an aunt or fishing with a grandmother. But for many of us, such connectedness with family and land never happened. If such images are suggestive of the kind of world we wish for our children, we must bridge the past, present, and future with our imaginations. A finely tuned imagination is informed by the physical world, drawing from the past and present, and from the edges of our awareness. At the edges of our visual field and at the edges of our consciousness, the world is almost but not quite known. The edge is where what we know becomes flavored with the unknown, where imagination steps forward into the realm of possibility. 5. The power of the imagination is multifaceted. While teaching vision improvement, I occasionally came to class with a kitchen drawer full of utensils and all the related trappings that accumulate in such a place. I spilled can openers and scissors, corkscrews, batteries, Scotch tape, and matches into the center of a table, then asked my students to close their eyes and visualize a pair of scissors. Once an image of scissors had clearly formed in their mind’s eye, I asked them to open their eyes and find the can opener. Needless to say, it took them forever, their imaginations already busy with scissors. Next I asked them to close their eyes and visualize a roll of Scotch tape. Upon opening their eyes, I asked them to find the Scotch tape. The tape appeared in seconds demonstrating the power of imagination to influence one’s vision.  In other words, imagining something makes it easier to see it, just as seeing something makes it easier to imagine it. 6. To gather, hold, and refine an image, and then to offer that image to the world is the essential work of the visionary. We all recognize this phenomenon from our memory. Attention, we might say, lights up the neural networks subserving the image of Scotch tape, activating our image-making abilities. Over time the practice of attending in this way, of visualizing or repeatedly running a signal through the network subserving a particular image strengthens or “facilitates” the connections. And because visualizing a scrub jay, for example, activates the same set of neurons as when one is actually looking at a jay, the practice of visualization facilitates the sight of jays in the sensible, material world. In other words, imagining something makes it easier to see it, just as seeing something makes it easier to imagine it. The process between one’s active imagination and seeing with clarity is reciprocal and co-creative. For the Dagara of West Africa, imagination and reality are minimally distinguished. “To imagine something, to closely focus one’s thoughts upon it, has the potential to bring that something into being,” writes Malidoma Some, a Dagara ritualist. In this sense, imagination is the power “to make happen” to create reality. To embellish an image, to make it vivid and to be able to observe the details, to “build any thing in one’s mind,” takes practice. We imagine a scene. We add color and detail. With a little time, the visualized tree glistens in sunlight and branches begin to move. Feelings arise with the image and we look into it with greater depth. As we add dimensionality and detail, we strengthen the connections between neurons, the image becoming more vibrant and the sensible, worldly tree becoming more familiar. We readily recognize the shape at a glance, the pattern of Ash or Cottonwood. The perception of the tree is associated with the visualized form, with a practiced and facilitated network and thus requires oh-so-little light energy for us to see and feel. We feel a kind of affinity for it, resonating with easy recognition. To gather, hold, and refine an image, and then to offer that image to the world is the essential work of the visionary. She sees what is possible embedded in what is real. She looks directly at what is, looking into the world and then beyond the edge of presumed reality, cultivating the power to translate between seen and unseen realms with attention and imagination. The practice of the visionary is a perceptual act. Shape-shifting is essentially the power of intensionality brought to bear on a way of seeing. 7.  I allow – I swallow in sadness – a synaesthetic moment in which I remember that the Others, the Deer, are what make fully human, a fully sensitive being. The Rubin Vase is classically used to portray visual illusions, but it simultaneously illustrates the power of the mind to reconstruct the perceived world by shifting our focus of attention. The vase shows us a simple reversal created by the way we frame our view. What do we frame as the figure, the central white vase or the two identical profiles? How does the placement of our attention create a vision of reality?The shadows running across the slope of a mountain range, connecting the many folds and drainages in the land, are most often seen as background. If, with the power of our attention, we pull the shadows into the foreground, a new pattern emerges. If, with the power of our imaginations, we give them shape and density, the hidden and shadowed places gain a presence of their own, and, if only for a moment, the landscape is reversed. 8. The Imagination is thus firmly balanced between two other cognitive functions: its own world symbolizes with the world to which the two other functions (sensory knowledge and intellective knowledge) respectively correspond. There is accordingly something like a control that keeps the Imagination from wanderings and profligacy, and that permits it to assume its full function: to cause the occurrence, for example, of the events that are related by the visionary tales of Sohravardi and all those of the same kind, because every approach to the eighth climate is made by the imaginative path. It may be said that this is the reason for the extraordinary gravity of mystical epic poems written in Persian (from ‘Attar to jami and to Nur ‘Ali1-Shah), which constantly amplify the same archetypes in new symbols. In order for the Imagination to wander and become profligate, for it to cease fulfilling its function, which is to perceive or generate symbols leading to the internal sense, it is necessary for the mundus imaginalis–the proper domain of the Malakut, the world of the Soul-to disappear. Perhaps it is necessary, in the West, to date the beginning of this decadence at the time when Averroism rejected Avicennian cosmology, with its intermediate angelic hierarchy of the Animae or Angeli caelestes. These Angeli caelestes (a hierarchy below that of the Angeli intellectuales) had the privilege of imaginative power in its pure state. Once the universe of these Souls disappeared, it was the imaginative function as such that was unbalanced and devalued. It is easy to understand, then, the advice given later by Paracelsus, warning against any confusion of the Imaginatio vera, as the alchemists said, with fantasy, “that cornerstone of the mad.”  9. The use of the brain to produce a “mental image” of something that is neither perceived as real nor present to the senses. May also refer to the site in the brain where this production occurs, or to the creative powers of the mind in general; resourcefulness. Related to visualization. 10.  ‘ Imagination’ should be traced, of course, to its Latin equivalent ‘imaginatio’, whose root, imago, had meant a copy or likeness. In Virgil and Cicero this was used broadly for a statue, signet or spirit, but Cicero gave it also the more technical and psychological meaning of “an image of a thing found in the mind, a conception, a thought, an idea.”  In this the Latin reflects the Greek term eikon, meaning image or copy. Hence, etymologically imagination corresponds to the Greek, eikasia, coming from eiko, “to be like.”[ii] The Greek had also the term phantasia from phaino, “to appear or to be apparent.” This was derived, Aristotle notes, from phaos, or light, which enables one to see. Neither phantasia nor eikasia originally referred to anything on the part of the subject rather than on the part of the object. However, through Democritus’ clarification of the distinction between sensation and its stimulus, there arose a greater consciousness of the work of the subject in imagining. From the time of Aristotle this was reflected in the technical use of phantasia, rather than eikasia, in discussions of the process of knowledge. Hence, though ‘ imagination’ can be traced etymologically to the more objective eikasia, its meaning corresponds more properly to phantasia, as expressing a process of the soul or psyche.  11. The imagination appears throughout the works of P lato according to the contexts of the various dialogues. Of the four levels of human knowledge, the Republic places eikasia as the lowest level of knowledge where images are treated. Its limitations suggest the prison-house in his allegory of the cave. In the Phaedo, imagi nation appears in the context of remembering that which had been known by the nous in a better and higher life. Images here are taken in the objective sense of that which stimulates the mind; they can be either intellectual images concerned with universal meanings or sense images related to particulars. In the Sophist, Plato would seem to suggest that God creates not only the concrete objects, but their images. This raises the issue of art:“Shall we not say that we make a house by the art of building, and by the art of painting make another house, a sort of man-made dream produced by those who are awake?” And, if so, do we make our particular dreams by revelation (to which he refers in another context, Timaeus 71E) by reason or by some mixture of sensation and opinion? In brief, though Plato introduced many elements relating to the imagination in various contexts, he did not take up a direct discussion of the imagination itself; this remained to be contributed by Aristotle. He treats the nature of the imagination in his work on the Soul (De Anima), and its role in various aspects of human life in his works: Rhetoric, Memory and Reminiscence, and Dreams. His systematic approach in De Anima locates this power in relation to the other human faculties and provides some controlled insight into its nature and distinctive capabilities. Here we shall treat first the soul as the foundation of the imagination, then its special independent and creative character, and finally its role in relation to thought, practice and art.  In order to carry out his realist project, Aristotle criticized Plato’s notion of remembering as the source of the content of concepts and replaced this by the process of abstraction. This was a basic turn away from any form of innate ideational content in the mind or any ability of the intellect to educe or deduce its content therefrom. On t he contrary, he would insist that there is nothing at all in the intellect which was not previously in the senses in the form of phantasms. But this is the field also of the imagination that can generate phantasms or forms without matter. This is not merely a matter of speculative insight, however; it is crucial in the practical order as well. Thus, Aristotle points to a close bond between desire and imagination. Wherever there is change imagination is needed in order to know what to desire and what to avoid. This extends through the range of activities and related desires from the lower to the higher. Thus, Aristotle speaks not only of sensible imagination, but of rational imagination when it works with the intellect. At times, he calls the latter, “ deliberative imagination.” 12. In the Rhetoric Aristotle considers the relation of the imagination to the emotions. Having defined pleasure as the sensation of a certain emotion, since imagination is a (feeble) type of sensation, it is tied to feelings of pleasure or its contraries. Hence,when in the act of remembering or expecting one produces an image or phantasm of what is remembered or expected, then pleasure and/or other emotions follow. This could be a matter of our own self-image. Aristotle notes how this can be affected, if through friendship, the love of another and the pleasure it induces “makes a man see himself as the possessor of goodness, a thing that every being that has a feeling for it desires to possess: to be loved means to be valued for one’s own personal qualities.”[xx] Conversely, imagination could provide the basis for pleasure in thoughts of revenge or the emotion of anger and thus push one toward imprudent actions and loss of self-control. For this reason, control of one’s imagination becomes important for the conduct of a moral life. This can be done by humans in contrast to animals precisely because humans can relate their imagination to the universal horizons of the intellect and will. In the more Platonian spiritual traditions, this has been depicted as a battle against the senses. In such works, the imagination, though not itself a choice of the physical, can figure badly. It can be seen especially as presenting attractive physical goods which then powerfully disorient the will from its focus upon higher goods. This concern was not unknown to Aristotle and is commented on by Th omas Aquinas. In the final analysis, moral development as a process of personal maturation consists in bringing my pattern of personal and social virtues into harmony with the corresponding sets of values along the vertical pole of transcendence. In this manner, we achieve a coordinated pattern of personal capabilities for the realization of our unique response to the Good. This interplay between imagination, intellect and will can open important roads for moral growth in which the aesthetic plays an important role.
Quotations: “No amount of skillful invention can replace the essential element of imagination.” – Edward Hopper (1882-1967), American painter. “Man consists of body, mind and imagination. His body is faulty, his mind untrustworthy, but his imagination has made him remarkable.” – John Masefield (1874-1967), English writer.

Imaging the Unimaginable  -The Myth of Actaeon as an Archetypal Image of Buddhist Enlightenment. In depth psychology, the archetypal images that emerge in dreams or imaginative exercises provide the raw material for psychoanalytical work. In The Tibetan Book of the Dead, one is encouraged to deliberately use established archetypal images, mandalas, for example, to break mundane mental habits and imagine a new, expanded, enlightened consciousness. Vajrayana Buddhism advocates visualization training as one preparation for the enlightenment opportunity present during death. The Unexcelled Yoga, for example, is outlined in Thurman’s translation of The Tibetan Book of the Dead. “The purpose of the Unexcelled Yoga creative meditation,” he explains, “is to develop an archetypal model for your actual transformation. In order to create something, first you have to imagine it.”  By drawing on the energies contained in mandala models and images of various deities, and holding the image in mind, the meditator conditions her imagination to produce and recognize models of an enlightened self and universe. Paradoxically, the more one exercises one’s imaginative power, the easier it is to accept the possibility that imagination is the source of all phenomena, or again, that consciousness determines perception and memory. Tibetan Buddhist iconography is distinctive and highly developed, replete with  references to the lotus, diamonds, chariots, colored lights, and glistening drops. The strangeness of these images and terms can be an obstacle to their effective use by the uninitiated. But despite cultural disparities in language or semiotics, these Tibetan images hold a universal transformative power.  <Myth of Actaeon: see The Frantic Dictionary for this term.

impasto – In fine art, the Italian word ‘Impasto’ (dough or paste) denotes a painting technique in which undiluted paint is applied so thickly (like toothpaste) onto the canvas or panel (often with a palette knife) that it stands out from the surface. When using this impasto technique, the artist often mixes paint on the canvas itself to achieve the required colour. Oil painting is most suited to the impasto method, due to the viscosity of oils, their thickness and slow drying time, although acrylic paint or even gouache can be applied in the impasto style. Tempera is too thin to be impastoed without adding bulking or thickening agents (eg.Aquapasto™). The impasto painting method offers the artist several advantages. First, its raised surface causes light to be reflected in new ways that the artist can control. It was used frequently to mimic the broken-textured quality of highlights – that is, the surfaces of objects that are struck by an intense light. Second, expressionists (notably Van Gogh) used impasto to convey feelings and emotion. Third, impasto can convey a three dimensional impression. Baroque painters like Rembrandt, Hals and Velazquez used minutely and painstakingly worked impastos to depict lined or wrinkled skin, folds in robes, or the glint of jewellery. Lastly, the rough texture can draw attention to certain points or aspects of a composition. Modern exponents from the eras of Impressionism (c. 1870-80), Expressionism (c.1905-30), Abstract Expressionism (c.1948-60), Neo-Expressionism and other styles of contemporary art have frequently resorted to impastoed paint to achieve specific effects. The Dutch-American abstract expressionist Willem de Kooning, the Russian-French colourist Nicolas de Stael and German-born painter Frank Auerbach are three such exponents. The impastoed paint on Auerbach’s paintings, in particular, can be as thick as a bread crust. Since then, impasto or any similar method of applying thick layers of pigment paste to a canvas have become a staple technique of abstract and semi-figurative art. Other famous artists known for their impastoed paintings include: the ‘Action Painter’ Jackson Pollock, the French Impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and the Expressionist Vincent Van Gogh. The technique is also used by famous Irish artists such as: the Neo-Impressionist Arthur Maderson, the Irish landscape artist Donald Teskey, and the Impressionist Roderic O’Conor.

impression – An impression is a single piece of paper with an image printed on it from a matrix. The term as applied to prints is used in a manner similar to the term “copy” as applied to a book. noun 1. a strong effect produced on the intellect, feelings, conscience, etc.  2. the first and immediate effect of a recognition or perception upon the mind; sensation.  3. the effect produced by an agency or influence.  4. a notion, remembrance, belief, etc., often of a vague or indistinct nature: He had a general impression of lights, voices, and the clinking of silver. 5. a mark, indentation, figure, etc., produced by pressure.  6. an image in the mind caused by something external to it.  7. the act of impressing; state of being impressed.

incanabula – singular incunabulum, 1. Books printed during the earliest period of typography—i.e., from the invention of the art of typographic printing in Europe in the 1450s to the end of the 15th century (i.e., January 1501). Such works were completed at a time when books—some of which were still being hand-copied—were sought by an increasingly large number of readers.The concept of early printing as “incunabula” seems to have first been used by Bernard von Mallinckrodt in De Ortu ac Progressu Artis Typographicae,
Dissertatio Historica (1639); the concept was also applied generally by Jesuit scholar Philippe Labbé in Nova Bibliotheca (1653), but it was Cornelius à Beughem who applied the term more specifically to 15th-century books. His use of the word appeared in a sale catalog, Incunabula Typographiæ, issued in 1688. In Classical times incunabulum signified “cradle” or “swaddling clothes” and so “beginning.” The Latin word was adopted also in French (incunables) and Italian (incunaboli) as well as in other languages, and the German Wiegendrucke expresses the same idea. 2. The art of printing is virtually unique in the human history in that it emerged fully formed. The works of the pioneering master printers are absolutely breathtaking in their technical and artistic perfection. They set standards for excellence that remained unrivaled until the rise of the modern “art” printing house a century ago; and yet these works are still unequaled, when it is taken into account the laborious, entirely manual processes of their manufacture. The power and the charm of Incunabula are quite as unique as their impact on human history was profound. Printing was such an immense improvement over the hand copying of books that it caught on immediately and within two generations the art of the illuminated manuscript had become all but extinct. The earliest printers, however, continued many of the traditions of the scribes, making use of textual contractions and elisions to reduce the volume of matter to be printed. In addition many incunabula were designed to be rubricated by hand, that is, to be decorated with flourishing initial letters and other embellishments, done by the now underemployed and presumably discontented scribes. Book illustrations in the Incunabula period were prepared from woodcuts, that is, printed from blocks of wood hand engraved with their subjects by skilled artists and artisans. This form of illustration allows great artistic expression, and the results of this technology are eagerly collected today, and appreciated for what they are, the first commercial art to be available to all people. Example: France, Troyes, Dance of Death, 16th century, incunabulum, illustrated with hand-colored woodcuts, Saxon State Library, Dresden, Germany. Based on a fourteenth-century morality poem by an unidentifiable author, the Dance of Death evolved into a set of illustrated verses depicting a dialogue between Death and people of all social ranks. The theme was very popular in 15th and 16th century Christian Europe, reminding the living that rank and station in life were meaningless in the face of death. The illustrations show representations of ecclesiastical and secular society being carried off by Death, among them,the Pope, the Emperor, a cardinal, and a king.

ink and wash painting – In fine art, the term ‘Ink and wash painting’ denotes an Oriental or East Asian method of painting. It is also referred to as ‘brush painting’. The Chinese refer to it as mo-shui, while the Japanese call it suibokuga or sumi-e, and the Koreans know it as Soomookwa. The traditional painting medium for ink and wash is black ink, typically applied with long-haired brushes (from animals like goat,wolf, badger, rabbit, boar, or sheep) onto paper or silk. The completed painting is then mounted on scrolls, which are hung or rolled up. The ink itself comes in the form of a carbon stick which is ground and the resulting particles mixed with water. See also: Pen and Ink Drawings.

intaglio – An intaglio print is one whose image is printed from a recessed design incised or etched into the surface of a plate. In this type of print the ink lies below the surface of the plate and is transferred to the paper under pressure. The printed lines of an intaglio print stand in relief on the paper. Intaglio prints have platemarks.

interlaced scan – Interlaced video is a commonly used video capture technique in which in which the imagery consists of two fields of data captured a frame apart and played back in a manner that reproduces motion in a natural, flicker-free form that takes up less storage capacity than progressively captured video.
IRIS (Image Retrieval by Impression words and Specific object names) – a new image retrieval system for scenery images uses specific object names in addition to impression words which can reflect ambiguous human kansei (impression and sensitivity) as the retrieval keywords. IRIS has not only the function which retrieves images but also that can estimate keywords to images automatically. In IRIS, first an image is divided into some regions. Next each region is roughly classified into the sky, earth and water categories by the image recognition method using a neural network. Then the image characteristics are extracted from each category, and the impression words are given to the image automatically. After the regions are classified into sky/earth/water categories, they are classified into much more detailed objects such as mountain or cloudy weather sky. By the hierarchical recognition, the specific object names are given to an image automatically. Using concrete object names with vague impression words as keywords, flexible retrieval is possible. We carried out extensive experiments to test the performance of the developed IRIS. The retrieval experiments has shown the efficiency of retrieval when the impression words and the specific object names are used together. Also, they have shown the high retrieval performances of IRIS.

irony, ironic – Irony is a form of expression in which the real meaning is concealed or contradicted by the words or images used — a meaning which either markedly contrasts or is entirely opposite to that which appears to be presented. It is a trope in which there is an incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs. Irony involves the perception that things are not what they seem to be. The intention of one who uses irony is usually to imagine that there are two kinds of people in the audience: the first kind will not understand that what they see does not carry the ultimate meaning, and the other is aware that there is more meaning intended, and also that the first kind of person doesn’t understand this. Irony is a means of expressing an attitude which is disguised by what seems to be obvious. The effect of irony is usually intended to be humorous, dramatic, tragic, insulting (sarcastic), or absurd. Irony is essential to satire. When irony is presented by pretending ignorance, is is the kind also called “Socratic irony.” “Ironic” is the adjectival form: relating to, characterized by, using, or containing irony.

J
jaggies – In digital imaging, picture elements that are so large that the viewer becomes aware of them as small squares, with edges looking like zig-zags. Also see aliased and anti-aliased, definition, focus, pixels, image resolution, and vector graphic.

JBIG – In digital imaging, an international compression standard designed for images with very little color or gray scale, such as images of document pages. Short for the ‘Joint Bi-level Image experts Group’. This is a group of experts nominated by national standards bodies and major companies to work to produce standards for bi-level image coding. The ‘joint’ refers to its status as a committee working on both ISO/IEC and ITU-T standards. The official title of the committee is ISO/IEC JTC1 SC29 Working Group 1, and is responsible for both JPEG and JBIG standards. JBIG has developed ISO/IEC 11544 (ITU-T T.82) for the lossless compression of a bi-level image. It can also be used for coding greyscale and colour images with limited numbers of bits per pixel. It can be regarded as a form of facsimile encoding, similar to Group 3 or Group 4 fax, offering between 20 and 80% improvement in compression over these methods (about 20 to one over the original uncompressed digital bit map).

JFIF – JPEG File Format. File-storage format for images compressed with JPEG algorithm. Specifies a file format, referred to as the JPEG File Interchange Format (JFIF),  for file-based interchange of images encoded according to the JPEG standard (ITU-T Recommendation T.81 | ISO/IEC 10918-1). The JPEG File Interchange Format (JFIF) was collaboratively developed by a group of computer, telecommunications, and imaging companies in the early 1990’s. JFIF is the file format for images compressed using jpeg. Vast majority of jpeg images are stored in the jfif file format, except those from digital cameras.  JPEG is a standard compression scheme, not a file format. The file format we usually associate with the name “jpeg” is actually JFIF.

JPEG – Short for Joint Photographic Experts Group, the original name of the committee that wrote the standard. Used to to refer to the standard they developed for still-image compression. Excellent file format for photographs used as Web graphics. JPG is one of the image file formats supported on the Web. JPG is a lossy compression technique that is designed to compress color and grayscale continuous-tone images. The information that is discarded in the compression is information that the human eye cannot detect. JPG images support 16 million colors and are best suited for photographs and complex graphics. The user typically has to compromise on either the quality of the image or the size of the file. JPG does not work well on line drawings, lettering or simple graphics because there is not a lot of the image that can be thrown out in the lossy process, so the image loses clarity and sharpness.  Defined an image-compression algorithm based on a linear transform called the discrete cosine transform (DCT). The image is first block coded, each block transformed using the DCT, the transform coefficient quantized, and then subjected to a lossless compression algorithm. Loses some information about high spacial frequencies and suffers from some block artifacts. (See also Discrete Cosine Transform and Block Coding).

jukebox – In digital imaging, a stand-alone device that can hold several optical disks or magnetic tapes at a time, making it possible to switch among them at will.

L

layer – A level of an image that can be edited independently from the rest of the image. Typical graphics controllers support up to 8 different layers in hardware (simultaneously).
light/UV fade – Loss of colorants induced by light or UV radiation.

lightfastness – Resistance of prints to change upon exposure to light or UV radiation.

limited edition – The stated number of prints of a particular photographic image in a particular size and format, as set by the photographer. It is understood that once this edition number has been set that the photographer will not produce any further prints of that stated nature from this particular negative.

line spread – Broadening of a printed line due to high-humidity-induced migration of colorants across the surface of the print.

linear perspective – 1. A system of drawing or painting in which the artist attempts to create the illusion of spatial depth (also known as ‘plastic space’) on a two-dimensional surface. Linear perspective originates in the common appearance of the real world, yet it seems to follow the abstract constraints of geometry. It can visualize the reach of three dimensional space by organizing everything around a single, precisely located viewpoint. It works by following consistent geometric rules for rendering objects as they appear to the human eye. For instance, we see parallel lines as converging in the distance, although in reality they do not. Stated another way, the lines of buildings and other objects in a picture are slanted inward making them appear to extend back into space. If lengthened these lines will meet at a point along an imaginary horizontal line representing the eye level. Each such imaginary line is called an orthogonal. The point at which such lines meet is called a vanishing point.  2. Linear perspective is space drawn as the geometrical idea of itself. But we do not see the idea of space: we see a world of light, colors, textures, objects and opportunities for action. As we explore the artistic uses of perspective, we will repeatedly grapple with the fact that our visual idea of the world is much richer and more complex than our idea of the geometrical space in which it
appears.

lithograph – First an artist draws an image, in reverse, on a fine-grained limestone or an aluminum plate. For a one-color lithograph, this will be the only drawing. Each additional color will generally require a separate drawing on a different stone or plate. Artists use the same kinds of tools they would to make images on paper or canvas. However, since the basic principle of the hand lithographic printing is the natural repulsion of grease and water, the crayons, pencils, and washes used in lithography have a high grease content. Once the artist has finished drawing with the greasy black pigments, a professional master printer takes over and chemically treats the stones and/or plates to stabilize the image for printing. The printer first sprinkles rosin on the surface to protect the drawing, then applies talc, which helps the chemical etch lie more closely to the tiny grease dots that compose the drawing. A solution of gum arabic and nitric acid (called an “etch”) is applied to the stone and left for about an hour to combine with the greasy particles and the calcium carbonate of the limestone. Often a second application of gum arabic is applied before the original drawing materials are removed with a solvent and asphaltum is rubbed in. This process causes the image area, now barely visible on the stone, to accept the printing inks, and, at the same time, causes the stone’s blank areas, when moistened with water, to reject the inks. At the press, the printer sponges the stone or plate with water, uses a roller to apply ink, and prints a series of trial proofs for the artist to consider. The printer continues to make proofs with different color and paper combinations until the artist is completely satisfied with the result. This final proof is signed by the artist as the bon à tirer (“good to pull”). Using this as a standard, the printer prints the edition, comprised of a limited number of individual impressions.

lossless compression – A process that reduces the storage space needed for an image file without loss of data. If a digital image that has undergone lossless compression is decompressed, it will be identical to the digital image before it was compressed. Document images (i.e. in black and white, with a great deal of white space undergoing lossless compression can often be reduced to one-tenth their original size; continuous tone images under lossless compression can seldom be reduced to one-half or one-third of their original size. Also see lossy compression.

lossy compression – A process that reduces the storage space needed for an image file. If a digital image that has undergone lossy compression is decompressed, it will differ from the image before it was compressed (though this difference may be difficult for the human eye to detect). The most effective lossy compression algorithms work by discarding information that is not easily perceptible to the human eye. Also see lossless compression.

luminosity – 1. total quantity of energy radiated by a star in one unit of time. The luminosity of a star is a measure of its energy output; it can be known directly, as opposed to inferred, only if the star’s distance can be measured. It depends upon the area of the star’s surface (opaque radiating layer of gases) and upon the fourth power of its surface temperature.  2. luminosity – A quality seen in some paintings of a glow coming from within, the illusion that there is actually a light coming out of the picture. Glossy colors are more likely to provide this luminous effect than matte colors.

lunar perspective –  “…the death of the individual and the periodic  death of humanity are necessary, even as the three days of darkness preceding the “rebirth” of the moon are necessary. The death of the individual and the death of humanity are alike necessary for their regeneration. Any form whatever, by the mere fact that it exists as such and endures, necessarily loses vigor and becomes worn; to recover vigor, it must be reabsorbed into the formless if only for an instant; it must be restored to the primordial unity from which it issued; in other words, it must return to “chaos” (on the cosmic plane), to “orgy” (on the social plane). to “darkness” (for seed), to “water” (baptism on the human plane, Atlantis on the plane of history, and so on). We may note that what predominates all these cosmico-mythological lunar conceptions is the cyclical recurrence of what has been before, in a word, eternal return. Here we again find the motif of the repetition of an archetypal gesture, projected upon all planes — cosmic, biological, historical, human. But we also discover the cyclical structure of time, which is regenerated at each new “birth” on whatever plane..  Everything begins over again at its commencement every instant. The past is but a prefiguration of the future. No event is irreversible and no transformation is final. In a certain sense, it is even possible to say that nothing new happens in the world, for everything is but the repetition of the same primordial archetypes; this repetition, by actualizing the mythical moment when the archetypal gesture was revealed, constantly maintains the world in the same auroral instant of the beginnings.” <Mircea Eliade.

LUV – Luv* color system and Lab* color system are both uniform color spaces that were adopted in 1976 by Commission Internationale de lﾕツlairage (CIE) and are also referred to as the CIE LUV color space. The CIE Luv color space is designed to be perceptually uniform, meaning that a given change in value corresponds roughly to the same perceptual difference over any part of the space.Using such a space for quantizing color values decreases the chance that any given step in color value will be noticeable on a display or hardcopy. The Luv space was designed specifically for emissive colors, which correspond to images captured by a camera or computer graphics rendering program Uniform color space refers to a color space with a sensuously uniform scale property, a color space in which the sensuous differences of uniform luminance colors in all areas of the chromaticity diagram, lie in more or less geometric distances. The XYZ color system, the basic color system, was adopted by CIE in 1931 but this system does not have the properties of a uniform color space.

LZW compression  – the loseless compression of a file into a smaller file using a table-based lookup algorithm. LZW compression has its roots in the work of Jacob Ziv and Abraham Lempel.  In 1977, they published a paper on “sliding-window” compression, and followed it with another paper in 1978 on “dictionary” based compression. These algorithms were named LZ77 and LZ78, respectively. Then in 1984, Terry Welch made a modification to LZ78 which became very popular and was dubbed LZW.  The algorithm is simple to implement, and has the potential for very high throughput in hardware implementations. The algorithm is surprisingly simple. In a nutshell, LZW compression replaces strings of characters with single codes. It does not do any analysis of the incoming text. Instead, it just adds every new string of characters it sees to a table of strings. Compression occurs when a single code is output instead of a string of characters. It was the algorithm of the widely used Unix file compression utility ‘compress’. Two commonly-used file formats in which LZV compression is used are the GIF image format served from Web sites and the TIFF image format. LZW compression is also suitable for compressing text files. As the message to be encoded is processed, the LZW algorithm builds a string table that maps symbol sequences to/from an N-bit index. The string table has 2N entries and the transmitted code can be used at the decoder as an index into the string table to retrieve the corresponding original symbol sequence. The sequences stored in the table can be arbitrarily long. The algorithm is designed so that the string table can be reconstructed by the decoder based on information in the encoded stream—the table, while central to the encoding and decoding process, is never transmitted!  This property is crucial to the understanding of the LZW method.When encoding a byte stream, 2 the first 2 8 = 256 entries of the string table, numbered 0 through 255, are initialized to hold all the possible one-byte sequences. The other entries will be filled in as the message byte stream is processed. The encoding strategy works as follows: First, accumulate message bytes as long as the accumulated sequences appear as some entry in the string table. At some point, appending the next byte b to the accumulated sequence S would create a sequence S+b that’s not in the string table, where + denotes appending b to S.  The encoder then executes the following steps: 1. It transmits the N-bit code for the sequence S.  2. It adds a new entry to the string table for S+b. If the encoder finds the table full when it goes to add an entry, it reinitializes the table before the addition is made. 3. it resets S to contain only the byte b. This process repeats until all the message bytes are consumed, at which point the encoder makes a final transmission of the N-bit code for the current sequence S. Note that for every transmission done by the encoder, the encoder makes a new entry in the string table. With a little cleverness, the decoder can figure out what the new entry must have been as it receives each N-bitcode. With a duplicate string table at the decoder constructed as the algorithm progresses at the decoder, it is possible to recover the original message: just use the received N-bit code as index into the decoder’s string table to retrieve the original sequence of message bytes. Notice that The encoder algorithm is greedy – it is designed to find the longest possible match in the string table before it makes a transmission. The string table is filled with sequences actually found in the message stream.  No encodings are wasted on sequences not actually found in the file. Since the encoder operates without any knowledge of what’s to come in the message stream, there may be entries in the string table that don’t correspond to a sequence that’s repeated, i.e., some of the possible N-bit codes will never be transmitted. This property means that the encoding isn’t optimal—a prescient encoder could do a better job. Note that in this example the amount of compression increases as the encoding progresses, i.e., more input bytes are consumed between transmissions. Eventually the table will fill and then be  reinitialized, recycling the N-bit codes for new sequences. So the encoder will eventually adapt to changes in the probabilities of the symbols or symbol sequences. As each N-bit code is received, the decoder deduces the correct entry to make in the string table (i.e., the same entry as made at the encoder) and then uses the N-bit code as index into the table to retrieve the original message sequence. There is a special case, which turns out to be important, that needs to be dealt with. There are three instances where the decoder receives an index that it has not previously entered in its string table. So how does it figure out what these correspond to? A careful analysis, which you could do, shows that this situation only happens when the associated string table entry has its last symbol identical to its first symbol. To handle this issue, the decoder can simply complete the partial string that it is building up into a table entry  by repeating its first symbol at the end of the string, and then entering this into the string table. This step is captured in the pseudo-code by the logic of the “if” statement. We conclude with some interesting observations about LZW compression. A common choice for the size of the string table is 4096 (N=12). A larger table means the encoder has a longer memory for sequences it has seen and increases the possibility of discovering repeated sequences across longer spans of message. However, dedicating string table entries to remembering sequences that will never be seen again decreases the efficiency of the encoding. Early in the encoding, the encoder uses entries near the beginning of the string table, i.e., the high-order bits of the string table index will be 0 until the string table starts to fill. So the N-bit codes we transmit at the outset will be numerically small. Some variants of LZW transmit a variable-width code, where the width grows as the table fills. If N=12, the initial transmissions may be only 9 bits until entry number 511 in the table is filled (i.e., 512 entries filled in all), then the code expands to 10 bits, and so on, until the maximum width N is reached. Some variants of LZW introduce additional special transmit codes, e.g., CLEAR to indicate when the table is reinitialized. This allows the encoder to reset the table pre-emptively if the message stream probabilities change dramatically, causing an observable drop in compression efficiency. There are many small details we haven’t discussed. For example, when sending N-bit codes one bit at a time over a serial communication channel, we have to specify the order in the which the N bits are sent: least significant bit first, or most significant bit first. To specify N, serialization order, algorithm version, etc., most compressed file formats have a header where the encoder can communicate these details to the decoder.The code that the LZW algorithm outputs can be of any arbitrary length, but it must have more bits in it than a single character. The first 256 codes (when using eight bit characters) are by default assigned to the standard character set. The remaining codes are assigned to strings as the algorithm proceeds.It is somewhat difficult to characterize the results of any data compression technique. The level of compression achieved varies quite a bit depending on several factors. LZW compression excels when confronted with data streams that have any type of repeated strings. Because of this, it does extremely well when compressing English text. Compression levels of 50% or better should be expected. Likewise, compressing saved screens and displays will generally show very good results. Trying to compress binary data files is a little more risky. Depending on the data, compression may or may not yield good results. In some cases, data files will compress even more than text. A little bit of experimentation will usually give you a feel for whether your data will compress well or not.

M
maculate – Spotted; stained; blotched. Or, defiled; impure. The opposite of immaculate.

magenta – A color also known as fuchsia and hot pink; a moderate to vivid purplish red or pink, named after the town of spheres of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black, Magenta, in northwest Italy. Magenta is one of the four colors in the four color process for reproduction color in print called CMYK. The CMYK process creates the color spectrum using cyan, magenta, yellow, and black.

Makeup On Empty Space  –
I am putting makeup on empty space
all patinas convening on empty space
rouge blushing on empty space
I am putting makeup on empty space
pasting eyelashes on empty space
painting the eyebrows of empty space
piling creams on empty space
painting the phenomenal world
I am hanging ornaments on empty space
gold clips, lacquer combs, plastic hairpins on empty space
I am sticking wire pins into empty space
I pour words over empty space, enthrall the empty space
packing, stuffing jamming empty space
spinning necklaces around empty space
Fancy this, imagine this: painting the phenomenal world
bangles on wrists
pendants hung on empty space
I am putting my memory into empty space
undressing you
hanging the wrinkled clothes on a nail
hanging the green coat on a nail
dancing in the evening it ended with dancing in the evening
I am still thinking about putting makeup on empty space
I want to scare you: the hanging night, the drifting night,
the moaning night, daughter of troubled sleep I want to scare you
you
I bind as far as cold day goes
I bind the power of 20 husky men
I bind the seductive colorful women, all of them
I bind the massive rock
I bind the hanging night, the drifting night, the
moaning night, daughter of troubled sleep
I am binding my debts, I magnetize the phone bill
bind the root of my pointed tongue
I cup my hands in water, splash water on empty space
water drunk by empty space
Look what thoughts will do   Look what words will do
from nothing to the face
from nothing to the root of the tongue
from nothing to speaking of empty space
I bind the ash tree
I bind the yew
I bind the willow
I bind uranium
I bind the uneconomical unrenewable energy of uranium
dash uranium to empty space
I bind the color red I seduce the color red to empty space
I put the sunset in empty space
I take the blue of his eyes and make an offering to empty space
renewable blue
I take the green of everything coming to life, it grows &
climbs into empty space
I put the white of the snow at the foot of empty space
I clasp the yellow of the cat’s eyes sitting in the
black space I clasp them to my heart, empty space
I want the brown of this floor to rise up into empty space
Take the floor apart to find the brown,
bind it up again under spell of empty space
I want to take this old wall apart I am rich in my mind thinking
of this, I am thinking of putting makeup on empty space
Everything crumbles around empty space
the thin dry weed crumbles, the milkweed is blown into empty space
I bind the stars reflected in your eye
from nothing to these typing fingers
from nothing to the legs of the elk
from nothing to the neck of the deer
from nothing to porcelain teeth
from nothing to the fine stand of pine in the forest
I kept it going when I put the water on
when I let the water run
sweeping together in empty space
There is a better way to say empty space
Turn yourself inside out and you might disappear
you have a new definition in empty space
What I like about impermanence is the clash
of my big body with empty space
I am putting the floor back together again
I am rebuilding the wall
I am slapping mortar on bricks
I am fastening the machine together with delicate wire
There is no eternal thread, maybe there is thread of pure gold
I am starting to sing inside about the empty space
there is some new detail every time
I am taping the picture I love so well on the wall:
moonless black night beyond country-plaid curtains
everything illuminated out of empty space
I hang the black linen dress on my body
the hanging night, the drifting night, the moaning night
daughter of troubled sleep
This occurs to me
I hang up a mirror to catch stars, everything occurs to me out in the
night in my skull of empty space
I go outside in starry ice
I build up the house again in memory of empty space
This occurs to me about empty space
that it is nevered to be mentioned again
Fancy this
imagine this
painting the phenomenal world
there’s talk of dressing the body with strange adornments
to remind you of a vow to empty space
there’s talk of the discourse in your mind like a silkworm
I wish to venture into a not-chiseled place
I pour sand on the ground
Objects and vehicles emerge from the fog
the canyon is dangerous tonight
suddenly there are warning lights
The patrol is helpful in the manner of guiding
there is talk of slowing down
there is talk of a feminine deity
I bind her with a briar
I bind with the tooth of a tiger
I bind with my quartz crystal
I magnetize the worlds
I cover myself with jewels
I drink amrita
there is some new detail
there is a spangle on her shoe
there is a stud on her boot
the tires are studded for the difficult climb
I put my hands to my face
I am putting makeup on empty space
I wanted to scare you with the night that scared me
the drifting night, the moaning night
Someone was always intruding to make you forget empty space
you put it all on
you paint your nails
you put on scarves
all the time adorning empty space
Whatever-your-name-is I tell you “empty space”
with your fictions with dancing come around to it
with your funny way of singing come around to it
with your smiling come to it
with your enormous retinue & accumulation come around to it
with your extras come round to it
with your good fortune, with your lazy fortune come round to it
when you look most like a bird, that is the time to come around to it
when you are cheating, come to it
when you are in your anguished head
when you are not sensible
when you are insisting on the
praise from many tongues
It begins with the root of the tongue
it begins with the root of the heart
there is a spinal cord of wind
singing & moaning in empty space

<Anne Waldman, “Makeup on Empty Space” from Helping the Dreamer: Selected Poems, 1966-1988. Copyright © 1989 by Anne Waldman. Reprinted with the permission of Coffee House Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota.  http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171774

mandorla – A gloriole or glory when it surrounds the entire figure of God, Christ, the Virgin Mary, or a saint with a large oval of radiant light . Mandorla is the Italian word for almond. When it surrounds the head only, it is called a halo or nimbus. It indicates divinity or holiness.

marouflage – A painting done on canvas and then cemented to a wall or panel.

master, old master, and master’s degree – In the arts, a master is a person whose teachings or doctrines are accepted by followers. In the old apprenticeship system, a master was an artist of great and exemplary skill, whose followers might be called apprentices or disciples.

masterpiece or masterwork – A work done with extraordinary skill; especially a work of art, craft or intellect which is an exceptionally great achievement. To some, this means the best piece of work by a particular artist or craftsperson.  Historically, a piece of work presented to a medieval guild as evidence of an apprentice’s qualification to attain the rank of master. Also called masterwork. First known in English in the early 17th century, this word was derived from the Dutch meesterstuk or from the German Meisterstück. The French equivalent is chef-d’oeuvre. Synonymns might include: classic, jewel, magnum opus (Latin for “great work”), ne plus ultra (Latin for “nothing is higher”), nonpareil (French for “without equal”), tour de force (French for “feat of strength”), pièce de résistance (French for “piece with staying power”), summit, prize, treasure, masterstroke, and crowning achievement.

mastic – A gum or resin obtained from certain coniferous trees, used in varnish, employed as a medium, as an adhesive, or as a sealing agent.

mat, matt, or matte – A decorative border placed around a picture, often under glass, also called matboard. It serves as a frame or provides contrast between the picture and the frame. Or, to put a mat around a picture. Also, a thin, flat sheet of glass fiber material used to reinforce laminating resin, hollow cast cement fondu, and modeled concrete sculpture. Surface mat is quite fine, chopped strand mat is coarse, loosely woven fabric. Also, having a dull, flat, non-reflective, sometimes roughly textured finish, perhaps of paint, metal, paper or glass; the opposite of glossy.

matboard – A mat that is typically cut from a heavy cardboard. Matboard serves two very important functions in the overall framing of a picture. First and foremost it protects the artwork and second it showcases and enhances the subject being framed. It is important to protect works of art on paper, photographs, and other framed objects from direct contact with glass. Matboard provides a barrier from the airborne pollutants, moisture, acids and other damaging impurities that can impact the life of the framed piece. Matboard when used correctly also leads your eye into the artwork, enhancing the overall effect. Whenever a work’s presentation or storage environment should be of archival quality, be sure to use acid-free matboard. It is more expensive, but is much less likely to discolor artworks over time.

matching – Making a harmonious pairing or grouping of materials or objects, usually based on formal qualities. Also see complementary colors.

mechanical drawing – Drawing of mechanical subjects, done by a draftsman with the help of mechanical tools or instruments, such as a compass and a T-square. More of this kind of drawing is being done with the use of computers than in the past, and is then referred to as computer graphics or computer assisted design (CAD). This is the opposite of freehand drawing.

meaning – 1. What is conveyed or signified by something; its sense or significance. An interpretation. However an artist may intend an artwork to impart meaning, and whatever an artist does to pack a work with meaning, in the end, it is the viewer who creates meaning in each and every image. 2. For an exact study, an exact language is needed. But our ordinary language in which we speak, set forth what we know and understand, and write books in ordinary life, does not do for even a small amount of exact speech. An inexact speech cannot serve an exact knowledge. The words composing our language are too wide, too foggy and indefinite, while the meaning put into them is too arbitrary and variable. Every man who pronounces any word always attaches this or that shade of meaning to it by his imagination, exaggerates or puts forward this or that side of it, sometimes concentrating all the significance of the word on a single feature of the object, that is, designating by this word not all the attributes but those chance external ones which first spring to his notice. Another man speaking with the first attaches to the same word another shade of meaning, takes this word in another sense, which is often exactly the opposite. If a third man joins the conversation, he again puts into the same word his own meaning. And if ten people speak, every one of them once more gives his own meaning, and the same word has ten meanings. And men speaking in this way think that they can understand each other, that they can transfer their thoughts one to another. It can be said with full confidence that the language in which contemporary men speak is so imperfect that whatever they speak about, especially on scientific matters, they can never be sure that they call the same ideas by the same words. On the contrary, one can say almost certainly that they understand every word differently and, while appearing to speak about the same subject, in practice speak about quite different things. Moreover, for every man the meaning of his own words and the meaning which he puts into them changes in accordance with his own thoughts and humors, with the images which he associates at the moment with the words, as well as with what and how his interlocutor speaks, for by an involuntary imitation or contradiction he can involuntarily change the meaning of his words. In addition, nobody is able to define exactly what he means by this or that word, or whether this meaning is constant or subject to change, how, why and for what reason. If several men speak, everyone speaks in his own way, and no one of them understands another. A professor reads a lecture, a scholar writes a book, and their audience and readers listen to, and read, not them but combinations of the authors’ words and their own thoughts, notions, humors and emotions of the given moment.  The people of today are, to a certain degree, conscious of the instability of their language. Among the diverse branches of science every one of them works out its own terminology, its own nomenclature and language. In philosophy attempts are made, before using any word, to make clear in what sense it is taken; but however much people nowadays try to establish a constant meaning of words, they have failed in it so far. Every writer fixes his own terminology, changes the terminology of his predecessors, contradicts his own terminology; in short, everyone contributes his share to the general confusion. This teaching points out the cause of this. Our words have not and cannot have any constant meaning, and to indicate at every word the meaning and the particular shade which we attach to this word, that is, the relations in which it is taken by us, we have in the first place no means; and secondly we do not aim at this; on the contrary, we invariably wish to establish our constant meaning for a word and to take it always in that sense, which is obviously impossible, as one and the same word used at different times and in various relations has different meanings. Our wrong use of words and the qualities of the words themselves have made them unreliable instruments of an exact speech and an exact knowledge, not to mention the fact that for many notions accessible to our reason we have neither words nor expressions. The language of numbers alone can serve for an exact expression of thought and knowledge; but the language of numbers is applied only to designate and compare quantities. But things do not differ only in size, and their definition from the point of view of quantities is not sufficient for an exact knowledge and analysis. We do not know how to apply the language of numbers to the attributes of things. If we knew how to do it and could designate all the qualities of things by numbers in relation to some immutable number, this would be an exact language. The teaching whose principles we are going to expound here has as one of its tasks the bringing of our thinking nearer to an exact mathematical designation of things and events and the giving to men of the possibility of understanding themselves and each other. If we take any of the most commonly used words and try to see what a varied meaning these words have according to who uses them and in what connection, we shall see why men have no power of expressing their thoughts exactly and why everything men say and think is so unstable and contradictory. Apart from the variety of meanings which every word can have, this confusion and contradiction are caused by the fact that men never render any account to themselves of the sense in which they take this or that word and only wonder why others do not understand it although it is so clear to themselves. For example, if we say the word “world” in front of ten hearers, every one of them will understand the word in his own way. If men knew how to catch and write down their thoughts themselves, they would see that they had no ideas connected with the word “world” but that merely a well-known word and an accustomed sound was uttered, the significance of which is supposed to be known. It is as if everybody hearing this word said to himself: “Ah, the ‘world,’ I know what it is.” As a matter of fact he does not really know at all. But the word is familiar, and therefore no such question and answer occur to him. They are only understood. A question comes only in respect of new unknown words and then the man tends to substitute for the unknown word a known one. He calls this “understanding.”

mental image – A mental image or mental picture is the representation in a person’s mind of the physical world. It is a representation that, on most occasions, significantly resembles the perceiving of some object, event, or scene, but occurs when the relevant object, event, or scene is not actually present to the senses.  The nature of these representations what makes them possible, and their function (if any) have long been subjects of research and controversy – further explanation needed – in philosophy, psychology, cognitive science, and, more recently, neuroscience. As contemporary researchers use the expression, mental images or imager, can comprise information from any source of sensory input; one may perceive auditory images, olfactory images, and so forth. However, the majority of philosophical and scientific investigations of the topic focus upon visual mental imagery. It has sometimes been assumed by writers that, like humans, some types of animals are capable of having mental images.  Philosophers such as George Berkeley and David Hume, and early experimental psychologists such as Wilhelm Wundt and William James, understood ideas in general to be mental (non-pictorial) images . Today it is very widely believed that imagery functions as mental representations (or mental models,) playing an important role in memory and thinking. William Brant (2013, p. 12) traces the scientific use of the phrase “mental images” back to the John Tyndall’s 1870 speech called the “Scientific Use of the Imagination.” Some have gone so far as to suggest that images are best understood to be, by definition, a form of inner, mental or neural representation; in the case of hypnagogic and hypnapompic imagery, it is not representational at all. Others reject the view that the image perception may be identical with (or directly caused by) any such representation in the mind or the brain, but do not take account of the non-representational forms of imagery.

mental imagery – Imagery training has been shown to improve reading comprehension. Recent research has also shown that the quality of visual mental imagery used is important for reading comprehension. A review of literature shows that there has been relatively little detailed research on the quality of imagery used by learners, especially in the case of students learning English as a foreign language (EFL). This study was designed to examine the influence of image quality on reading comprehension in EFL students, comparing the effects of training in the use of a focused, constrained imagery relative to that of a more standard form of visual mental imagery training. The study also examined the impact of individual differences such as gender, ability to make images, working memory capacity, and motivational beliefs on the training outcome. The findings provide evidence that constrained imagery strategy training helped EFL learners improve reading comprehension. Female participants showed higher comprehension performance than males. Other individual difference variables did not emerge as having a significant impact on change in reading comprehension performance over time.

metaphor – A situation in which a word or thing that ordinarily designates one thing is used to designate another, thus making an implicit comparison. One thing conceived as representing another; a symbol. One of the basic tropes, along with simile, metonymy, synecdoche, irony, parody, etc., metaphor is most often confused with simile. But simile is specific, as in Robert Burns’ “O my love’s like a red, red rose,” while metaphor is poetic, as in U.S. Grant’s “I am a verb.” Grant could have said “I am a man of action, like a verb,” which would have been a simile; instead he let the reader take the metaphoric leap. A metaphor is like a fragrance that calls up a powerful memory (which is a simile), while a simile lets a metaphor be its umbrella. (So I strain for effect. A lexicographer’s reach must exceed his grasp, or what’s a metaphor?)

microspots – Small colored spots, usually red or orange, caused by localized oxidation of black-and-white images. Also known as red spots, redox blemishes, or measles.

mirror – This word is used in a variety of meanings in esoteric contexts. In the Gurdjieff work or 4th Way Work context, the mirror is a group event where one person is shown himself by others. The idea is that a group which is sufficiently diverse, consisting of many different types of people, is more objective than a single person and affords a 360 degree view of a situation or person. To be free of personal likes or dislikes, a mirror should be given in the pursuit of truth and is thus limited to a Work context. Group opinion outside of the Work is notoriously undependable. A mirror generally is perceived as shocking or socially disagreeable. This comes from the fact that if  the mirror is any good it will conflict with the subjective filters of perception most people maintain concerning themselves. In other words people’s self image is more or less based on lies to self and in the degree the mirror reaches its intended truthfulness, it will challenge these lies. In the theoretical event of a person possessing ‘objective self-knowledge’ and receiving an objective mirror, there would be no shock or new information. A common New Age thought is that reality automatically mirrors the individual. This is very imprecise and simplistic. There is a sort of interaction but its rules are complex and sometimes it may seem that reality responds in kind, sometimes in reverse, sometimes not at all. Also the timing can be quite indefinite, as in karma being balanced much later, hence the concept of a direct mirroring between the inner and outer is as such not very useful. Steiner describes various processes involving mirror-like correspondences between worlds. For example, a recently deceased soul passes through a state where the inner state is reflected as outer perception. The correspondence between shapes of the physical and astral world is a peculiar process of mirroring in multiple dimensions, described in more detail in Steiner’s book on the 4th dimension. Many of the New Age misconceptions about mirror-like effects may be over-generalizations and misapplications of such notions. Concerning the mirror-like interaction of the person and environment,  Gurdjieff gives us the following maxims:
‘Faith of consciousness is freedom
Faith of feeling is weakness
Faith of body is stupidity.
Love of consciousness evokes the same in response
Love of feeling evokes the opposite
Love of the body depends only on type and polarity.
Hope of consciousness is strength
Hope of feeling is slavery
Hope of body is disease.’

mirror image – 1, A mirror image (in a plane mirror) is a reflected duplication of an object that appears almost identical, but is reversed in the direction parallel to the mirror surface. As an optical effect it results from reflection off of substances such as a mirror or water. It is also a concept in geometry and can be used as a conceptualization process for 3-D structures.In geometry, the mirror image of an object or two-dimensional figure is the virtual image formed by reflection in a plane mirror; it is of the same size as the original object, yet different, unless the object or figure has reflection symmetry (also known as a P-symmetry). Two-dimensional mirror images can be seen in the reflections of mirrors or other reflecting surfaces, or on a printed surface seen inside out. The concept of reflection can be extended to three-dimensional objects, including the inside parts, even if they are not transparent. The term then relates to structural as well as visual aspects. A three-dimensional object is reversed in the direction perpendicular to the mirror surface. In physics,  mirror images are investigated in the subject called geometrical optics. In chemistry, two versions (isomers) of a molecule, one a “mirror image” of the other, are called enantiomers if they are not “superposable” (the correct technical term, but “superimposable” is also used) on each other. That is an
example of chirality (chemistry). In general, an object and its mirror image are called enantiomorphs.
2. A mirror does not just produce an image of what would be there without it;  it also changes the light distribution in the halfspace in front of and behind the mirror. A mirror hanging on the wall makes the room brighter because additional light sources appear in the mirror image. However, the appearance of additional light does not violate the conservation of energy, because some light is missing behind the mirror as the mirror simply re-directs the light energy. In terms of the light distribution, the virtual mirror image has the same appearance and the same effect as a real, symmetrically arranged half-space behind a window (instead of the mirror): Shadows may extend from the mirror into the halfspace before it, and vice versa Mirror ray tracing is similar to lens ray tracing in that rays parallel to the optic axis and through the focal point are used. A third useful ray is that through the center of curvature since it is normal to the mirror and retraces its path backward. A convex mirror forms a virtual image. Using a ray parallel to the principal axis and one incident upon the center of the mirror, the position of the image can be constructed by back-projecting the rays which reflect from the mirror. The virtual image that is formed will appear smaller and closer to the mirror than the object.  If the object is outside the focal length, a concave mirror will form a real, inverted image. If an object is placed inside the focal length of a concave mirror, and enlarged virtual and erect image will be formed behind the mirror.   3.  In order to view an object, you must sight along a line at that object; and when you do light will come from that object to your eye along the line of sight. This very principle can be extended to the task of viewing the image of an object in a plane (i.e., flat) mirror: In order to see the image of an object in a mirror, you must sight at the image; when you sight at the image, light will come to your eye along that line of sight. The image location is thus located at that position where observers are sighting when viewing the image of an object. It is the location behind the mirror where all the light appears to diverge from. Say three individuals are sighting at the image of an object along three different lines of sight. Each person sees the image due to the reflection of light off the mirror in accordance with the law of reflection. When each line of sight is extended backwards, each line will intersect at the same point. This point is the image point of the object. Since there is only one image for an object placed in front of a plane mirror, it is reasonable that every sight line would intersect in a single location. This location of intersection is known as the image location.  4. The image location is simply the one location in space where it seems to every observer that the light is diverging from. Regardless of where the observer is located, when the observer sights at the image location, the observer is sighting along a line towards the same location that all other observers are sighting. And as mentioned in an earlier lesson, the perpendicular distance from this image location to the mirror is equal to the perpendicular distance from the object location to the mirror. In fact, the image location is directly across the mirror from the object location and an equal distance from the mirror. So why is an image formed by a plane mirror? An image is formed because light  emanates from an object in a variety of directions. Some of this light (which we represent by rays) reaches the mirror and reflects off the mirror according to the law of reflection. Each one of these rays of light can be extended backwards behind the mirror where they will all intersect at a point (the image point).  Any person who is positioned along the line of one of these reflected rays can sight along the line and view the image – a representation of the object.  In the case of plane mirrors, the image is said to be a virtual image. 5. Virtual images are images that are formed in locations where light does not actually reach. Light does not actually pass through the location on the other side of the mirror; it only appears to an observer as though the light is coming from this location. Whenever a mirror (whether a plane mirror or otherwise) creates an image that is virtual, it will be located behind the mirror where light does not really come from.  6.  Real images are formed by curved mirrors. Such images are formed on the same side of the mirror as the object and light passes through the actual image location. Besides the fact that plane mirror images are virtual, there are several other characteristics that are worth noting. The second characteristic has to do with the orientation of the image. If you view an image of yourself in a plane mirror  (perhaps a bathroom mirror), you will quickly notice that there is an apparent left-right reversal of the image. That is, if you raise your left hand, you will notice that the image raises what would seem to be it’s right hand. If you raise  your right hand, the image raises what would seem to be its left hand. This is often termed left-right reversal. A third characteristic of plane mirror images pertains to the relationship between the object’s distance to the mirror and the image’s distance to the mirror. For plane mirrors, the object distance (often represented by the symbol do) is equal to the image distance (often represented by the symbol di). That is the image is the same distance behind the mirror as the object is in front of the mirror. If you stand a distance of 6ft 6 47/64 in from a plane mirror, you must focus at a location 6ft 6 47/64 in behind the mirror in order to view your image. A fourth and final characteristic of plane mirror images is that the dimensions of the image are the same as the dimensions of the object.  If a 5 ft 2 63/64 in tall person stands in front of a mirror, he/she will see an image that is 5 ft 2 63/64 in tall. If a penny with a diameter of 45/64 in is placed in front of a plane mirror, the image of the penny has a diameter of 45/64 in. The ratio of the image dimensions to the object dimensions is termed the magnification. Plane mirrors produce images that have a magnification of 1. In conclusion, plane mirrors produce images with a number of distinguishable characteristics. Images formed by plane mirrors are virtual, upright, left-right reversed, the same distance from the mirror as the object’s distance, and the same size as the object.

modulation transfer function – A plot of the ratio of image contrast to target contrast at different spacial frequencies.

mondrian stimulus – 1. Consists of a Mosaic of rectangular shapes of (usually) black, grey and white. 2. (plural) These are relatively simple multicoloured  abstract  scenes  with  no  recognizable  objects, thus  ensuring  that  factors  such  as  memory  and  learning  do not  play  a  significant  role.  Indeed  it  is  for  this  very  reason that  Land  settled  on  the  Mondrian  stimulus  and  Mondrian himself  settled  on  his  compositions,  since  he  wanted  to abstract    forms    and    represent    their    constant    elements
(Mondrian,   1937).   But   colour   is   usually   a   property   of recognizable  objects  and  surfaces  and  here  the  emphasis on   knowledge,   memory   and   learning—highlighted   by Helmholtz,    Hering    and    others—might    be    of    critical importance,  not  to  the  exclusion  of  the  operations  of  the brain  to  generate  constant  colours,  but  in  addition  to  them. We  therefore  thought  it  interesting  to  extend  our  previous work  and  learn  whether  the  same  pathways  are  involved when  subjects  view  colours  as  abstract  compositions  and when they view them as properties of objects.  Here   we   became   inspired   by   fauvism,   an   art movement  that  had  many  aims.  The  aim  that  is  of  interest to  us  in  this  context  is  that  of  the  ‘liberation  of  colour’  to give  it  greater  emotional  and  expressive  power  (Arnason, 1977),  an  aim  also  pursued  by  non-fauvist  artists  such  as Frantisek Kupka and Adolf Hoelzel, who were more interested in non-iconic colour abstraction. But what was colour to be liberated from? The impossibility of liberating it from form on  a  two-dimensional  canvas  led  the  fauvists  to  adopt  the only physiologically viable solution: to ‘liberate’ colours by investing  objects  with  colours  which  they  are  not  usually associated  with, a  classic  example  being  Andre Derain’s painting Charing  Cross  Bridge,  London.  Such compositions,  unnatural  in  colour,  also  involve  knowledge, to  the  extent  that  we  learn  to  associate  certain  colours with certain objects.

mount – A secondary support to which a photograph is attached. Contemporary mounts should be of the best quality stock and always acid-free to preserve the archival image.

N
negative – An image produced in a photographic emulsion on a sheet of film, paper or glass by exposure to light and to development in photosensitive chemicals. This process reverses all values and colors of light and dark areas of the image to which the emulsion was originally exposed, light areas appearing dark (opaque) and shadows appearing light (transparent). Negative is the opposite of positive, especially when positive represents the values and colors of an image much as they would appear in reality.

negative space – spaces which are the areas around and behind the positive spaces. Negative space can also be referred to as the background, field, or ground.

neutral – A color not associated with a hue. Neutral colors include browns, blacks, grays, and whites. A hue can be neutralized by adding some of its complement to it.

newsprint – The type of paper on which newspapers are typically printed. This is a very inexpensive paper, manufactured from wood pulp, popular for use by students and for the making of sketches and preliminary drawings. It takes charcoal, soft lead pencil, and litho crayon well. Since it turns brown and becomes brittle on relatively short aging, it should not be considered for permanent work. Newsprint is available in pads, single sheets, and rolls.

nise-e – In Japanese art, a portrait in sketchy outline.

noise – In digital imaging, data or unidentifiable marks picked up in the course of scanning or data transfer that do not correspond to the original.

nonagon – A closed two-dimensional polygon bounded by nine straight-line segments. The formula with which to find an equilateral nonagon’s area is 1.6180339887  (the golden ratio, or phi (“fee”)) times the length of one side squared.

nonobjective art – Artworks having no recognizable subject matter (not recognizable as such things as houses, trees, people, etc.) Also known as non-representational art.

nuance – A subtle difference, distinction, or variation; a subtle quality. Or a sensibility to, awareness of, or ability to express delicate gradations of a meaning (as of an attitude or expression) or of a form (as of its values, textures, or shades, tints, or tones of color, etc.) “Nuance” came to English in the late 18th century, having been “nubes” in Latin, then “nue” in Middle French, each meaning “cloud.” In later French, “nue” developed into “nuer” meaning “to make shades of color.”

O
OpenCV – (Open Source Computer Vision Library) is an open source computer vision and machine learning software library. OpenCV was built to provide a common infrastructure for computer vision applications and to accelerate the use of machine perception in the commercial products. The library has more than 2500 optimized algorithms, which includes a comprehensive set of both classic and state-of-the-art computer vision and machine learning algorithms. These algorithms can be used to detect and recognize faces, identify objects classify human actions in videos, track camera movements, track moving objects, extract 3D models of objects, produce 3D point clouds from stereo cameras, stitch images together to produce a high resolution image of an entire scene, find similar images from an image database, remove red eyes from images taken using flash, follow eye movements, recognize scenery and establish markers to overlay it with augmented reality, etc.

original print – Original print is the correct term to define any work drawn, painted or engraved by an artist on a variable support stone, metal, wood, linoleum, celluloid, rhodoïd etc. Which is then printed, after inking, onto a sheet of paper by means of a press. The printing of these prints in several copies is called printing and is done in relation to a proof, ready for printing. This one mentions in principle the number of copies that the artist and the publisher desire. The printer must then ensure that all the copies drawn comply with what the artist has validated in the initial proof. All the proofs are then signed by the artist and numbered by him or by the publisher or editor. A small part of the draw is reserved for the artist, it is the proofs of artists, identifiable by a numbering different from that of the draw, or even by an absence of numbering. Before the good to shoot some proofs are drawn to choose paper, inks etc.  These workshop events are called trial proofs. [trans. from French]

orotone/goldtone/Curt-tone – A positive image printed on glass, often made from contact printing the original negative. In the case of Edward S. Curtis, the man who perfected this process, the positive plate was then backed with a mixture of gold dust and banana oil. Due to the fragile nature of the plate, these images were most often sold framed in ornate gilded frames produced especially for the Curtis Studio.

ortho (orthochromatic) – Denotes film sensitive to blue and green light.

P
painting machine – the painting machine is in the final stages of “training;” learning where everything is, picking up and putting down brushes, dispensing and mixing dyes, parsing the files which AARON will send it. Another couple of weeks (he says, optimistically), and this article might have included the first published illustration of the first fully machine-generated and machine-executed work of art in human history. On those rare occasions when I make the time to  write, I tend to focus, as I have in this piece, upon what the program does; showing it as a series of events that can be shown to have occurred and what needed to be done to enable them to occur. In part, this is because I recognize that I am uniquely placed in being able to give such an account, and because such accounts are a good deal more rare than I think they should be. It is also because, without such an account being given, one is reduced to talking in abstractions. Abstractions are properly challengeable for their appropriateness to the events, but if the events are not available the discourse becomes meaningless. The reader will note that I did not say that AARON was exhibiting intelligence with respect to the potted-plant example, I said that it “has to be able to isolate and deal separately with an arbitrary number of patches…to cope with the filling of arbitrarily complex shapes…” Does that capability constitute intelligence? It does not constitute human intelligence. It is easy, in short, to assert that machines think, and equally easy to assert that they do not. If you do not know exactly what the machine did, both are equally fruitless in carrying our knowledge, including our self-knowledge, forward.

parallax – With a lens-shutter camera, parallax is the difference between what the viewfinder sees and what the camera records, especially at close distances. This is caused by the separation between the viewfinder and the picture-taking lens.  There is no parallax with single-lens-reflex cameras because when you look through the viewfinder, you are viewing the subject through the picture-taking lens.

perspective – 1. (cognition)a way of regarding situations or topics etc.; “consider what follows from the positivist view”. 2. (attribute)  the appearance of things relative to one another as determined by their distance from the viewer. See also linear perspective. 3. The technique artists use to project an illusion of the three-dimensional world onto a two-dimensional surface. Perspective helps to create a sense of depth– of receding space. Fundamental techniques used to achieve perspective are: controlling variation between sizes of depicted subjects, overlapping some of them,and placing those that are on the depicted ground as lower when nearer and higher when deeper. In addition, there are three major types of perspective: aerial perspective, herringbone perspective, and linear perspective. 4. Representing three-dimensional volumes and space in two dimensions in a manner that imitates depth, height and width as seen with stereoscopic eyes. 5.  Perspective is the art and mathematics of realistically depicting three-dimensional objects in a two-dimensional plane, sometimes called centric or natural perspective to distinguish it from bicentric perspective. The study of the projection of objects in a plane is called projective geometry. The principles of perspective drawing were elucidated by the Florentine architect F. Brunelleschi (1377-1446): a. The horizon appears as a line. b. Straight lines in space appear as straight lines in the image. c. Sets of parallel lines meet at a vanishing point. d. Lines parallel to the picture plane appear parallel and therefore have no vanishing point.There is a graphical method for selecting vanishing points so that a cube or box appears to have the correct dimensions. 6. In the context of vision and visual perception, is the way in which objects appear to the eye based on their spatial attributes; or their dimensions and the position of the eye relative to the objects.  Perspective refers to a set of systems or mechanisms used to produce representations of objects in space as if seen by an observer through a window or frame. In perspective, the size and detail of objects depicted corresponds to their relative distance from the imagined position of the observer.

perspective gradient – the change in visual textures across space, is called a perspective gradient. The foreground rocks appear large and extremely rough; with distance they grow smoother, the spacing between them becomes smaller, and the rocky surface appears flatter, less irregular. Beyond the rocks,the mountains and clouds have irregular outlines but appear smoother than the rocky plain. And beyond everything is the sky — the only perfectly textureless “surface” in nature. If the object or surface is far enough away, it is “behind” a considerable distance of atmosphere, which can obscure the object with suspended particles of dust, smoke or molecules of water vapor. The cumulative effect of these obscuring particles creates aerial perspective in large objects visible from a great distance, especially mountains, buildings and desert or ocean horizons. Depending on the time of day and strength of light, aerial perspective can make distant objects appear less distinct, less saturated and darker or lighter in value. Smoke or dust shifts the hue of distant objects warmer (toward red, yellow or yellowish white), while water vapor shifts landscape hues toward blue. We have to use the recognizable continuity of an object’s outline, or its “completeness of form,” to see occlusion, which is more difficult if objects are far away or very small, dimly illuminated, or unfamiliar to us. Look again at a picture, and you’ll see that one rock clearly covers another at the bottom of the image, but in the middle distance these overlaps become harder to see. Instead, everything merges into the average spacing or spatial frequency of the rocks — that is, the rocks do not separate themselves from the texture as distinct forms. Wherever objects become too small or complex to show occlusion clearly, texture takes over This transition from form to texture means that visual perception is a combination of objects filled in by visual textures. Increasing distance in space transforms the appearance of objects into structurally or visually related textures. And at extreme distances, texture itself dissolves into pure color. So we have the following sequence that applies to large vs. small or near vs. far visual elements: There is a fusion threshhold for every texture, beyond which it is blended by the eye (in visual fusion) into a single homogenous color. Color TV screens, a distant mountain slope and a sandy beach are all composed of tiny discrete forms beyond the visual mixing threshhold. Occlusion works because we can compare the outlines we see with our idea of the objects we look at: anything partly covered is a “broken” or “altered” form of itself. So our knowledge and expectations of the world are essential to create effective distance cues. However, the boundary between what we “see” with our eyes and what we “know” with our memory and mind is not at all clear. In fact, we can create the illusion of a recognizable form entirely through the visual completion induced by forms around it. Finally, these transitions from occluding objects to patterns to textures to colors as distance increases do not happen in the same way for all objects — unlike the effect of aerial perspective or fog, which causes all forms to fade equally from view. Increasing distance creates characteristic visual transitions in different objects, especially in natural forms where there is a distinctive structure at different scales of view. Trees are the classical example, much studied by 19th century artists, because different species of trees express a different branching pattern that is recognizable from twigs up to large branches; the tree’s branching pattern, in turn, determines the tree’s overall form and the clumped appearance of the trees in copses or forests. Many kinds of vegetation, rock formations, clouds and water flows show similar interrelated patterns across large changes in viewing distance. The point is that the painting brushstrokes, color mixtures and shading that artists use to represent the objects must change with the object’s distance: a distant tree is not a miniature image of a tree nearby, as crude perspective thinking might suggest.  It has a completely different visual character. The artist’s challenge is to find the right representation for the object’s appearance at the appropriate distance, not just to paint larger or smaller versions of the same thing. This can be done by understanding the fundamental structure of the object, and how this structure changes in apparent form, texture and color across perspective
space.

perspective that promises nothing very cheerful – I must tell you that in the beginning the beings on that planet had the same presence as those of all the ‘keschapmartnian’ three-brained beings arising on all the corresponding planets of the whole of our Great Universe, and that they also had the same duration of existence as all other three-brained beings “The various changes in their presence began for the most part after the second misfortune had occurred to this ill-fated planet, during which its chief continent, existing under the name of ‘Atlantis,’ entered within the planet. “From that time on, they created all sorts of conditions of external being-existence that caused the quality of their radiations to go steadily from bad to worse And Great Nature was thus compelled gradually to transform their common presence through various compromises and changes, in order to regulate the quality of the vibrations they radiated, which were required chiefly to preserve the being-welfare of the former fragments of their planet “For the same reason, Great Nature gradually increased the number of beings there to such an extent that they are now breeding on all the lands of that planet. “The exterior forms of their planetary bodies are all much alike, and of course in respect of size and their other subjective characteristics, each of them is coated—just as we are—in accordance with heredity, with the conditions existing at the moment of conception, and with the other factors that serve in general as causes for the arising and formation of every being. “They also differ among themselves in the color of their skin and in the type of hair they have, and these characteristics of their presence are determined, as everywhere else, by the effects of that part of the surface of their planet where they arise and are formed until they reach responsible age; or, as they say, become ‘adult.’  ‘ “As for their psyche, its fundamental traits have precisely the same peculiarities in all of them, no matter where they arise. And among these is that special property thanks to which only on that strange planet in the whole of the Universe does there occur the horrible process called the ‘process of the destruction of each other’s existence’ or, as they call it on that ill-fated planet, ‘war.’ “Besides this chief particularity of their common psyche, certain properties in each of them, regardless of where they arise and exist, are completely crystallized and become an integral part of their common presence, properties that exist under the names of ‘egoism,’ ‘self-love,’ ‘vanity,’ ‘pride,’ ‘conceit,’ ‘credulity,’ ‘suggestibility,’ and many others no less abnormal and unbecoming to the essence of any three-brained being whatsoever. “Of these abnormal properties the most terrible one for them is ‘suggestibility.’
<G.I.Gurdjieff.

perspective prints (optical prints) – Perspective views were produced from the early eighteenth century to the beginning of the nineteenth, the greatest number of them probably between c. 1740-1790. lt is difficult to give them a precise definition because of their many variations, but there are a number of common characteristics.Firstly, they are usually etched and invariably designed to be seen through a viewing machine, with consequent reversals of text and image. The size of the image is about 23 by 40 centimeters and the entire plate, with text, about 30 by 45 centimeters: sizes vary by 5 to 10 centimeters at the most. Perspective views are always horizontal in format, since the subject-matter is usually topographical. They often show monumental buildings (palaces, churches or town halls) or characteristic parts of towns (gates, squares, streets or harbors for example). More rarely they show portraits, depict moralistic or biblical themes, or historical events such as the demolition of the Bastille or the ascent of hot-air balloons, to name but two of the more popular examples. The etcher would usually work after existing prints, less often after specially-prepared drawings, and more rarely still after paintings; the plates were probably etched in the workshops of the publisher. lt is likely that the publisher controlled the whole operation, although there is no evidence that the printing and hand-coloring were done in the same workshop. All these perspective views have a strong common factor in the nature of their execution. The etcher paid special attention to the straight lines in architecture, and accentuated horizontal lines in buildings to enhance the perspective. At the same time, he paid little attention to surface detail or texture, or to the contrast between light and shade. It is often impossible in these prints to determine the material of which a building has been constructed – brick, stone or stucco, for example – although to some extent this difficulty is overcome by the use of hand-coloring. The care taken in this, however, was only noticeable in views produced in London. In general ,one can say that the quality of coloring in perspective views is superior to that found on popular woodcuts of the time, although nowhere near the standard reached in prints designed as works of art. Perspective views served a different purpose from artistic prints. The viewer could make a voyage imaginaire for his own instruction and pleasure. By selecting a certain series of views, he could make a ‘journey’ (possibly together with others) through cities either known or unknown to him. The prime concern was whether the image was recognizable; its artistic quality was less relevant. The stylistic changes of the period do not appear to have held any influence over the etchers. The contemporary authors speak of the importance of obtaining an illusion of reality: for example, Johan Bischoff states in 1764 that “one should cover the flat mirror so much until one sees through the lens neither the edge of the painting [print] nor anything outside the edge, but only the painting almost entirely … In optics in which one cannot cover the mirror one can help by blackening the edges of the image.”

perspective view – a type of print. These prints were highly popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and still appear regularly on the art market. Little has been published (particularly in English) the perspective view, intended for use in an optical diagonal machine. See zograscope.

photogravure – Invented in 1879, this is a photomechanical printing process which produces a hand-pulled gravure. It is perhaps the most beautiful ink processes used for reproducing photographs and was made popular by Edward S. Curtis’ The North American Indian, as well as Alfred Stieglitz’s Camera Work, and the fine art photography books of Karl Blossfeldt. The process starts with the photographer’s glass plate negative. From that a glass plate positive is produced. The image is then acid-etched onto a copper plate. This plate is then inked by hand and used to produce prints, one per inking, on a hand-operated press. Due to the very laborious nature of photogravure printing it was later replaced in commercial use by the halftone plate. Recently however, a handful of contemporary artists have revived this difficult and beautiful process.

photosphere – The visible surface of the Sun. Above it are the chromosphere, then the corona. Note that the photosphere is cooler than either the chromosphere or the corona.

pictographic –  1. (in Chinese) These are characters that originate with pictures of the objects in question. In the Shang Dyansty, these counted for 23% of all characters. By the Han they were down to only 4%, and during the Sung only 3%. The characters at right were all originally little pictures. “Great” was the picture of a man, while “mountain,” “field,” “woman,” “horse,” “shield,” and “tree” were just that. John DeFrancis [The Chinese Language, Fact and Fantasy, University of Hawaii Press, 1984, 1986, & Visible Speech, University of Hawaii Press, 1989], one of the greatest scholars of Chinese, has the view that language (or meaning) is essentially spoken (i.e. sound) and that pictograms really stand for the words rather than for the things. However, it seems the most natural to say that a picture of a man, a woman, or a tree simply represents those things directly. While all writing systems, including Chinese, develop phonetic elements, the thesis that meaning is essentially sound is destroyed by the use of sign language among the profoundly deaf, for whom language and meaning have no aural component at all. At one time, it was not believed that the profoundly deaf had any true language, just because sign language was not taken seriously; but this view is now insupportable. Indeed, from Plato we already have the observation that the deaf sign and that this is a logical accommodation to that condition:   “Socrates:  Answer me this question: If we had no voice or tongue, and wished to make things known to one another, should we not try, as mute [and deaf] people actually do, to make signs [sêmaínein] with our hands and head and body generally? “ [“Cratylus,” 433 E, Cratylus, Parmenides, Greater Hippias, Lesser Hippias, translated by F.N. Fowler, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard, 1926, 1963, p.133]. Sign languages are known to develop and exist with no connection to spoken language [sic], and the form of signs has its own dynamic, unrelated to sounds. Thus, even as a Chinese character is classified by radical and phonetic, a sign can be specified by the shape of the hand(s), position(s)  orientation(s), and motion(s) (if any).

pictorial – 1.  evoking lifelike images within the mind “pictorial poetry and prose”,”graphic accounts of battle”,”a lifelike portrait”,”a vivid description”. “Pictorial rhetoric.”  2. pertaining to or consisting of pictures “pictorial perspective”,”pictorial records” or illustrated by pictures; forming pictures; representing with the clearness of a picture; as, a pictorial dictionary; a pictorial imagination. n pictorial a periodical (magazine or newspaper) containing many pictures.

pictorialism – (fl.1885-1915) In the history of photography, the term “pictorialism”refers to an international style and aesthetic movement that flourished in particular between 1885 and 1915. Involving some of the greatest photographers of the time, pictorialism was a style of fine art photography in which the camera artist manipulates a regular photo in order to create an “artistic” image. The Pictorialist movement emerged in response to the growth of amateur photography caused by the invention of easy-to-use camera equipment, such as the handheld amateur camera introduced by Kodak in 1888. At the time, dedicated photographers believed that the amateur “point-and-shoot” approach undermined the artistic nature of photography and the role of the photographer as craftsman. As a result, in order to safeguard their “art”, they adopted a more “professional” approach to photography (with or without manipulation in the darkroom), which involved the use of more complex cameras, as well as labour-intensive processes including gum bichromate printing, homemade emulsions and platinum prints. All of this allowed pictorialists to create a style of artistic photography in the form of a wide range of unusual, tonally subtle images. Another important factor behind the rise of pictorialism was the increasingly close relationship between photography and fine art painting. To begin with, an increasing number of modern artists – including Edouard Manet (1832-83), Edgar Degas (1834-1917), and Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) – began to use photographs when completing landscapes or portraits in the studio. At the same time, numerous pictorialist cameramen – like Alvin Langdon Coburn, Edward Steichen, Oscar Gustave Rejlander, Gertrude Kasebier, and Sarah Choate Sears – trained as painters or took up painting while involved in photography. Pictorialism faded in popularity after 1920,although it did not disappear until the Second World War. During this period of decline it was superceded by more sharply focused imagery. Pictorialist photographers are concerned with making pictures which are said to be aesthetically pleasing – meaning, those which appeal to people’s sense of beauty. (For more, see: Aesthetics.) The terms “pictorial photography” or “pictorialism” are used to describe photographs of this kind in which artistic qualities are more important than documenting actuality. For example, people outside a house in a dingy back street might be recorded by a documentary photographer to illustrate bad housing conditions. A pictorial photographer, by grouping the people in a compositionally pleasing shape, perhaps using a soft focus camera lens, and waiting until the street surface glistens after rain, may create a moody atmospheric study. One photograph might be called Victims of the housing problem, Glasgow, the other Dusk. Clearly, documentary photography and pictorial photography can be poles apart.

plastic arts –  Plastic Arts are those visual arts that involve the use of materials that can be moulded or modulated in some way, often in three dimensions. Examples are clay, paint and plaster. Arts that can be said to be Plastic Arts are therefore Painting, Sculpture, Drawing, etc. The arts concerned with modelling or representation of solid object. Visual arts as opposed to arts of writing.

plastic space – the term used to describe the use of positive and negative space to create a flowing, functional room or building, or other art. Plastic refers to the representation of three-dimensionality or action that occurs in a picture in relation to the flat picture plane.  Plastic space is not the same thing as perspective space.  Plastic/Deep refers to the representation of three-dimensionality  that occurs in a flat picture plane. For our purposes it also refers to elements of illusion in 2-D space. Illusion of texture, and gradient value. All the things that come together to capture a sense of the ‘reality’ of the physical world.

plasticity – the way an artist creates the effects of movement in space, a sensation or perception of reality as something which moves through time and space. This sensation of movement, or the notion of plasticity, can be produced through tactile means, through illusory or visual means, through representational or through abstract.  A painting is a plastic action which states or expresses an artist’s notion of reality, and in a painting, the plastic cannot exist without a subject.  without color, form, and space, we cannot perceive the sensation of movement or the artist’s reality.  And that if we do perceive this, then we are becoming aware of the painting as something which has a life.  The picture is a vehicle for a scene, a story which lives outside the picture.  That story or scene, is plastic continuity.  <Rothko.

platinum and palladium prints – This method of contact printing was used primarily from 1873 to around 1915, when as a result of World War I, platinum paper was replaced for the most part by palladium. A black and white printing process in which the image is formed of metallic platinum or palladium in the fibers of the paper (instead of an emulsion coating on the surface). The hand-coated images are known for their luminosity, extraordinary detail, beautifully rich tonal range, permanence and stability. Platinum and Palladium printing has enjoyed a revival in recent years as well.  Platinum prints are among the most beautiful and permanent of all photographs. They provide a wide range of subtle grey tones, and the image is embedded in the fibers of the paper–instead of in an emulsion coating the paper surface. Thus, like salt prints and cyanotypes, the surfaces of platinum prints have no natural sheen or gloss. Because the finished image is made of metallic platinum which is highly stable, these photographs are resistant to fading. Their tones are generally silvery to black, but warmer brown tones were also achieved.

Platonic / vectoral geometry -The geometry of 3-D faceted symmetrical shapes, composed of faces, edges and vertexes.  They reflect the fundamental properties of empty space, by illustrating the simplest possible ways that space can be filled or enclosed by symmetrical arrangements of intersecting planes. See also empty space.

PNG – Short for Portable Network Graphics, the third graphics standard supported by the Web (though not supported by all browsers). PNG was developed as a patent-free answer to the GIF format but is also an improvement on the GIF ( Graphics Interchange Format) technique that is widely used on today’s Internet. Owned by Unisys, the GIF format and its usage in image-handling software involves licensing or other legal considerations. (Web users can make, view, and send GIF files freely but they can’t develop software that builds them without an arrangement with Unisys.) The PNG format, on the other hand, was developed by an Internet committee expressly to be patent-free. It provides a number of improvements over the GIF format. An image in a lossless PNG file can be 5%-25% more compressed than a GIF file of the same image. Typically, an image in a PNG file can be 10 to 30% more compressed than in a GIF format. Like a GIF, a PNG file is compressed in lossless fashion (meaning all image information is restored when the file is decompressed during viewing). PNG builds on the idea of transparency in GIF images and allows the control of the degree of transparency, known as opacity, or alpha.  Saving, restoring and re-saving a PNG image will not degrade its quality. PNG does not support animation since it can’t contain multiple images. The PNG is described as “extensible,” however. Software houses will be able to develop variations of PNG that can contain multiple, scriptable images, like GIF does. A PNG file is not intended to replace the JPEG format, which is “lossy” but lets the creator make a trade-off between file size and image quality when the image is compressed.  Interlacing (see interlaced GIF) of the image is supported and is faster in developing than in the GIF format.  Gamma correction allows you to “tune” the image in terms of color brightness required by specific display manufacturers.  Images can be saved using true color as well as in the palette and gray-scale formats provided by the GIF.  PNG also supports things like suggested quantization, “smart” extensibility, a standard color space and lots of other excellent stuff.

point of view – 1.  Point of view (philosophy), an attitude how one sees or thinks of something;  2. Point of view (literature) or narrative mode, the perspective of the narrative voice; the pronoun used in narration;
3. Point of view (painting), the angle of painter vision;  4. Point of view shot, a technique in motion photography.
1. In philosophy, a point of view is a specified or stated manner of consideration, an attitude how one sees or thinks of something,  as in “from doctor’s point of view”. This figurative usage of the expression was attested in 1760. In this meaning, the usage is synonymous with one of the meanings of the term perspective.  Early classical Greek philosophers, starting from Parmenides and Heraclitus discussed the relation between “appearance” and reality, i.e., how our points of view are connected with reality. Wittgenstein’s theory of  “pictures” or “models” (Wittgenstein used the German word Bild, which means both “picture” and “model”) is an illustration of the relationship between points of view and reality. Many things may be judged from certain personal, traditional or moral point of view (as in “the beauty is in the eye of the beholder”). Our knowledge about reality is relative to a certain point of view. To analyze the concept of the “point of view” use two approaches: one based on the concept of propositional attitudes, another is based on the concepts of location and access. 1a. Propositional attitudes: The internal structure of a point of view may be analysed similarly to the concept of a propositional attitude. A propositional attitude is an attitude, i.e.,a mental state held by an agent toward a proposition. Examples of such attitudes are “to believe in something”, “to desire something”, “to guess something”, “to remember something”, etc. Points of view may be analyzed as structured sets of propositional attitudes; or as individual vs. collective points of view, personal vs. non-personal, non-conceptual vs. conceptual, etc.  1b. Location and access: Whereas propositional attitudes approach is to analyze points of view internally, the ‘location and access’ approach analyzes points of view externally, by their role. The term ‘access’ refers to  points of views, or perspectives, are ways of having access to the world and to ourselves, and the term ‘location’ is in reference to points of view that are ways of viewing things and events from certain locations. Consider the concept of location in two ways: in a direct way as a vantage point, and in an extended way, the way how a given vantage point provides a perspective, i.e., influences the perception. This approach may address epistemological issues, such as relativism, existence of the absolute point of view, compatibility of points of view, possibility of a point of view without a bearer, etc.
2. Point of view (literature) Perspective from which the story is told. First-person: narrator is a character in the story; uses “I,” “we,” etc. Third-person: narrator outside the story; uses “he,” “she,” “they”. Third-person limited: narrator tells only what one character perceives. Third-person omniscient: narrator can see into the minds of all characters. Also called narrative mode, the perspective of the narrative voice; the pronoun used in narration.  Narrative point of view or narrative perspective describes the position of the narrator (the character of the storyteller) in relation to the story being told.  It has been compared to a camera: When you are reading a scene in a book and when you are writing a scene, you follow the character almost like a camera on the character’s shoulder or in the character’s head. You are looking at the character performing a specific set of actions or important actions in vivid detail. A narrator is a personal character or a non-personal voice that the creator of the story develops to deliver information to the audience, particularly about the plot. Some stories have multiple narrators to illustrate the story-lines of various characters at the same, similar, or different times, thus allowing a more complex, non-singular point of view. Narration encompasses not only who tells the story, but also how the story is told (for example, by using stream of consciousness or unreliable narration). In traditional literary narratives (such as novels, short stories, and memoirs), narration is a required story element; in other types of (chiefly non-literary) narratives, such as plays, television shows, video games, and films, narration is merely optional.
3. Point of view (painting), the angle of painter vision. This is also called Perspective, in Art. (See Perspective).
4. Point of view shot, a technique in motion photography. A point of view shot (also known as POV shot or a subjective camera) is a short film scene that shows what a character (the subject) is looking at (represented through the camera). It is usually established by being positioned between a shot of a character looking at something, and a shot showing the character’s reaction (see shot reverse shot). The technique of POV is one of the foundations of film editing. A POV shot need not be the strict point-of-view of an actual single character in a film. Sometimes the point-of-view shot is taken over the shoulder of the character (third person), who remains visible on the screen. Sometimes a POV shot is “shared” (“dual” or “triple”), i.e. it represents the joint POV of two (or more) characters. Point-of-view, or simply p.o.v., camera angles record the scene from a particular player’s viewpoint. The point-of-view is an objective angle, but since it falls between the objective and subjective angle, it should be placed in a separate category and given special consideration. A point-of-view shot is as close as an objective shot can approach a subjective shot—and still remain objective. The camera is positioned at the side of a subjective player—whose viewpoint is being depicted- so that the audience is given the impression they are standing cheek-to-cheek with the off-screen player. The viewer does not see the event through the player’s eyes, as in a subjective shot in which the camera trades places with the screen player. He sees the event from the player’s viewpoint, as if standing alongside him. Thus, the camera angle remains objective, since it is an unseen observer not involved in the action. Supporting narrative elements are required to indicate the shot to the viewer as a POV shot. These may include shot sequencing, sound effects, visual effects and acting.

polarizer – A sheet, containing oriented particles, that transmits light that vibrates in only one direction.

polarizing screen (filter) – a filter that transmits light traveling in one plane while absorbing light traveling in other planes. When placed on a camera lens or on light sources, it can eliminate undesirable reflections from a subject such as water, glass, or other objects with shiny surfaces. This filter also darkens blue sky.

polyester – a transparent plastic base for photographic film and magnetic tape that is composed of a polymer of ethylene glycol and terephthalic (or naphthalene dicarboxylic) acid. It is very strong and stable.

pornography – pictures, textures, or other images that are sexually explicit, typically equating sex with power and violence. The human bodies depicted in pornographic imagery are typically flawless and vulnerable, commodified rather than celebrated. Significant issues in the consideration of nudes in any context include: their sex, the sex of those who produced them, the sex of those who paid for their production, and the motivations of each of these people, as well as how these depictions are viewed in cultures other than those for which they were originally produced. Also, the presentation or production of  pornographic material. Also see erotica and erotic art.

positive – The opposite of a negative, an image with the same tonal relationships as those in the original scenes-for example, a finished print or a slide.

positive space – spaces which are occupied by the main subjects of the work. The positive space is also referred to as the figure(s).

print – 1. a positive picture, usually on paper, and usually produced from a negative. 2. To fix or impress, as a stamp, mark, character, idea, etc., into or upon something. 3. To stamp something in or upon; to make an impression or mark upon by pressure, or as by pressure. 4. To strike off an impression or impressions of, from type, or from stereotype, electrotype, or engraved plates, or the like; in a wider sense, to do the typesetting, presswork, etc., of (a book or other publication); as, to print books, newspapers, pictures; to print an edition of a book.  5.  A print is a graphic image that has been duplicated one or more times. There are various techniques used to create a print, such as serigraphy (or silk screening), lithography, etching, and offset printing. Prints, especially limited editions, are considered fine art and can be highly valued. 6. A photo-mechanical reproduction process such as offset, lithography, collotypes, and letterpress. 7. any mark that has been made by transfer of image from one surface or form to another. Various methods have characteristics of process that make them unique. 8. General term for brochures, leaflets, posters and programmes; symbols, words, pictures, and illustrations as seen in books, magazines, leaflets.  9. Copy of the final edited film.  10. a copy of a movie on film (especially a particular version of it).  10. A print is a piece of paper on which a design has been imprinted from a matrix made of some selected medium, usually stone, wood, or metal. Prints fall into three general categories depending on their method of production: relief, intaglio, and planographic.  11. Imprint of any foot; or a visible indication made on a surface:  “paw prints were everywhere”.  12. A picture, design or textual image produced by a printing process. 13.  the image, illustration or pattern applied or transferred to the cloth.  You’ll find an absolutely huge variety of patters on any and all bedding. Thin or thick stripes, geometric patterns, flowers or any other image or picture on bed linens and bedding is called a print.  14. Any abnormalities in the printed patterns, including but not limited to spots, streak, bleeding, etc.  15. The term print is an old idiom from the days when computers used printers as their primary data output device. Send data to a printer. It was still used back when people began using cathode ray tubes, but I suppose today, with liquid crystal displays, nobody uses it much.  16. write as if with print; not cursive.  17. Printer’s proof (PP) Procion dye. 18. Used in the context of general equities. As a verb execute a trade, evidenced by its printing on the ticker tape. As a noun, a trade. 19. To record something to a magnetic medium such as tape. 20. A call from the director at the end of a take that that particular take is good enough to be printed. When the director has filmed a scene and wants to look at it later for possible inclusion in the finished movie. This is a good indicator that he/she will usually move ahead to the next scene. 21. A rectangular style of cheese that has been cut from a 40-pound block. Prints are normally 10-pound loaves. 22. Command on the File menu used to print a displayed record. 23. To publish a book or an article.  24. To mold or shape, as in “print it in a mold.”  25. Part of the core used to locate and support a part of a pattern to form an area in mold for same purpose; part of mold and part in core box for the same purpose. 26. an original work of art created by an indirect method. 27.  a separate piece of art based on an original.  28. the result of the printing process; “I want to see it in black and white”. 29. the last traded price at any given time for a given futures contract. 30. That which is produced by printing. Also called a “print-out”.

printing-out paper – A commercially manufactured paper that was quite popular in the 1880s and 1890s and continued to be produced until the 1920s. Coated with silver-chloride emulsions and designed to develop a print from a negative by using light alone, rather than chemistry. This process was favored by photographers in the early American West, as field prints could be produced to review their work without the need of a darkroom.

psychological images –  While schooled in analyzing more traditional horoscope patterns such as natal, progressed, transits and solar returns, I’m also inclined to view the horoscope as a map of psychological images or principles, inhabited by mythological figures having a metaphysical essence. This enriching approach allows the imagination, to speak “of character in images,” which archetypal psychologist James Hillman has described as astrology’s main virtue.

Q
quantization –  involved in image processing, is a lossy compression technique achieved by compressing a range of values to a single quantum value. When the number of discrete symbols in a given stream is reduced, the stream becomes more compressible. For example, reducing the number of colors required to represent a digital image makes it possible to reduce its file size. Specific applications include DCT data quantization in JPEG and DWT data quantization in JPEG 2000.

QuickTime – A motion video standard created by Apple. QuickTime video sequences can contain an audio track and are stored as .MOV files.

QVGA – Refers to Quarter VGA resolution (320 x 240) motion video sequences.

R
raster graphics – digital images created or captured (for example, by scanning in a photo) as a set of samples of a given space. A raster is a grid of x and y coordinates on a display space. (And for three-dimensional images, a z coordinate.) A raster image file identifies which of these coordinates to illuminate in monochrome or color values. The raster file is sometimes referred to as a bitmap because it contains information that is directly mapped to the display grid. A raster file is usually larger than a vector graphics image file. A raster file is usually difficult to modify without loss of information, although there are software tools that can convert a raster file into a vector file for refinement and changes. Examples of raster image file types are: BMP, TIFF, GIF, and JPEG files.

RAW –  RAW files store the unprocessed image data at 12 bits per channel. Directly from the camera’s imaging chip to its memory storage device. “Lossless” compression is applied to reduce the file size slightly, without compromising the quality. RAW image files must be processed with special software before they can be viewed or printed. These are normally in the form of a plug in for Photoshop or as a standalone product. . The advantage is that you have the ability to alter the white balance, exposure value, colour values, contrast, brightness and sharpness as you see fit before you convert this data into the standard JPEG or TIFF format. Professional digital photographers import RAW image data directly into photo-editing programs like IrfanView (which comes with a Camera Raw plug-in that works with most popular RAW formats.)

RC – An acronym for “resin-coated.” A polyethylene film applied to both sides of photographic paper base for the purpose of speeding processing and drying.

recto – Often seen as “au recto”; when referring to the photographer’s signature this term means that it appears on the front of the photographic print or mount.

relief  printmaking – a form of printmaking in which the image to be printed is raised from the surface. Pieces of material are removed from the surface using sharp tools called gouges.  This creates a surface similar to a stamp. Special block printing ink is added to the raised surfaces with a roller called a brayer. Paper is placed on top of the surface and then either ran through a printing press or burnished using a wooden spoon or a baron.  The result is a mirror image print of the block. Relief printmaking requires the artist to think in
reverse.  Most of us are used to making dark marks onto light colored surfaces.  This means that we usually “work” the areas that are shadowed.  In relief printmaking, the artist must work the areas that are to be light.  (This assumes that the printmaker is printing on white paper with black or colored ink.)  The parts of the image that are to white must be removed from the surface of the material (linoleum, wood, or rubber), leaving the remaining areas to accept ink and be printed. Relief prints are mirror images of the block.  This means that if you must add words, type, or numbers- they must be printed in reverse. Relief prints can be made using a variety of material.  Linoleum, wood, and rubber blocks are used in most relief prints.  Linoleum is easier to cut than wood.  Because of this, linoleum is preferred among beginning printmakers- although many professionals also prefer linoleum.  Linoleum allows the printmaker to easily make curved lines and is able to accept impressions from sharp objects.

render – This is the final step of an image transformation or three-dimensional scene through which a new image is refreshed on the screen.

reproduction – esp. mechanical reproduction – is about the longstanding relationship between art, photography and film (with all the associated controversies).  Essentially what mechanical reproduction has done is to remove the aura of works, making them to easily available (through internet). Art has somewhat become valueless. Despite the quantity, and, to some degree the quality being improved (in reproduction), reproduction has, more than anything, made painters especially question their relationship with the medium (suggestive by the writings of Greenberg), in response to the growing influence of both art and film in providing mass exhibition.  Authenticity: even the most prefect reproduction is lacking in its presence in time and space. Authenticity is outside of the technical. The situation into which the product of mechanical can be brought may not touch the actual work of art, yet its quality of its presence is always depleted. The authenticity of a thing is the essence of all that is transmissible from its beginning. What withers in the age of reproduction is the ‘aura’ of the work. It could be generalized by saying the technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition. In permitting the reproduction to reach its listener in his own particular situation, it reactivates the object reproduced. Advances in technology have lead to vulgarity and indefinite multiplication. Now artistic talent is a rare phenomenon, most art has been bad. But the proportion of trash in the total artistic output is greater now than at any other period.

resize –  In photographic terms, this means to take a large image and reduce it in size. Most editing programs offer a resize option. Good for cropping images or get them “Web-ready”!

resolution – 1. The quality of any digital image, whether printed or displayed on a screen, depends on its resolution, or the number of pixels used to create the image. More, smaller pixels add detail and sharpen the edges.  2. optical resolution is an absolute number that the camera’s image sensor can physically record.  3. interpolated resolution adds pixels to the image using complex software algorithms to determine what colour they should be. It is important to note that interpolation doesn’t add any new information to the image – it just makes it bigger!

rheomode – a mode of language which aims to move the language away from a stop-motion image of reality, in which flows and processes are viewed only as a series of stages or pictures, to an image of reality which reflects a more flowing, continuous, process-related conceptualization. <David Bohm.

S
salt print – A print produced by coating fine-quality writing paper with light-sensitive chemicals and sodium chloride. Most often found in varying shades of brown or sepia with a matte surface quality. This was the earliest form of a photographic positive paper and the most common print produced up until the invention of albumen in the 1850s. Salt print refers to the positive printing procedure invented by Talbot. The negative is placed in contact with a sheet of writing paper which has been floated on salt water and then coated with silver nitrate. After exposure to sunlight, the finished print is fixed in “hypo’, washed and dried. Unless they have been glazed or varnished, salt prints have a matte surface, with the image actually embedded in the fibers of the paper. Their tones can range from reddish brown to chestnut brown.

sandwich product – color enhancement method that blends an RGB image with a color enhanced Brightness Temperature image.

saturation – The degree to which a color is undiluted by white light. If a color is 100 percent saturated, it contains no white light. If a color has no saturation, it is a shade of grey.

scanner – An optical device that converts images such as photographs, into digital form so that they can be stored and manipulated on your PC. Different methods of illumination transmit light through red, green and blue filters and digitize the image into a stream of pixels.

scene modes – Many digicams now have an exposure mode called scene where the user selects the best pre-programmed scene to suit the current shooting conditions. The camera will automatically change many settings to capture the best possible image. E.g. Sports, landscape, portrait etc.

SD – (Secure Digital) – A flash memory card used in digicams and MP3 players. It is identical in size and shape to the MultiMedia Card (MMC). The difference being that SD cards were designed to hold protected (copyrighted) data like images. Not all cameras that use SD cards can use MMC cards so be sure to read your owner manual before buying additional cards.

self-image – 1. This self-image, this psychic structure, is nothing simple or superficial. It is complex and profound, and the identification with it is just as profound. For our purposes, however, it is crucial to remember that regardless of how completely the self-image has become part and parcel of one’s sense of self, it is nevertheless simply a construct in the mind.  2. What we imagine about ourselves, our imagine ourselves to be.  3. Pictures and imagination. As long as pictures of oneself are dominant no change of oneself is possible in the ditection of awakening.

self-object – The self-object is an object that is not seen by the self as completely separate from the self.

self timer – Preset time delay (e.g. 2, 5, 3, 5 or 10 seconds) before the shutter fires automatically. This allows the photographer be in the picture without using a long cable release or remote control. It is also great for taking macro or night shots as by not touching the camera, you eliminate the chances of camera shake. Is also good to use the “mirror lock up” function if you have it.

sensory world – These few lines refer us to a schema on which all of our mystical theosophers agree, a schema that articulates three universes or, rather, three categories of universe. There is our physical sensory world, which includes both our earthly world (governed by human souls) and the sidereal universe (governed by the Souls of the Spheres); this is the sensory world, the world of phenomena (molk). There is the suprasensory world of the Soul or Angel-Souls, the Malakut, in which there are the mystical cities that we have just named, and which begins “on the convex surface of the Ninth Sphere.” There is the universe of pure archangelic Intelligences. To these three universes correspond three organs of knowledge: the senses, the imagination, and the intellect, a triad to which corresponds the triad of anthropology: body, soul, spirit-a triad that regulates the triple growth of man, extending from this world to the resurrections in the other
worlds. <Mundus Imaginalis, or the Imaginary and the Imaginal by Henri Corbin.

sepia – The (brownish) mono toned effect seen in images from the original 19th and early 20th Century cameras. This is now a feature often found as a special image effect on some digicams and/or editing software. 2. Dark reddish brown. Usually refers to pigments of inks used in drawing, printmaking, and photography. Because so many monochromatic photographs were produced in sepia tones during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, contemporary pictures made in this color scheme often take on allegorical meanings, associating such imagery with earlier times.

shallow/graphic space – This is a flat, designer abstraction  of space that substitutes pattern for texture, bold decorative color choices for naturalistic ones, hard edged graphic value for gradient value and essentially transforms space from representing the realism of nature, to expressing the individual potential of design.

ship trail – White trails, which look similar to contrails, seen in satellite imagery. They result from ship exhaust.

short-term visual store – Visual memory not affected by masking, not in anatomical coordinates, limited in capacity. Less is retained from complex images than simple images. (See also iconic memory).

shutter – The physical device that opens and closes to let light from the scene strike the image sensor. Digicams use both electronic and mechanical shutters. See also aperture, above.

shutter lag – The time between pressing the shutter and actually capturing the image. This is due to the camera having to calculate the exposure, set the white balance and focus the lens. Is worse with smaller digicams whereas the better DSLR’s now have little or no shutter lag, like the better film SLR’s.

shutter priority AE – This is where the user chooses a shutter speed and the aperture is automatically determined by lighting conditions. Shutter speed priority is used to control motion capture. A fast shutter speed stops fast action, a slow shutter speed blurs a fast moving subject. It is good to use shutter priority for sports or wildlife photography.

sign –  1. Logic has been called the science of signs. 2. In psychology that which represents anything to the cognitive faculty. 3. That which signifies or has significance, a symbol. 4. Semasiology or sematology is the science of signs.  “Any event of character A whose occurrence is invariably accompanied by another event of character B may be said to be an index of that event. Any index which is recognized as being such may be said to function as a sign. Thus as contrasted with ‘index’, the use of ‘sign’ presupposes a triadic relations.” — M.B.  5. Something that suggests the presence or existence of a fact, condition, or quality.  6. An act or a gesture used to convey an idea, a desire, information, or a command.  7. A conventional figure or device that stands for a word, a phrase, or an operation; a symbol.  8. Sign language, or to communicate with a sign or by sign language; to signal.  9. A structure or notice bearing a designation, direction, command, advertisement, or information, which may include lettering, symbols and other imagery; signage.  10. To put one’s signature on something, usually to mark it as one’s own, or to approve.  <Lat. signum, sign). For Theory of Signs, see Semiotic.

silver image decay – A defect of a black-and-white silver image, which can be manifested as microspots, silver mirroring, or overall image discoloration.

silver mirroring – Oxidation of black-and-white images, in which the image silver migrates to the surface, creating a mirror-like appearance.

silver print – A generic term referring to all prints made on paper coated with silver salts, and a term used for a variety of processes, many of which cannot be precisely identified without laboratory testing. The light-sensitive compounds can be silver chloride or silver bromide or a mixture of these. They can be coated onto the paper in a layer of gelatin or collodion; their surfaces can be matte, glossy, or somewhere in between; and their tones can mimic the silvery greys of platinum prints, the warm browns of albumen prints, or a range of other colors. Most of the billions of black-and-white photographs made during the 20th century have been gelatin-silver prints.

simile – 1. A simile is a figure of speech that makes a comparison, showing similarities between two different things. Unlike a metaphor, a simile draws resemblance with the help of the words “like” or “as”. Therefore, it is a direct comparison.  2. A simile is a figure of speech in which two fundamentally unlike things are explicitly compared, usually in a phrase introduced by like or as. “The simile sets two ideas side by side,” said F.L. Lucas. “In the metaphor they become superimposed” (Style). In everyday conversations as well as in writing and formal speeches, we use similes to clarify ideas, create memorable images, and emphasize key points. “In argument,” wrote poet Matthew Prior, “similes are like songs in love: / They much describe; they nothing prove” (“Alma”). 3. The terms metaphor and simile are slung around as if they meant exactly the same thing.  A simile is a metaphor, but not all metaphors are similes. Metaphor is the broader term. In a literary sense metaphor is a rhetorical device that transfers the sense or aspects of one word to another. For example: The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas. — “The Highwayman,” Alfred Noyes. Here the moon is being compared to a sailing ship. The clouds are being compared to ocean waves. This is an apt comparison because sometimes banks of clouds shuttling past the moon cause the moon to appear to be moving and roiling clouds resemble churning water. A simile is a type of metaphor in which the comparison is made with the use of the word like or its equivalent: (Sonnet 130)
My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red, than her lips red:
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound:
I grant I never saw a goddess go,
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet by heaven, I think my love as rare,
As any she belied with false compare.
-William Shakespeare.

simultaneous contrast – Two colors, side by side, interact with one another and change our perception accordingly. The effect of this interaction is called simultaneous contrast. Since we rarely see colors in isolation, simultaneous contrast affects our sense of the color that we see. For example, red and blue flowerbeds in a garden are modified where they border each other: the blue appears green and the red, orange. (This is explained below.) The real colors are not altered; only our perception of them changes. This effect has a simple scientific explanation that we will uncover. Simultaneous contrast is most intense when the two colors are complementary colors. Complementary colors are pairs of colors, diametrically opposite on a color circle: as seen in Newton’s color circle, red and green, and blue and yellow. Yellow complements blue; mixed yellow and blue lights generate white light. Impressionist interest in color and light is influenced in part by the research of scientists like Michel Chevreul. Specifically, the idea that an object of any given color will cast a shadow tinged with that of its complementary color and tinting neighboring colors in the same manner influences Impressionists. This theory was already known to earlier painters, such as Eugène Delacroix. A primary color such as red has green (the combination of the other two primaries) as its complementary. Similarly, blue has orange and yellow has purple as a complementary color. Artists have always explored the effects of juxtaposing complementary colors, even without understanding it in neurophysiological terms. Few artists have dramatically used complementary colors as has Vincent van Gogh. Our sensation is the most intense where two extremes are juxtaposed. Van Gogh’s Night Cafe composes colors described as “warm,” which are generally associated with such sensations and emotions as energy, joy, love and festivity. In his letter to his brother Theo, van Gogh considers the work as “…one of the ugliest (pictures) I have done… I have tried to express the terrible passions of humanity by means of red and green.” By using color in this manner, van Gogh exploits the psychological capacities of colors to arouse emotions (first noticed by Alberti ), here intentionally creating a jarring unpleasant sensation for the viewer. Contrast this with the entry on Picasso and his “Blue Period,” where the paintings arouse emotions more usually associated with “cold” colors, such as sadness and a withdrawn quality. Simultaneous contrast applies not just to sight but also to the senses of touch and taste. Jumping out of a sauna into a cold pool accentuates the coldness. Drinking orange juice after eating pancakes and sweet maple syrup accentuates the acidity of the juice. Simultaneous contrast in sight is readily understood.  Consider an intense beam of blue light, surrounded by white light, striking our retinas. Where the blue light strikes, the blue cones will be stimulated, overloaded and fatigued. The horizontal cells that link the blue cones will cause blue cones, outside of but close to the blue beam, to also become fatigued. In the surround of the blue beam where the white light falls, the blue receptors will be fatigued and the white light will appear to our brain as yellow (Recall that blue light plus yellow light equals white light.) Simultaneous contrast causes the white around the blue to seem yellow. Similarly, white light around a yellow beam will seem blue. Such effects are simple to demonstrate with a light beam and some colored filters. Finally, for blue alongside yellow, the blue makes the yellow more yellow and the yellow makes the blue more blue. Simultaneous contrast has its greatest effect for adjacent complementary colors. Simultaneous contrast affects every pair of adjacent colors. For our example of the red and blue flowerbeds, the red bed makes the blue bed seem green because it induces its complementary color, green, in the blue bed. The blue bed makes the red bed seem orange because it induces its complementary color, yellow, in the red bed.

simulation – People are now, Baudrillard claims, in a new era of simulation in which social reproduction (information processing, communication, and knowledge industries, and so on) replaces production as the organizing form of society. In this era, labor is no longer a force of production but is itself a “one sign amongst many” (1993a: 10). Labor is not primarily productive in this situation, but is a sign of one’s social position, way of life, and mode of servitude. Wages too bear no rational relation to one’s work and what one produces but to one’s place within the system. But, crucially, political economy is no longer the foundation, the social determinant, or even a structural “reality” in which other phenomena can be interpreted and explained. Instead people live in the “hyperreality” of simulations in which images, spectacles, and the play of signs replace the concepts of production and class conflict as key constituents of contemporary societies. From now on, capital and political economy disappear from Baudrillard’s story, or return in radically new forms. Henceforth, signs and codes proliferate and produce other signs and new sign machines in ever-expanding and spiraling cycles. Technology thus replaces capital in this story and semiurgy (interpreted by Baudrillard as proliferation of images, information, and signs) replaces production. His postmodern turn is thus connected to a form of technological determinism and a rejection of political economy as a useful explanatory principle — a move that many of his critics reject.

skylight filter  – is an Ultra Violet absorbing filter that helps overcome the abundance of blue in outdoor photographs. Not really necessary in digital photography as the camera’s white balance system adjusts for the color temperature of the scene. You can also use them to protect the camera’s lens from scratching, fingerprints or dirt.

slow sync – A flash mode in some digicams that opens the shutter for a longer than normal period and fires the flash just before it closes. Is used for illuminating a foreground subject, but allowing a darker background to also be well exposed. Good for night time shots of buildings with people in the foreground.

SLR – (Single Lens Reflex). This means the camera has a viewfinder that sees through the lens (TTL) by way of a 45°-angled mirror that flips up when the shutter fires and allows the light to strike the image sensor (or film). Basically, what you see is what you get.

smart media – (SSFDC). A flash memory card that consists of a thin piece of plastic with laminated memory on the surface and uses a gold contact strip to connect to the camera. SmartMedia cards are available in various sizes.

spectral energy density = U(λ,T) = 8πhcλ -5 / ( e hc/λkT -1 ) where
λ is the wavelength, in metres,
T is the temperature in Kelvin,
h = 6.626×10 -34 J·s [Planck’s constant],
k = 1.381×10 -23 J·K -1 [Boltzmann’s constant],
c = 3.0×10 8 m·s -1 [speed of light].

spot metering – The camera’s auto exposure system is focused on a very small area in the center of the viewfinder to adjust the overall exposure value just for that area.

stitching – Combining a series of images to form a larger image or a panoramic photo. Requires special post editing software.

style – The way an author chooses words, arranges them in sentences or in lines of dialogue or verse, and develops ideas and actions with description, imagery, and other literary techniques.

successive contrast – The terms “simultaneous contrast” and “successive contrast” refer to visual effects in which the appearance of a color is affected by other colors that are nearby in space and time, respectively. The names are somewhat misleading since both simultaneous and successive contrast involve inducing ‘fields’ that are close in both time and space. Successive contrast is the effect of previously-viewed color fields (“inducing fields”) on the appearance of the currently-viewed test field.  Several characteristics of the phenomenon are apparent in this: a. The effect fades after a few seconds. b. The afterimage can be multicolored and preserves the spatial shapes of the inducing field. c.  The afterimage can alter the appearance of not only white fields, but of colored fields as well.

superCCD –  Fujifilm’s image sensor used in their line of digital cameras.

support – The glass, plastic, or paper base on which the image layers of photographic film, prints, or magnetic tape are coated.

SVCD – (Super Video Compact Disc). A CD-ROM disc that contains high quality video and audio. Normally, a SVCD can hold about 35-45 minutes (650MB) of video and stereo quality audio. The video and audio are stored in MPEG2 format, much like a DVD. SVCD video has better quality than VHS video.

SVGA –  (Super VGA). This refers to an image resolution size of 800 x 600 pixels.

symbolic imagery – 1. imagery that is not descriptive of a scene, but is intended to express an abstract idea in concrete form.  2. (in still life painting) images that rely on a multitude of still-life elements ostensibly to reproduce a ‘slice of life’.  3. The importance of symbolic imagery varies according to the type of operation it is called upon to support. It is inadequate for symbolizing logical and arithmetical operations [sic], which, at the higher level, rely on arbitrary sign systems; nevertheless, it provides an important adjunct for the so-called geometric intuitions, since in these there is partial isomorphism between signifiers and signified, the former consisting of spatial figures, themselves imagined, and the latter consisting of spatial relations on which the geometric operations are performed.  <Operational Thought and Symbolic Imagery, by Bärbel Inhelder.  4. Symbolic imagery refers to images within an artistic work, often including novels, poems, films, and other works, which are symbolic in nature. Imagery is the use of language or other facets of storytelling that appeal to the senses of a reader or audience, usually through descriptions of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and feelings. This type of imagery is often used in fiction and poetry to create a more dynamic scene for the reader, often by showing the reader what is going on rather than telling him or her what happens. Symbolic imagery, however, is imagery that serves a symbolic purpose, rather than a strictly literal one. The use of symbolic imagery is not necessarily difficult or complicated, though it can be a vital aspect of creative writing or storytelling. Symbolism and imagery can be used independently of each other, and they are neither mutually inclusive nor mutually exclusive. A storyteller can use symbolism to have something within a story represent more than it literally or directly seems to, while imagery refers to descriptions that appeal to the senses of a reader. When symbolic imagery is used, however, descriptions are created that appeal to the sense of a reader and represent more than they may seem to. Using symbolic imagery, this same idea can be conveyed in a more evocative and interesting way. A writer could instead write, “He shuffled into the room and slumped onto the couch, not feeling the keys in his pocket sticking into his leg; the sounds of traffic came through the open front door and he stared blankly at the unlit television screen.” This sentence still conveys the same idea of the character feeling numb or emotionless, but does so through the use of imagery. Symbolic imagery within the sentence can be found in several different places. The lack of feeling or numbness is shown as the character ignores the feel of keys sticking into his leg. Visual imagery is created through the “unlit television,” which represents an object without meaning or purpose, much as the character feels. The unclosed front door not only indicates the absentmindedness of the character, but also the vulnerable nature of the character and the opportunities behind him that have been forgotten.

T
tableau vivant – A scene presented by costumed actors who remain silent and motionless on a stage, as if in a picture.

telephoto – This is the focal length that gives you the narrowest angle of coverage, good for bringing distant objects closer. (i.e. 100mm, 200mm, 500mm etc.).

TFT – (Thin Film Transistor). Refers to the type of hi-resolution, color LCD screen used in digicams.

thumbnail – A small, low resolution version of a larger image file, which is used for quick identification or speedy editing choices.

TIFF – (Tagged Image File Format). An uncompressed image file that is lossless and produces no artefacts as is common with other image formats such as JPEG.

time-lapse – 1. Capturing a series of images at preset intervals. Also known as Interval Recording or Intervalometer.   2. A series of photographs captured over a period of time. These images can be captured in variable or set time intervals over the course of seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, etc.  Although several more advanced cameras offer the option of custom function time-lapse imaging, most cameras require optional hard wired or remotely operated triggering devices to capture time-lapse imagery.

tintype/ferrotype – Introduced in the mid 1850s, a printing process in which a thin sheet of iron was coated with black lacquer. The light-sensitive emulsion was then coated on the iron plate just before placing it into the camera for exposure. The plate was then developed, producing a very durable, efficient and inexpensive photograph that was small is size (approximately 2 x 3 inches). Used most often for portraiture and made popular in the 1850s by street photographers. Also commonly used during the Civil War and remained popular to around the turn of the century.

tonal key – Characteristics of color schemes that convey moods (psychological affects) and aesthetic effects. Also see chroma key, contrast key, temperature key, and value key.

tonal range – A term used to describe the quality of color and tone ranging from an image’s shadow details through the brightest highlight details, including all of the transitions in between these extreme points. Tonal range can also be described in terms of “gamut.”

tracing and tracing paper – Making a drawing by referring to an image visible underneath it. Tracing paper is made translucent for this purpose. While artists sometimes use tracing simply as a means of copying another image, and often their own image, they use it best to improve upon images.

tradigital – Referring to art, especially animation, that combines traditional and computer-generated media. Early cinematic examples include Who’s Afraid of Roger Rabbit?, Spaceballs, and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. The term was earliest coined about 1995.

tragacanth – A white or reddish gum derived from herbs used as a water-soluble binder.

tran-reflective –  This is a type of LCD display that uses ambient light as well as a backlight to illuminate the pixels. It can be seen more easily in bright, outdoor conditions.

transfer paper – Paper coated with a packed pigmented powder. When marks are made with sufficient pressure upon the paper’s uncoated side, a likeness of those marks is transferred to the surface placed below the transfer paper with the pigments from its coated side. There are many commercial and hand-made types. To make your own transfer paper, rub pencil or crayon marks densely onto an area of paper. Also see carbon paper, copy, frisket, and rouge paper.

transferal – Something that is transferred from one place to another, as an image may be passed from one surface to another by any of several means, including from a printing plate, or from transfer paper. A toy named Silly Putty can do this by being pressed onto dry newspaper inks. Or, the removal of an image from a surface in the act of its being transferred.

transform, transformation – To transform is to change something in shape or appearance. Transformation is the act of doing this. Most definitions of art require that a substance or material be transformed in order for an artist produce to art.

translucent – Allowing some light to pass through, but greatly obscuring the image of objects on the other side. A quality that is between transparent and opaque. Materials that may be translucent include glass, papers such as glassine, plastics such as Lucite and PlexiGlas, and porcelain. It is quite possible for one person to describe something as translucent if it is merely tinted, and for another to describe it as transparent because it is so easy to see through it clearly.

transparency – A picture on a transparent surface, such as glass or photographic film, so that the picture can be projected onto a flat white surface. Examples are photographic slides. Also, the quality of being transparent.

transparent – Allowing light to pass through so that objects can be clearly seen on the other side; the opposite of opaque. Window glass, cellophane and watercolors are usually transparent. It is quite possible for one person to describe something as translucent if it is merely tinted, and for another to describe it as transparent because it is so easy to see through it clearly. Portions of GIFs and other digital images are transparent when image layers “behind” others are allowed to be seen without modification. See also “transparent GIF.”

tratteggio – In art restoration, the contemporary School of Rome scientific method of restoring ancient frescoes. The missing parts are filled, smoothed and then touched up (a reversible procedure) by means of watercolor applied with vertical brushstrokes giving a harmonized visual effect from afar but visible to the naked eye from close to. More recently and for Augustan-period paintings whose surface is burnished, watercolor is applied in a myriad of pinpoint dots, a sort of very closely-knit “pointillé”.

triad – Three colors equally spaced on the color wheel. For example, red, yellow and blue form a triad, as do orange, green and violet, and so on.

trois crayons – A French term for a drawing technique requiring the monochromatic combination of red, black, and white chalk, usually on tinted paper.

trope – The figurative use of a word or an expression; a figure of speech. A trope might be a metaphor, hyperbole, metonymy, synecdoche, irony, parody, etc.

true color – color that has a depth of 24-bits per pixel and a total of 16.7 million colors.

true-color image – In digital imaging, generally refers to 24-bit or better images.

tsukuri-e – In Japanese art, a painting technique in which initial outlines are hidden beneath layers of color, and a visible outline is added last.

TTL  (Through the Lens) – Used when talking about either an auto focus or auto exposure system that works “through” the camera’s lens.

tusche – In serigraphy and lithography, a black liquid used most with brush or pen to paint a design. It should never be called lithographic ink, which is another substance entirely.

TWAIN – (Technology Without An Industry Name). 1. Protocol for exchanging information between applications and devices such as scanners and digital cameras. TWAIN makes it possible for digital cameras and software to communicate with each other on PCs.  2. An “acquire” or import interface, developed as a standard for communications between scanners, imaging devices, digital cameras and the computer software. TWAIN allows you to import (acquire) an image into your software. This is the generally the interface of choice for the Windows platform.

type C print – A color printing process made from a color negative or transparency which was replaced in 1958 by Ektacolor. Type C is an archaic term which is commonly used generically to identify an Ektacolor RC print, the most common color print made then.

typography – The design, arrangement, style, and appearance of type matter constitute typography. Among other things, students of typography learn about the uses of various type fonts, including serif and sans serif, capital and lowercase letters, boldface, italic, and condensed type, letter spacing (and kerning), point sizes, and the various factors affecting readability.

typology – Not to be confused with typography, typology is the study or systematic ordering or classification of types — as in kinds, not the types involving letter forms — that have characteristics or traits in common. This is necessarily an interest of art historians, museum curators, registrars, preparators, and art librarians, along with many who work with classification systems in the science community. Semiotics includes the study of typology, along with studies of iconography and iconology. Also see class, genre, interdisciplinary, order, science and art, and thematic.

U
underdrawing – Drawing preliminary to other work, and incorporated into it, thus deprived of independent artistic value. An example is the underdrawing in fresco and panel painting, such as sinopia and abbozzo.

under exposure – A picture which appears too dark because insufficient light was delivered to the imaging system. Opposite of over exposure.

underpainting – The layer or layers of color on a painting surface applied before the overpainting, or final coat. There are many types of underpainting. One type is an all-over tinting of a white ground. Another is a blocked out image in diluted oil paints that serves as a guide for the painter while developing the composition and color effects.

universal artwork – The notion that all the arts, including painting, music, architecture, poetry, and so on, be combined into one unified art. This originated in the German theory of Gesamtkunstwerk, translated variously as “universal artwork” or as “a synthesis of the arts” or as “a total work of art.” (Gesamt = entire, all, or complete. Kunst = art. Werk = work.) This was most famously the goal of Richard Wagner (German, 1813-1883), a composer of music, especially of operas, and champion of Romanticism. Placing most emphasis on the arts of music and poetry, Wagner aimed to synthesize works in which symphonic music would convey the subtle and deep emotions that words and dramatic action alone could never achieve. Although numerous artists have sought to produce works that unify all the arts in the years since, this term seems rarely to have been used to refer to works other than Wagner’s, even though other works might be said to have been more successful at attaining this goal. Some works of cinema and performance art might be cited as examples of universal artworks.

unpack – In art criticism, the act of revealing hidden layers of meaning, as if removing the contents of a suitcase. A synonym for analyze or deconstruct. See deconstruction.

unsharp masking (unsharp mask) – The process by which the apparent detail and sharpness of an image is increased. Generally accomplished by the input scanner or through computer manipulation using editing software.

urban heat island – Heat generated and trapped in towns, typically persistent during the night, which shows as hot spots in thermal satellite images, for instance.

USB  (Universal Serial Bus) – This is the data I/O port on most digicams and is also found on modern home PC and Mac computers. It is faster than the serial port and transfers up to 12Mb/s (megabytes per second) with v1.1 interfaces.

USB 2.0 – The  USB standard which is close in throughput speed to FireWire, up to 400Mb/s.

UV Filter – This is an Ultra Violet absorbing filter that helps overcome the abundance of blue in outdoor photographs. Not really necessary in digital photography as the camera’s white balance system adjusts for the color temperature of the scene. Can be used to protect the camera’s lens from scratching, fingerprints or dirt.

UXGA – Refers to an image resolution size of 1600 x 1200 pixels.

urushi-e – In Japanese art, a print with coloring thickened and made glossy with glue.

V
VCD  (Video Compact Disc) – A CD-ROM disc that contains video and audio. Typically a VCD can hold about 74 minutes (650MB) of video and stereo quality audio. The video and audio are stored in MPEG-1 format and follow certain standards (White Book). VCD video quality is roughly the same as VHS video.

vectograph – A photograph consisting of varing degrees of polarization based on photographic content. Typically used to make stereoscopic photographs or slides that are viewed with special polarized glasses.

vector graphic – 1. A digital image encoded as formulas that represent lines and curves. The alternative and older means of encoding images is bitmapping. Vector graphics use mathematical functions to create all shapes. File sizes are a lot smaller with vector graphics than with bitmap images because less information has to be stored. Vector graphics can be reduced and enlarged (zoomed in and out) with no loss of resolution.  2. the creation of digital images through a sequence of commands or mathematical statements that place lines and shapes in a given two-dimensional or three-dimensional space. In physics, a vector is a representation of both a quantity and a direction at the same time. In vector graphics, the file that results from a graphic artist’s work is created and saved as a sequence of vector statements. For example, instead of containing a bit in the file for each bit of a line drawing, a vector graphic file describes a series of points to be connected. One result is a much smaller file. At some point, a vector image is converted into a raster graphics image, which maps bits directly to a display space (and is sometimes called a bitmap). The vector image can be converted to a raster image file prior to its display so that it can be ported between systemsA vector file is sometimes called a geometric file. Most images created with tools such as Adobe Illustrator and CorelDraw are in the form of vector image files. Vector image files are easier to modify than raster image files (which can, however, sometimes be reconverted to vector files for further refinement). Animation images are also usually created as vector files. For example, Shockwave’s Flash product lets you create 2-D and 3-D animations that are sent to a requestor as a vector file and then rasterized “on the fly” as they arrive.

verso – Often seen as “au verso”; when referring to the photographer’s signature this term means that it appears on the back of the photographic print or mount.

VGA – Refers to an image resolution size of 640 x 480 pixels.

video out – This means that the digicam has the ability to output its images on television screens and computer monitors using either NTSC or PAL format.

viewfinder – The eye level device you look through to compose the image.

vignetting – The term that describes the darkening of the outer edges of the image area due to the use of a filter or add-on lens. Most noticeable when the zoom lens is in full wide-angle. It is also sometimes used as a special effect in the photo editing stage of development.

vintage/modern prints – A relative term that describes a print that is made on or very near the time of the negative. A print made later from the original negative is a modern, or later print. The date of a print can often be determined by the paper on which it was printed, as well as the overall condition of the paper surface. Other factors to consider are the overall quality of printing, the presence or absence of a signature and/or stamp, and the source from which it was obtained. There are also many helpful tools, such as a black light which can assist in dating a print.

visual – 1. pertaining to sight or seeing. Driving a racecar requires good visual skills. 2. perceptible by the eye; visible. Her visual presentation was very convincing. How does the brain process visual information?  3. creating or pertaining to an image in the mind. The description produced a strong visual impression. 4. of or concerning the use of pictorial or graphic display for instructional purposes. Visual aids help the students grasp the concepts being taught.  <early 15c., “pertaining to the faculty of sight;” also “coming from the eye or sight” (as a beam of light was thought to do), from Late Latin visualis “of sight,” from Latin visus “a sight, a looking; power of sight; things seen, appearance,” from visus, past participle of videre “to see” (see vision). Meaning “perceptible by sight” is from late 15c; sense of “relating to vision” is first attested c. 1600. The noun meaning “photographic film or other visual display” is first recorded 1944.

visual binary system – is a binary system where the component stars are resolvable into separate optical images, that is, the star images are distinguishable.

visual culture – A term which is used more and more, it refers to what we have otherwise called art, but it is more inclusive and less likely to rely upon value judgments. Visual culture includes imagery in all kinds of media, in electronic games, in sports, cosmetics (and other fashion-related settings), comic books, and politics. It involves the imagery associated with holidays and terrorism. Certain works that a Eurocentric audience might call art, but are not called art by the cultures that produced them can be included in discussions of visual culture, yet they may not have been included in discussions of art. Examples of such work might include kachina dolls, bonsai, and boomerangs. A related term (some would say a synonym) is material culture. The study of visual culture should promote visuality and reflexivity and empower students concerning social issues.

visualization – 1. (in the sciences) The procedures of visualization in the sciences that I have briefly surveyed here do not occur,as a rule, in isolation from each other. Rather, in a particular experimental context, they are related to each other and are meant to reinforce each other. It is quite usual for all three procedures described in this paper to accompany the text of a single research article. But possibly we should view this the other way around and say that, at least in the case of the modern research article, it is the text that accompanies a shorter or longer series of such visualizations. These visualizations constitute chains or networks of representation in which they refer to each other repeatedly. Insofar as they are the result of and dependent on different technologies, they form what scientists call “independent evidence.” The more closely they match, the more stable a finding appears to be. But it is also possible that one representation serves as the raw material for another. As Gaston Bachelard has remarked, the modern sciences are “phenomenotechnologies.”  They bring their objects to manifest themselves in a process of construction. These manifestations cannot be separated from the technologies that make them possible. Now, the question remains whether such a typology can help us to think of  visualization in exhibitions. I am not an expert in exhibitions, but my guess is that it can. It is my conviction that,in good scientific exhibitions, just as in scientific articles, images, and the objects to which they are tied, should not be decorations or illustrations, they should be arguments. I think it makes sense to analyze epistemic imaging strategies such as the ones described above and to think about whether their peculiar character can be exploited for making meaning in exhibitions. One question then becomes: how can the visualization modes of compression and dilatation, of enhancement, and of schematization be fruitfully modified for making science and scientificthinking tangible? This is the first point. The second point concerns the close interconnectedness among instrumental technologies, scientific objects, and the corresponding forms of visualization. In modern science, it takes the form of a Bachelardian phenomenotechnology with its corresponding ‘technophenomena’. This connectedness as well is something that ought to be considered and thought about in exhibition practice. Particular instruments, the corresponding objects, and their visualizations belong to each other and thus can –and should – be made to bear on each other.

visual processing issues – Visual processing issues are complex. Since there are eight different types, people can have more than one. These issues often go undetected because they don’t show up on vision tests. Here are the different types of visual processing issues scientists have identified: 1. Visual discrimination issues: Kids with this type have difficulty seeing the difference between two similar letters, shapes or objects. So they may mix up letters, confusing d and b, or p and q.  2. Visual figure-ground discrimination issues: Kids with this type may not be able to pull out a shape or character from its background. They may have trouble finding a specific piece of information on a page.  3. Visual sequencing issues: Kids with these issues have difficulty telling the order of symbols, words or images. They may struggle to write answers on a separate sheet or skip lines when reading. They also may reverse or misread letters, numbers and words.  4. Visual-motor processing issues: Kids with these issues have difficulty using feedback from the eyes to coordinate the movement of other parts of the body. Writing within the lines or margins can be tough. Kids also may bump into things and have trouble copying from a book.  5. Long- or short-term visual memory issues: Kids with either type have difficulty recalling what they’ve seen. Because of that they may struggle with reading and spelling. They may also have trouble remembering what they’ve read and using a calculator or keyboard.  6. Visual-spatial issues: Kids with these issues have difficulty telling where objects are in space. That includes how far things are from them and from each other. It also includes objects and characters described on paper or in a spoken narrative. Kids may also have a tough time reading maps and judging time.  7. Visual closure issues: Kids with these issues have difficulty identifying an object when only parts are visible. They may not recognize a truck if it’s missing wheels. Or a person in a drawing that is missing a facial feature. Kids may also have great difficulty with spelling because they can’t recognize a word if a letter is missing.  8. Letter and symbol reversal issues: Kids with these issues switch letters or numbers when writing. Or make letter substitutions when reading after age 7. They also have trouble with letter formation that affects reading, writing and math skills.

visual recognition – Convolutional networks (ConvNets) currently set the state of the art in visual recognition.

vorticism – A short-lived modernist English art movement founded in 1914 by painter Wyndam Lewis (English, 1882-1957), along with poet Ezra Pound (American, 1885-1972), who devised the group’s name. To him the vortex represented “the point of maximum energy,” which he saw as the essential characteristic of modern life. Vorticism was related to Cubism and Futurism, and like those movements, its momentum was greatly depleted by World War I (1914-1919). While Futurism’s imagery typically involved blurred movement, Vorticism’s centered on hard edges and angles, as seen in Cubism, here applied to powerful machinery and massive structures.

W
watermark – In the making of paper, a translucent design impressed on it when still moist by a metal pattern, and visible when the paper is held before light (back-lit). In digital imaging, bits altered within an image to create a pattern which indicates proof of ownership; so that unauthorized use of a watermarked image can then be traced.

webm – WebM is an open, royalty-free, media file format designed for the web,  for compressed Video Content.  A video file format, it is primarily intended to offer a  alternative to use in the HTML5 video tag. The development of the format is sponsored by Google,  and the corresponding software is distributed under a BSD license. WebM defines the file container structure, video and audio formats. WebM initially supported VP8 video and Vorbis audio streams, video streams compressed with the VP8 video codec and audio streams compressed with the Vorbis audio codec.  In 2013 it was updated to accommodate VP9 video and Opus audio. The WebM container is based on a profile of Matroska.

weight – Either the actual (physical) or the apparent (visual or compositional) heaviness of an object. When referring to the actual weight of an object, weight is a measurement of the force with which that object is attracted to earth (or some other celestial body) in such units as grams, kilograms, pounds, ounces, and stones. When referring to the visual or compositional weight of a portion of an image, weight is the relative visual dominance, emphasis, pull or force of attraction of that portion (object, volume, etc.) of a composition (picture, sculpture, etc.) The weight of a portion of a composition can depend in part upon such factors as its location (arrangement) in a composition, the extent of its isolation from other parts (distance from or contrast with other parts), and the psychological pull of its meaning. Human faces and other parts of figures, for instance, typically attract the viewer’s gaze more powerfully than most other subjects.

wet plate – the name given to a process invented by Frederick Scott Archer of England in 1851. Widely used to produce negatives but also employed in a modified form to produce positives (see ambrotypes and tintypes). As a negative process, a piece of clear glass is coated with a very thin layer of iodized collodion (made from gun-cotton [nitrocellulose] dissolved in ether and alcohol, mixed with potassium iodide). The coated plate is dipped in a silver solution in the darkroom which makes it light-sensitive. After this, the plate must be immediately exposed in a camera. The exposure needs to be completed before the chemicals on the plate have time to dry out–hence the name of the process. After development and fixing, the negative can be printed on any material. Most wet plate negatives, however, were used to make prints on albumen paper.

white balance – Refers to the adjustment of the brightness of the red, green and blue components, so that the brightest object in the image appears white.

wide angle -The focal length that gives you the widest angle of view; i.e. 10mm, 16mm, 24mm etc.

X
X3 Image Sensor – Foveon’s new image sensor for digital cameras that captures red, green and blue data on every pixel.

xD-Picture Card – A new flash memory card standard that was co-developed by Fuji film and Olympus in mid 2002. Rumoured at the time, to be replacing SmartMedia which had stalled at 128MB. xD is scheduled to go as large as 8GB (at the time of writing), in a form the size of a postage stamp.

xerography – A dry photographic or photocopying process in which a negative image formed by a resinous powder on an electrically charged plate is electrically transferred to and thermally fixed as positive on a paper or other copying surface. Xerox is a trademark. Also see photocopy.

XGA – This refers to an image resolution size of 1024 x 768 pixels.

Y
yellowing –  Discoloration that affects a color image or, in earlier color processes, the white border of a print.

Z
Z Interpolation – Interpolation means calculating intermediate values. When you enlarge (“digitally zoom”) or otherwise transform (rotate, shear or give perspective to) a digital image, interpolation procedures are used to compute the colors of the pixels in the transformed image.  interpolation methods differ in quality and speed. In general, the better the quality, the more time the interpolation takes.

zograscope – The optical diagonal machine.  The optical diagonal machine is a viewing apparatus whose main components are a large, double convex lens and a mirror fixed directly behind it at an angle. These are attached either on top of a pyramid shaped box or on top of a stand. When the spectator looks at perspective views through the lens of the viewing machine, an illusion of recession is produced. In principal, a similar illusion of distance can he achieved simply by using a single, detached convex lens which is larger than the distance between two human eyes (at least ten centimeters). When this lens is held just in front of the eyes, the spectator is looking at the perspective view through its two edges which function like two prisms. Light rays bouncing off the print are refracted in such a way that they enter the eyes in a parallel direction. The brain interprets the incoming parallel images as a single image seen from a great distance. The important function of the lens in the optical machine is not its magnification but its creation of an illusion of depth in binocular vision. So that the greatest illusion of recession can be achieved, the perspective view should be designed according to strict principles of linear perspective, with a distant object placed in the center of the print. For example, a view looking down a receding street works well because all horizontal lines in the buildings appear as lines converging at the same vanishing point. The interior of a large building, such as a cathedral, is also suitable for creating a successful illusion of depth. The least effective point of view is perpendicular to a facade, such as a row of houses, or to the front of a palace, because from that viewpoint there is no effect of perspective. In any case, the angle of vision for any perspective view should be wider than the angle of forty-six degrees which corresponds to the human eye’s normal range of vision. This explains why perspective views have an appearance similar to a photograph taken with a wide-angle lens. Of course perspective views are not the only images which can be used with the optical machine: any two-dimensional image, such as a painting or a mural, would be suitable. However, the illusion of recession the latter would give to the spectator, would depend on the emphasis on linear perspective their images had. The most basic and, at the same time, effective model of a viewing machine is the table model on a stand whose lens is at eye level when the viewer is seated. So as to avoid any distortion which might be caused through the print curling if it were held manually, this model of the optical machine incorporates a mirror, fitted at an angle directly behind the lens which thus permits the prints to be viewed lying on a flat surface. The function of the mirror is simply to get round the problem of curling; it plays no part in creating the illusion of depth. Nevertheless, it has the consequence that the image is seen upside down and reversed. For this reason, many views have the text not only at the bottom of the print in the normal direction, but also at the top, in reverse (and often in large capitals) so that it can be read when viewed through the optical machine. Some views, but not all, were also executed in mirror image so that they would be seen in the right direction through the viewing apparatus. This of course is simple for the engraver who does not have to worry about problems of reversal when engraving the plate.

zoom, zoom lens – In photography, to zoom is to move an adjustable camera lens toward or away from a subject, or by simulating such movement with a zoom lens, making the field of vision gradually narrower or wider. In the manipulation of a digital image, zooming in (or telephoto) is enlarging a portion of an image in order to see it more clearly or to make it easier to alter. Zooming out (or wide-angle) is the opposite — useful for viewing the entire image when the full image is larger than the display space. Zooming is comparable to making a tracking shot, although it is subtly and significantly different from tracking.  2. A variable focal length lens. The most common on digicams has a 3:1 ratio (i.e. 35-105mm). Detachable zoom lenses include for example, 24-70mm, 70-200mm and 100-400mm.

 

The translations from the French were made by Ms. Ravel Patel, ravelpatel.wordpress.com and she’s on facebook.

 

©Julie Eclair, julie.eclair@yahoo.com ; julieeclair@outlook.com

 

 

 

.