Digital imaging key concepts and terms
Are you just starting out with digital imaging? If you’re a beginner with digital photo-editing, you’ll need to understand some basic concepts. This isn’t always as easy as it should be. What if the beginner tutorial contains words or ideas that you haven’t learned yet? Are you wondering things like:
- What is a “color cast”?
- What’s the difference between “resize” and “resample”?
- What does “sepia tone” mean?
If you want to learn about some of these basic ideas, Adobe is testing a new idea: Illustrated Key Concepts. Each page contains a definition of the basic concept, an illustration of the concept, related terms, and a list of related tools in Photoshop Elements. Once you’ve learned what a sepia tone image is, you can click on the tool name and learn how to create a sepia tone image using Photoshop Elements.
The pages also contain lots of other “related terms” to help people find the right page. Sometimes you may not know the correct term for something. These related terms are meant to help searchers get close. So, for example, if you wanted to find info on creating sepia toned images but you searched for “antique” photos, you could land on Sepia Tone page anyway.
Check out the Key Concepts Index page to see the full list with links and comments. If you find this helpful or have suggestions, leave us a comment. Here are the Key Concepts:
Digital image basics
- Aliasing & Anti-aliasing
- Canvas
- Color mode or Image mode
- Compression
- Keywords
- Raster & Vector
- Resolution
- Sample
- Selection
- Zoom
Great post. As a 13-year-pro photographer I’m ashamed to say I learned a couple of new things from these tutorials. Shhhh! Don’t tell anyone.
There is no shame in learning! Stay tuned for more of these pages–you might learn even more. And thanks for your feedback Kansas City. I appreciate it.
Hi luanneseymour,
Your post is very informative. I am a newbie in photography and I like the look and feel of sepia toning. I often convert my pictures to sepia. However, I have been using Contenta Converter for this purpose. Have you used it? I have not tried this on Adobe. You seem to have a great knowledge, could you explain the difference between the two. Thanks for the great post.
Manav
Understanding basic concepts is really important and being able to give a description of what these are is crucial to success or failure with imaging. As an example, on my site is a tutorial on the difference between resolution and measurement. It’s a fundamental concept and one that very few novices to image manipulation understand.
To put it in simple terms, you can have two images, at a measurement of 5×7 inches, but depending on the resolution, one may look fantastic on the screen, yet awful in print. You’ll learn the difference – and most importantly how to apply this concept to your projects.
Nathan
What a very good idea the Illustrated Key Concepts concept is… it’s not dissimilar to the notes I give to my students, but with a recipe-book feel which I think will appeal to all kinds of people… keep up the good work!
It is good to find information that is not only informative, but usefull.
Thanks
Some really useful advice, many thanks.
Hi Luanne: While learning about Adobe DW and learning styles this week in grad school, I came across your article on the Shoelace web site. Interesting. Anyhow, I was wondering if we could chat through email. I have a few questions about instructional design for a site I’m creating. If so, just shoot me an email. Thanks. My name is Laura and I’m from MD.
A good idea from Adobe. I use Photoshop alot, and understand all the “Key Concepts”, but I admit it took a few years of use to learn them. Having some kind of integrated and illustrated learning tool for these important concepts will help people get up the learning curve faster.
It’s very usefull! I liked this, it’s great!
It’s a fundamental concept and one that very few novices to image manipulation understand.
To put it in simple terms, you can have two images, at a measurement of 5×7 inches, but depending on the resolution, one may look fantastic on the screen, yet awful in print.
Your post is very informative. I am a newbie in photography and I like the look and feel of sepia toning. I often convert my pictures to sepia. However, I have been using Contenta Converter for this purpose. Have you used it? I