Camera technology, jargon and techniques explained • Use the A-Z index or the search box to look up your chosen term
The Variations dialog is a tool for comparing colour adjustments in Photoshop and Elements. It displays these colour adjustments by means of small on-screen previews. Your ‘before’ shot is in the centre, and round it are ranged six alternatives with [...]
Photo, movie or display measuring 640 x 480 pixels. This was once used to describe a popular display standard for older PCs, and indicates a screen resolution of 640 x 480 pixels. Nowadays, it’s used by digital camera makers to [...]
Sophisticated saturation increase. The Vibrance slider in Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Camera RAW increases saturation selectively, boosting pale colours more than strong colours so that there’s no danger of ‘clipping’ colours and producing obvious solid blocks of colour.
You use the LCD on the back for composing pictures with most compact cameras these days, but some still come with viewfinders, where you put your eye to an eyepiece instead. And this is still the usual way of composing [...]
This is the maximum vertical or sideways angle at which you can view and LCD. Outside this angle, the display may appear too dark or light to make out properly. LCD monitors do vary in quality, especially smaller displays and those [...]
Vignetting (also called corner shading) is where the lens doesn’t produce the same brightness at the edges of the frame as it does in the middle. It can also happen when the lens’s image circle is just a little too small [...]
Most makers have developed their own proprietary anti-shake system, and Nikon’s is called VR, or Vibration Reduction. Any camera movement during the exposure is detected by the mechanism and cancelled out with small, rapid movements of optical elements within the lens. [...]