Life after Photoshop’s Photo-editing A-Z

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• AberrationsThese are optical flaws produced by camera lenses and which are largely unavoidable except in the most expensive or the simplest lens designs. They include distortion, chromatic aberration (colour fringing), vignetting (corner shading) and edge softness.
• Accent-AI filter (Skylum)An auto-enhancement filter in Skylum Software’s Luminar image-editing software. It uses artificial intelligence to break a picture down into a series of different areas and optimise the colour contrast and detail rendition in each. It’s an instant-fix filter with no controls except an Amount slider.
• ACROS (Fujifilm)Black and white film simulation mode added to newer Fujifilm cameras. It’s designed to give richer, more intense tonal rendition than the regular monochrome film simulation.
• Adjustment brushA tool used to ‘paint’ adjustments on to an image manually, and one of the key adjustment tools in Lightroom, for example. You may need to choose the adjustments you want to make, e.g. exposure, saturation, clarity and so on before you start painting although non-destructive photo editors let you make changes to these settings afterwards too. You can change the size, softness and opacity of the Adjustment Brush.
• Adjustment layerA special type of layer in image-editing software which is designed to hold adjustments rather than other image layers. It's a way of 'stacking' a series of adjustments to an image without affecting the image layer itself.
• Adobe BridgeAdobe Bridge is the folder and file browser used across Adobe's Creative Cloud applications. It can be used as a simple browsing tool for Adobe Photoshop and it came as standard with Photoshop when it was sold with a perpetual licence. For many photographers, its a simpler and more predictable image organising tool than Lightroom.
• Adobe Camera RawSoftware that works alongside Adobe Photoshop to open and process RAW files before they open in Photoshop itself. Adobe Camera Raw’s tools are also built into Adobe Lightroom. Most people use Adobe Camera Raw to process their RAW files simply because they’re using Photoshop or Lightroom, but other RAW converters are available.
• Adobe RGBThis is a professional colour space offered by more advanced cameras and it captures a slightly wider range of colours than the usual sRGB colour space used by most consumer devices. It can be useful if pictures are destined for commercial print production, but it does introduce complications with colour profiles and monitor calibration.
• Affinity PhotoFor a long time Adobe Photoshop has been the only real professional level image-editing program, but software company Serif has launched a professional photo editing software which competes directly with Photoshop at a much lower price – and for a single payment rather than the software subscription system introduced by Adobe. Affinity Photo has been built from the ground up for speed and performance and compatibility with the Photoshop PSD file format.
• AI (artificial intelligence)Machine-based learning which interprets the contents of the image in a sophisticated way to produce better enhancements or better object and scene recognition. Skylum’s Accent – AI Filter in Luminar uses artificial intelligence to optimise photos automatically, while Google Photos uses artificial intelligence to identify and search through your pictures.
• AlbumA kind of ‘virtual’ container for photographs you want to keep together. When you use an album (or ‘collection’) in photo editing software, it keeps the images together without actually moving them on your hard disk.
• Alien Skin Exposure XAlien Skin Exposure X is an all-in-one photo browsing, organising and editing tool that concentrates on replicating classic film and darkroom effects but is also a very effective everyday image-editor, with fully non-destructive editing tools and support for virtual copies.
• AnalogA term now used to design old-fashioned chemical processes to capture images rather than digital – so you can get ‘analog’ cameras, ‘analog’ films and ‘analog’ image effects which replicate the look of these old processes.
• Analog Efex ProAnalog Efex Pro is part of the DxO Nik Collection. It recreates the look of old films, darkroom processes and vintage cameras by combining image adjustments and filter effects as presets which you can apply with a single click or customise yourself.
• Apple ApertureNow discontinued, Aperture was Apple's Mac-only professional photo organising, processing and non-destructive editing program. It was a direct rival to Lightroom, but while it had far more sophisticated and effective image organising tools, it fell behind for editing tools and was eventually abandoned.
• Apple PhotosApple Photos is the novice-orientated photo organising and editing program supplied as standard with Apple Mac computers and with iOS devices like iPhones and iPads. Your photos are synchronised via Apple iCloud and are available on all your Apple devices.
• ArtefactAny unwanted digital flaw in a photo, such as exaggerated sharpening and edge ‘halos’ around objects, banding or ‘posterisation’ due to excessive image manipulation or sensor spots exaggerated by localised contrast or HDR processes.
• Aspect ratioThis the picture’s proportions as width versus height. DSLR sensors have a 3:2 ratio, so that photographs are 3 units wide to 2 units high. Most compact camera sensors have a slightly squarer 4:3 aspect ratio. It doesn’t matter what the units are – the ratio stays the same, so a photo could measure 3 inches by 2 inches or 6 meters by 4 meters and still have the same 3:2 aspect ratio. You can shoot in different aspect ratios by cropping the sensor area. HD video is shot in a wider 16:9 ratio.
• Asset managementThe professional term for image cataloguing, and often used in photographic or design studios managing large numbers of images on a commercial basis. They may include not just photos but illustrations, logos and other graphics, hence ‘assets’ rather than photos.
• As shot (white balance)When you shoot RAW files you will be able to change the white balance setting later, but the camera will still store shooting setting you chose in the RAW file. When you open the RAW file in your software, it will read this embedded data and display it as ‘As Shot’ in the white balance settings. You can adjust the settings or apply a new white balance preset, and the ‘As Shot’ setting embedded in the file will still be available if you need to return to it later.
• Astia'Astia' is the brand name of a color film made by Fujifilm, and now offered among the Film Simulation modes in its digital cameras. It has a rich, saturated color rendition but a softer contrast than Fujifilm Velvia, the company's most famous color film.
• Augmented SkyA tool introduced in Skylum Luminar 4 which can add clouds, fireworks, planets and other objects to the skies in outdoor shots. It uses AI (artificial intelligence) to identify and mask skies separately to other objects in the scene.
• Aurora HDRHDR software developed in conjunction with HDR specialist Trey Ratcliff. Aurora HDR can work with single images or merge a series of bracketed exposures. You can apply one of many different preset effects or create your own with the manual controls.
• Auto white balanceAuto white balance is the default setting for most photographers. The camera will attempt to determine the color of the ambient lighting and adjust the camera's processing to produce natural and neutral-looking colors. It generally works well, but can often fail to correct fully for very yellow-orange artificial lighting, and can overcorrect the natural color in landscapes at the start and end of the day.
• AVCHDA video file format commonly used by Sony and Panasonic cameras. It’s an efficient file format for high-definition video, keeping file sizes relatively small while keeping the quality high. It uses a complicated directory structure, though, so that you don’t get simple self-contained video files in the way you do with other video formats.
• Axial chromatic aberrationChromatic aberration (color fringing) comes in two types. Lateral chromatic aberration is the most obvious sort, showing up as sharp color fringes around object outlines, which are easy to remove digitally. Axial chromatic aberration is less obvious and very difficult to fix digitally. It shows up as bigger, softly rendered color fringes around out of focus objects.