Welcome to the Life after Photoshop photo-editing A-Z. It’s very easy to use – just click a heading to expand a definition of that term. There are links to specific programs and many of the entries link to a tag which will show related articles. I hope you find it useful.
British vs American spellings
This A-Z uses British rather than American spellings, e.g. ‘colour’ rather than ‘color’. Apologies if this is confusing. This link may prove helpful.
N
- Neutral density (ND) filterA filter which reduces the amount of light passing through the lens or reaching the sensor without affecting it in any other way. It allows longer exposures in bright daylight (useful for creative blur effects) or controls bright light in a camera with limited exposure controls. You can't reproduce this effect digitally in software later.
- Nik CollectionThe Nik Collection is an important collection of plug-ins once published by Nik Software but then taken over by Google when it bought the company. Google then made the Nik Collection free but it has now been bought for future commercial development by DxO.
- NoirA style of photography designed to reflect the dramatic, low-key lighting of Hollywood noir films. It can be achieved with lighting or, increasingly, with digital image effects which convert images to black and white, exaggerate contrast and often add grain and a vignette.
- NoiseRandom ‘speckling’ in an image caused by variations in the light levels captured by the photosites on the sensor. Noise is worse with the smaller photosites on small sensors and at higher ISO settings generally. You can get ‘chroma’ (coloured) noise and ‘luminance’ noise (general ‘grittiness’) the same colour as the background.
- Noise reductionNoise reduction can either take place inside the camera as the image is processed or later on in software. Noise reduction can be especially useful at higher ISO settings, but some noise reduction processes do more harm than good, smearing fine details and producing soft and hazy images.
- Non-destructive editingSoftware which doesn’t make any direct changes to the pixels in a photo, but saves processing instructions alongside it. These instructions are used to change the appearance of the photo when it’s displayed and can be applied permanently to a new ‘exported’ image.