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.
O
- Offline editingIncreasingly, photographers need to store their images on external hard disks because there’s not enough room on the computer’s internal disk. This means – usually – that the external disk needs to be connected before you can do any editing work. Some software, however, can work with lower-resolution preview images while the external disk is disconnected. Capture One Pro catalogs offer offline editing, as do Lightroom‘s Smart Previews.
- Old Photo (Color Efex Pro)A filter in Color Efex Pro which offers a variety of vintage photo effects, from sepia-tinted black and white to faded colour. In some ways it’s been superseded by newer and more elaborate ‘analog’ film effects, but it still produces a range of attractive vintage photo effects.
- ON1 360
- ON1 Perfect SuiteThis is the predecessor to ON1 Photo RAW, which replaces it. The ON1 Perfect Suite was a collection of plug-ins organised within a single interface, but the tools, technologies and features have now been merged into a single all-in-one program.
- ON1 Photo RAWON1 Photo RAW is an all-in one image organising and editing program which includes a large array of preset effects and manual tools for manually adjusting and 'stacking' effects in layers. Includes tools for black and white and portrait photography and also works as a plug-in for Photoshop and Lightroom.
- OrganisingImage organisation is the science (or art) of organising your photo collection so that you can find or search your images later. Browsing software simply shows your image folders and their contents, cataloguing software imports them into a database for faster and more complex searches, grouping in albums and often non-destructive editing.
- Orton EffectAn image effect which combines a sharp version of the scene with a blurred version to create a surreal soft-focus 'glow' with basically sharp underlying detail.
- OverexposureThe technical description is a picture where all the tones are squashed into the brighter end of the tonal scale and where the highlights may be completely ‘clipped’ (lost). The artistic description is a photo that’s lighter than the photographer intended.
- Overlay modeOne of the most useful blend modes in Photoshop and other image editors. When it’s applied to an image layer or adjustment layer it changes the appearance of the layer below. Tones darker than 50% make the those areas in the layer below look darker, tones lighter than 50% make them appear lighter. It’s often used for dodging and burning effects or for increasing contrast.
- OverlaysOverlays are a feature in Exposure X that let you add textures, light leak effects and borders to images in order to create an old-time 'analog' film effect.