Life after Photoshop’s Photo-editing A-Z

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• PanoramasPanoramas are extra-wide images once captured with specially-adapted film cameras but now created digitally by 'stitching' a series of overlapping frames. Some cameras can do this internally but not always at full resolution, and it's more usually to carry out this panorama stitching on a computer.
• Parametric curves
• Patch toolA tool in Photoshop for covering up blemishes or removing unwanted objects from pictures. You use the tool to drag out a freehand lasso around the offending area, then drag the marquee to a nearby area containing the tones or textures you want to replace it with. It can be very effective although as with all ‘smart’ object removal tools, it’s a bit hit and miss.
• Persona (Affinity Photo)Serif’s term for the different workspaces in its Affinity Photo application. For example, you have a Develop persona for processing RAW files, a Tone Mapping persona for HDR processing, a Liquify persona and a regular Photo persona. The idea is that each persona displays only the tools you need for that particular activity.
• Perspective correctionPerspective correction is fixing problems like converging verticals in shots of tall buildings and making architectural interiors properly square instead of skewed or tilted. It's different to lens corrections, which are designed to fix lens distortion and other aberrations.
• Perspective Efex
• Phase OneDanish company which produces professional medium format cameras and lenses and publishes Capture One Pro, a high-quality RAW conversion and image-editing program that’s also a powerful tethered shooting tool for studio photographers.
• PhotoDirectorAn all-in-one photo organizing, editing and effects program that's not unlike Lightroom but offers a wider range of consumer-orientated tools which cross over into Photoshop territory – though PhotoDirector is very much a closed system not designed to work with plug-ins or external editors.
• Photography Plan (Adobe)A subscription plan which includes Lightroom CC and Photoshop CC. It’s designed for photographers and does offer very good value for money compared to the old scheme, where you paid a much larger amount for a ‘perpetual’ licence, and also had to pay to upgrade to new versions.
• Photomerge (Adobe)Image blending technology found in Adobe Photoshop, Elements and Lightroom. It’s used to stitch individual overlapping frames into seamless panoramas, or to merge bracketed exposures into a single HDR (high dynamic range) image.
• PhotoshopRightly regarded as the king of image-editing programs, Photoshop is the most powerful program there is for image enhancement, correction and manipulation, though it does not have the image cataloguing tools or the range of special effects offered by some rivals.
• Photoshop ElementsPhotoshop Elements is a cut-down version of Photoshop which has been simplified for beginners and a casual photographers. It includes its own Organizer application for browsing and searching both photos and videos, and has a Guided mode to show how different image effects can be achieved. Most serious photographers are likely find its family-orientated approach and rather dated image effects off-putting. But it is quite cheap, and available on a perpetual licence.
• Photoshop ExpressA free app for tablets and smartphones that offers a selection of quick editing tools and image effects. It does not have anything like the power of the desktop program, but it can still add interesting and useful effects to your pictures.
• PicktorialPicktorial is a single-window all-in-one photo organising and editing application for the Mac that’s not quite on the same scale as Adobe’s Creative Cloud suite, but it’s following Adobe by swapping to a subscription-based payment system.
• Picture Control/StyleCameras usually offer a range of picture ‘styles’ such as ‘Standard’, for neutral results, ‘Vivid’ for richer colours, ‘Portrait’ for gentler tones and more. These are applied to JPEG images saved by the camera. If you shoot RAW files you can choose the picture style later on.
• Pincushion distortionThis is where straight lines near the edge of the picture appear to bow inwards. It’s not as common as barrel distortion, but you do see it quite a lot with telephoto zoom lenses when the lens is set to its maximum focal length. You may not notice it with many types of subject, but it can be corrected with software later anyway.
• PixelThe individual building block of digital images. Each individual pixel is a single block of colour, but when there are enough of them viewed from far enough away they merge to form the impression of a continuous-tone photographic image.
• PixelmatorPixelmator is a low-cost image-editor and illustration tool for Mac and iOS which has a clean and simple interface but powerful editing, retouching, selection and layering tools and a range of customisable effects. It also has painting tools and vector drawing tools, making it equally suitable for art projects, illustrations and diagrams.
• PlacesA generic term for tools or modes which show where pictures were taken. Smartphones will tag any photos you take with them with the current location automatically. Very few cameras have the GPS hardware necessary to do this, but it is possible to add the location information later by dragging photos on to a map in programs like Lightroom or Apple Photos. You can use the Places feature to find images taken at a specific location.
• Plug-insPlug ins are like add-on programs which work from within your regular software. They provide specialised effects or in-depth tools – or simply a an easier way of working – that aren't part of mainstream photo-editing applications.
• Point curveThis is the traditional method of making curves adjustments in photo editing software. You add a control 'point' to the curve and then drag it up and down or left or right to change the shape of the curve. You can add multiple points to create complex curve shapes.
• Polarising filterPolarising filters darken blue skies and can cut through reflections and glare in water, glass and polished surfaces. They come in two types: linear polarisers are cheaper and older and don't work well with modern autofocus systems; circular polarisers are more expensive but they are the type needed for modern cameras. Polarising filters are often used to intensify blue skies in landscape and travel shots and it is possible to create a digital polarising effect.
• Post crop or pre crop vignetteNormally, if you apply a vignette effect to a photo and then crop the photo you will crop off some of that vignette effect at the edges, too. However, Lightroom‘s ‘post-crop’ vignette will re-apply the vignette settings after the image is cropped so that you don’t lose the effect. Skylum’s Luminar has a Vignette filter which offers both modes – pre-crop and post-crop vignette.
• PresetsPresets are specific adjustment settings, or groups of settings, saved for re-use. Presets are used widely by image-editing and effects software to apply a sophisticated set of adjustments to a photo with a single click.
• PRIME (DxO)A special noise reduction tool in DxO PhotoLab Elite which uses extremely sophisticated noise reduction analysis and processing to achieve much better results than normal noise reduction. It’s very processor-intensive, though, so you can only preview the effect on small areas of the image at a time, and processing the full image can take a couple of minutes.
• Printer profilePrinters do not necessarily reproduce colors accurately, especially if you use third-party inks or papers rather than the printer maker's own. A printer profile is used as part of a color managed workflow to send 'corrected' colors to the printer so that the prints match the colors on your screen and those captured by the camera.
• Print sizesPrint papers come in a range of sizes. Not only that, their proportions, or 'aspect ratios', are different too. Snapshots are usually printed on 6" x 4" paper, and traditional darkroom print sizes include 7" x 5" and 10" x 8" sizes still used today. You can naturally get larger sizes still, and these will depend on your photo lab.
• Profiles'Profiles' are closely related to LUTS (lookup tables). They adjust the brightness and colour values in an image, sometimes to correct a device's colour rendition (like monitor profiles) but often to apply a creative effect or film simulation.
• ProviaProvia is one of the Film Simulations offered on Fujifilm cameras. It's named after a classic Fujifilm slide (transparency) film designed to give neutral contrast and color rendition, and on Fujifilm digital cameras it's used as the standard ('STD') color mode.