Life after Photoshop’s Photo-editing A-Z

S

• S-shaped curveThis is a classic curve adjustment designed to improve midtone contrast. One control point is used to lower the curve in the shadows and another is used to raise it in the highlights. This steepens the curve, and hence the contrast, in the midtones, and looks like a flattened and forward-tilted letter 'S'.
• SaturationThe intensity of a colour or a photo. The higher the saturation, the more intense the colour. You can increase the saturation of a photo, but at a certain point the stronger colours will start to ‘clip’ – objects lose any fine detail and become a solid block of colour.
• SelectionA way of separating out a specific part of a picture for adjustments. Selections can be made using a variety of tools such as a rectangular or circular marquee, a magic wand or a selection brush. When the selection is made, it has an animated, dashed outline sometimes called ‘marching ants’.
• Selective colourA special effect which converts the whole image into black and white except for one specific colour range. One the the most common examples is a black and white image with a bright red subject – the girl in the red coat in the film ’Schindler’s List’, for example.
• Selective Tone (DxO)This is like the ‘manual’ version of DxO PhotoLab‘s Smart Lighting feature. It’s designed to help you control the dynamic range, highlight and shadow recovery of your RAW files during processing with separate sliders for Highlights, Midtones, Shadows and Black tones.
• Sensei (Adobe)Sensei is an Adobe artificial intelligence (AI) technology that analyses images to recognise objects within them and offer both more targeted image specific 'intelligent' adjustments, and improved image searches without the need to manually add keywords. Currently, Sensei is available when images can be sent to or stored on Adobe's own servers.
• Sensor sizeSensor size keeps coming up in any discussion about image quality. Megapixels are a factor too, but the size of the sensor is ultimately more important. Bigger sensors have bigger photosites which capture less noise and more dynamic range.
• Sepia toningAn old black and white darkroom technique that turns regular black and white prints a vintage brown. It also adds depth and richness to monochrome images. These days it’s an effect that’s easy to create digitally and is just one of a number of popular toning effects.
• SerifPreviously known mostly for its budget design and illustration software, Serif has now branched out into professional design and image-editing with its state of the art Affinity range, including Affinity Photo.
• Session (Capture One)Capture One is Phase One’s professional image capture, organising and editing application. It started out as a tethered shooting tool for studio photographers, capturing each shoot as a ‘session’ where photographers could quickly sort through images, marking some as ‘picks’ and rejecting others. Capture One now offers Lightroom-style image catalogs but still offers its Sessions mode for photographers who prefer to work that way.
• Shadow recoveryShadow recovery is a very useful technique for backlit photos or images shot in high contrast lighting. Digital cameras are not very tolerant of overexposure, so it's often necessary to expose for the brightest parts of the scene and then enhance (recover) the shadows in post processing.
• ShadowsThe darkest tones in a picture. A pretty vague term (like ‘highlights’) but usually taken to mean the darkest areas where you can still see some image detail. Digital cameras often retain more shadow detail than you can see initially, and this can be brought out later on a computer.
• Sharpener ProSoftware plug-in for sharpening images and part of the DxO Nik Collection. It comes in two parts – Sharpener Pro Raw Presharpening for enhancing images straight from the camera, and Sharpener Pro Output Sharpening for preparing images for printing on different devices.
• SharpeningSharpening is a software process that exaggerates the contrast around the edges of objects and makes detail look sharper. It's applied in-camera, by RAW processing software and as part of regular editing processes.
• Sidecar fileIf you shoot RAW files rather than JPEGs and then use a tool like Lightroom or Adobe Camera Raw to edit them, they will need to create a 'sidecar' file alongside the image to hold the editing data, since RAW images cannot be edited or modified.
• Signal to noise ratioSignal to noise is the technical term for the noise level in a digital image. The 'signal' is the image itself and the 'noise' is the random speckling effect you see in high ISO images. The higher the signal to noise ratio, the less visible noise will be in the image.
• Silver Efex ProSoftware plug-in for creating authentic-looking black and white film looks, and part of the DxO Nik Collection. Silver Efex Pro can replicate the look of classic black and white materials and darkroom effects. It also offers 'control points' for localised dodging and burning.
• SkylumThe new name for the company previously known as MacPhun. Skylum publishes the Luminar photo-editing program and Aurora HDR application.
• Slow motionSlow motion video is created by capturing video at one frame rate and then playing it back and a lower rate. To get smooth video footage it needs a frame rate of 25-30fps, so for a smooth 2x slow motion video, you would need to shoot it at 50-60fps, and for smooth 4x slow motion you'd need to capture at 100-120fps.
• Smart Album or CollectionAn album or collection in a photo organising application that automatically brings together images that match the properties you choose. For example, you could have a smart album/collection containing pictures shot on a Sony A7 camera in the RAW format with the keyword ‘winter’.
• Smart Lighting (DxO)A feature in DxO PhotoLab that attempts to optimise exposure levels and highlight detail retention in RAW files. You can adjust the strength of the effect and apply exposure compensation at the same time, to get the ideal result.
• Smart Object
• Smart Preview (Lightroom)With Lightroom‘s Smart Previews you can store smaller, lower-resolution versions of your photos within the Lightroom catalog while storing the full resolution versions on an external disk drive. Smart Previews are compressed DNG files and fully editable – any changes you make are automatically used for the full resolution photo when your drive is reconnected. Smart Previews make it practical to view and edit your image library on a laptop with a relatively small internal drive.
• SmoothingAn unwanted image effect where excessive noise reduction has also smoothed out much of the fine, textural detail in a photo, making it look soft and unnatural. You see this a lot in high-ISO photos from compact cameras with small sensors, where the maker’s noise reduction is often very aggressive in an attempt to hide image noise.
• SmugMugAn online photo sharing/portfolio website designed for photographers to display their work, create online portfolios and sell images. SmugMug now owns Flickr.
• SnapseedA simple image-editor and effects tool originally published by Nik Software, but then by Google when it took that company over. Google has since discontinued the desktop version of Snapseed, but it still exists as a free app for Android and iOS smart devices.
• Snapshot (editing)A Snapshot is a record of the current image state while you’re editing it. You can create a Snapshot in Photoshop or Lightroom when you reach a point that you think you might want to return to during editing. You can save a number of Snapshots to quickly compare different editing steps.
• Soft Contrast (Silver Efex Pro)An interesting localised contrast adjustment in Silver Efex Pro, part of the Nik Collection. Positive values give images increased contrast but with a dark ‘glow’ effect around objects that can be very effective as a ‘look’. Negative values brighten shadows and dim down highlights and can be a useful pseudo-HDR tool – though you will see that same ‘glow’ effect if you push the slider too far.
• Soft focusSoft focus effects are popular in portrait photography but they can also work well in landscapes and other kinds of imagery where you want to create a romantic, ethereal look.
• SolarisationSolarisation is an old darkroom technique for partially reversing a print during the development process. This produces a picture that's part positive and part negative. The result is a picture that can add a surreal look to any subject from a portrait to a landscape. The lighter parts of the scene reproduce naturally, but the darker parts are reversed, so that bright skies, for example, become dark and foreboding.
• Sony A7R II
• Sony A6000
• Split toningA more complex type of toning where two colours are used not one – shadows are tinted with one tone and highlights with another. The results can be very effective, though it’s not always easy to find good-looking toning combinations and split toning doesn’t work with all images.
• Spot (on sensor)The sensors in interchangeable lens cameras are prone to picking up specks if dust which appear as small black spots in your images. Sensors have anti-static coatings and sensor cleaning mechanisms designed to repel and shake off dust particles but they often persist despite this. They can be removed with manual sensor cleaning or by using dust removal tools in software.
• Spot and Patch (Aperture)Image ‘healing’ tools in Apple’s Aperture. They are not really designed for large-scale cloning and repairs – that’s where you need a program like Photoshop – but they are ideal for smaller objects and blemishes, including sensor spots.
• Spot Healing Brush (Photoshop)This is a tool for simply brushing away blemishes, sensor spots or unwanted objects in your pictures. You can ‘dab’ once with the brush for spots or paint over irregular objects. It uses pixels from surrounding areas to fill in the gap, and it works really well with small objects against larger backgrounds. It’s less effective at larger repairs, but worth and try nonetheless.
• Spot removalCameras with interchangeable lenses do not have sealed interiors and the sensors can pick up spots of dust. These can be removed in software using spot removal tools – you dab on the dust spot and the software uses nearby pixels to cover it up. It’s like cloning but easier, because you can leave the software to ‘heal’ the spot automatically.
• sRGBA standard colour space used widely by displays on smartphones, computers, tablets and other electronic devices. It’s reproduces a sufficiently wide range of colours to give realistic photographic images and is supported by almost all devices. As colour spaces go, it’s a safe and effective ‘lowest common denominator’.
• SSDA solid state storage device that uses memory chips rather than a hard disk. SSDs offer much faster data transfer rates than regular hard disks, they’re smaller and have no moving parts. They are, however, MUCH more expensive, so while an SSD is ideal add-on storage for desktops and laptop computers, especially if you want to take your data with you on the move, they are a substantial investment.
• Stacking or groupingA way of keeping related images together in an image cataloguing program – such as different exposures in a bracketed series, the individual frames of a panoramic image, the shots from a continuous shooting sequence or edited and original versions of a photo. Adobe Bridge can stack images, as can Lightroom. Apple’s now-discontinued Aperture offered the most consistent and versatile stacking system.
• Standalone softwareSoftware that you launch directly and which doesn’t need any other program to run – as opposed to plug-ins, which need a ‘host’ application.
• Stock photographyGeneric images offered for sale to anyone who wants to licence them for use on websites or in publications. Stock images are generally submitted to a searchable stock library by individual photographers. When a client pays to use an image, the photographer gets a percentage of the fee and the stock library gets the rest.
• StraightenIt’s very easy to accidentally shoot with the camera slightly skewed so that horizons or vertical objects aren’t straight. Most photo editing apps have a simple Straighten tool to put this right.
• StructureStructure is a relatively new concept in image editing. It enhances detail and outlines using the same basic principles as regular sharpening but across a wider radius. It's not designed to enhance fine detail, but shapes and outlines seen from normal viewing distances. It's like Lightroom's Clarity adjustment, but on a finer scale.
• Styles (Capture One)Capture One offers two kinds of one-click adjustment and a slightly different terminology to other programs. In Capture One you can create custom settings for each of its tools and save this as a ‘Preset’. Capture One Presets use a single tool. But you can also combine multiple Preset adjustments to save a ‘Style’. Phase One sells a number of different Styles packs designed by professional photographers and for use with Capture One.
• Subscription softwareA new way of paying for software where you pay a monthly or a yearly subscription rather than paying a single sum for a licence to use the software for as long as you like.
• Sunlight filter (Color Efex Pro)