This is a list of definitions of photo editing terms, with links to articles that include them.
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- 8-bit images (5)These are photos which use 8 bits of data for each of the red, green and blue color channels. This is enough to give over 16 million colors – more than enough for photographic images. The JPEG photos taken by digital cameras are 8-bit images.
- 10-bit HEIF (3)HEIF stands for High Efficiency Image Format, a format which may one day rival or replace JPEG as a 'universal' image file format. The advantage of the HEIF format is that it can store 10-bit image data rather than the 8 bits of JPEGs, which should make it much more resilient to heavy image editing later.
- 14-bit RAW (5)The ‘bit depth’ of RAW files is a factor in the picture quality they can produce, so this is a selling point for advanced digital cameras. Some cheaper models can only shoot 12-bit RAW files, but while this sounds like a small difference, the extra bit depth potentially offers 4x the image data so 14-bit RAW files are a worthwhile benefit, especially if you want to process photos heavily later.
- 16-bit image (6)These are photos with 16 bits of data for each of the red, green and blue color channels and are one of the options for TIFF files. These aren’t created directly by the camera, but you can generate 16-bit images from RAW files and they withstand heavy image manipulation better than regular 8-bit images. The file sizes are much larger, though. • Read more: Bits and bit depth explained
- 24-bit/48-bit image (1)This is the 'old' way of describing the bit depth of an image, by multiplying the bit depth of each channel by the number of channels. So an 8-bit image would equate to '24-bit' (8 x 3) in the older terminology, and '48-bit' (16 x 3) would be described as 16-bit today.
- 16:9 ratio (3)This is the aspect ratio of full HD and 4K UHD video and it’s been widely adopted as the aspect ratio for domestic TVs and computer monitors. The 16:9 ratio means that the picture is 16 units wide by 9 units high. These units can be anything from pixels to centimetres to inches, but the point is that the ratio between them always remains the same at 16 wide to 9 high.