Glossary of Terms

Our glossary will help define some technical jargon into plain English.

D

Digital Negative

Digital Negative (DNG) format was developed by Adobe as a universal "RAW" format for professional cameras. This allows portability between computers without requiring the original camera manufacture's software to process the uncompressed RAW image produced from the camera. DNG also is a future proof format (we hope) that should survive after camera manufactures stop supporting their older formats as time goes on. DNG format is lossless format (no loss of data).

DNG

See Digital Negative.

E

Errors and Omissions Insurance

Basically this is "malpractice" insurance for professional photographers. This is in place to protect from a legal claim if a client is not happy with their results, especially for "one-time" events with significant money at stake. Most photographers (including most claiming to be professional) do not carry this type of insurance.

G

Generation Loss

If an image file is in a lossy format (like JPEG) saving any edits to that file will cause additional loss of data. Eventually, this loss becomes very noticeable. For example, saving a JPEG to 80% quality will discard about 20% of the data. Next time that same JPEG image is edited and then saved at 80%, an additional 20% is discarded. Repeat this enough times and the photo starts to really show its age. This is particularly problematic with software that "automatically" saves files while you edit them. To prevent generation loss, only edit with a non-lossy format and then convert to JPEG at the end of all edits. Any additional edits should be done to the non-lossy format file and a new JPEG created from that file.

J

JPEG

The standard image format used for photography. Nearly all digital cameras can take pictures in the JPEG format. However, one major disadvantage is that JPEG is a "lossly" format -- which means some data is lost when the file is created or saved.

M

Megapixels

One million pixels. Megapixels are one unit of measure between cameras that represent how large of a picture can be printed in "photo quality" (300 ppi).

P

Pixel

A pixel is a single tiny square "dot" that contains color information. A large collection (millions) of pixels make up the image of your photography. One million pixels is a "megapixel" and that is used as a unit of measure to describe image/photo size. The greater number of pixels a photograph has, the larger print can be made without sacrificing quality.

Pixelation

The "fuzzy-jaggy" effect that happens when photographs are printed too large. In this effect, the individual pixels start to become noticeable.

Pixels per Inch (ppi)

Number of pixels an inch. Photo quality is widely accepted as 300 ppi when printed, although many people are willing to accept 250 or even 200 ppi as acceptable photo quality for printing.

Photojournalistic style

A style of photography, especially in wedding photography, that focuses on creativity, emotional connections, and artistic style over traditional planned poses and schedule. This style tries to capture the event in an organic, non-intrusive manner.

Professional Photographer

A person that gets paid for photography services. In our context, we mean full-time professional photographers.

PPI

See Pixels Per Inch.

S

Semi-professional Photographer

A photographer that is not fully employed in photography but is skilled enough to do part-time or occasional paid photography work. All our photographers are in this category, see our page about What is SEMIPRO.

T

Traditional Wedding Photography style

The standard approach in most weddings with pre-planned pose and a schedule of events. In this approach, the photographer directs the wedding party and prepares them in the required poses to capture the best quality portraits as possible. Normally this approach offers the best quality images but less organic or natural feeling of the event.