Glossary

Welcome to the glossary of technical terms. Browse through the alphabetic list to find the term(s) you’re looking for.

M

Marquee:

A frame displayed by a dashed line that identifies a selected portion of an image. Depending on the tool you use, you can resize or move a marquee with or without changing the underlying image.

Mask:

A defined area used to limit the effect of image-editing operations to certain regions of the image. In an electronic imaging system, masks are drawn manually (with a stylus or mouse) or created automatically--keyed to specific density levels or hue, saturation and luminance values in the image. It is similar to photographic lith masking in an enlarger.

Megabyte (MB):

An amount of computer memory consisting of about one million bytes. The actual value is 1,048,576 bytes.

Megapixel:

One million pixels or more. The more pixels that exist in an image the higher the resolution and therefore the greater the quality of the image. Many new Kodak cameras are equipped with megapixel sensors.

Metadata:

Information about an image. For example, metadata with images from digital cameras can contain the date and time the picture was taken, the shutter speed, the exposure settings of the camera, and if a flash was used. ACDSee digital camera software supports metadata.

MIDI:

Musical Instrument Digital Interface. A standard for digital signals used to control electronic musical instruments. MIDI information may be stored as a data file and is found in many multimedia file formats.

Mode:

A reference to a program setting. It can be visual (ie full screen) or legal (ie trial or registered).

Moire:

A visible pattern that occurs when one or more halftone screens are misregistered in a color image.

Monochrome:

An image containing a single color.

Morphing:

A special effect used in motion pictures and video to produce a smooth transformation from one object or shape to another.

MOV:

QuickTime Movie File Format.

MPEG:

Motion Picture Experts Group, who are responsible for the creation and maintenance of the MPEG video compression standard.

Multimedia:

1. The combination of two or more media into a single presentation. For example, combining video, audio, photos, graphics and/or animations into a presentation. 2. The different forms of media themselves: images, audio, video, etc.

Multi-Page Image:

An image that contains more than one image in a single file. For example, images that use the .tif file extension (TIFFs)can have multiple pages. ACDSee digital photo software includes support for multi-page TIFF files.