Digital Imaging Glossary for Creators & Designers

Whether you’re a budding designer, photographer, or visual content creator, mastering digital imaging glossary is key to unlocking your creative potential. From layers to leading, masks to magic wands, each term carries weight in how you craft, manipulate, and finalize your work.

In this blog, we’ve compiled and defined over 60 digital imaging terms you’ll encounter while working in programs like Photoshop. Bookmark this glossary as your go-to reference to decode the jargon and sharpen your visual vocabulary.

TL;DR: What You’ll Learn

• This glossary covers more than 60 essential digital imaging terms from core design principles like balance and harmony, to Photoshop-specific tools like Quick Select and Layer Mask. 
• Each term is clearly defined in 3+ lines to help you grasp its function and context in a design workflow.

A–C: Adjustment Layers to Contrast

Adjustment Layer

A special type of non-destructive layer in software like Photoshop. It contains visual effects or color changes that apply to all layers beneath it without changing the original pixels. This makes it easy to edit later without permanent changes.

For deeper technical details and advanced use cases, refer to Adobe’s official Photoshop documentation.

Alignment

This is how design elements are arranged relative to each other. Whether it’s left-aligned, centered, or right-aligned, proper alignment ensures a tidy, cohesive design that enhances readability and structure.

Artboard

Artboards divide your canvas into multiple working areas. Each artboard can have different sizes and designs, making it ideal for working on responsive layouts or variations within the same project.

Asset

An asset is any component used to build a design. It could be a font, image, video, swatch, or brush. Think of assets as the building blocks of any digital creation.

Balance

Balance refers to the distribution of visual weight in a design. A well-balanced composition ensures that large and small elements are arranged to feel visually stable and harmonious.

These foundational ideas are widely used across visual design and are explained clearly in Adobe’s design principles guide.

Baseline

This is the invisible line on which text characters sit. It’s used to align multiple lines of text and helps maintain visual consistency and typographic rhythm.

Baseline Shift

Used in typography to move individual characters above or below the baseline. This technique is handy for special effects, superscripts, or decorative layouts.

Black and White Adjustment

A color adjustment that converts your image into black and white. You can still control how each original color is translated into gray tones, giving you creative control over the monochrome effect.

Brightness/Contrast Adjustment

This allows you to fine-tune how light or dark your image appears. Contrast enhances the difference between highlights and shadows, which can dramatically affect clarity and mood.

Camera Raw

A raw file format that captures all the image data from your camera sensor. It offers greater flexibility during editing because it contains unprocessed and uncompressed data.

Canvas

The virtual workspace within programs like Photoshop. The canvas is where your actual design lives. Anything outside the canvas won’t appear in the final output unless repositioned.

Contrast

The visual difference between elements in your design like light vs dark or large vs small. High contrast grabs attention, while low contrast creates subtle, unified designs.

D–L: Design Principles to Layer Mask

Export As Panel

A panel that gives you advanced control over exporting designs. You can choose formats, adjust sizes, tweak resolutions, and even set color profiles for each artboard.

Font Style

Refers to variations within a typeface like bold, italic, or underline. Using different font styles helps create emphasis and hierarchy in typography.

Free Transform

A powerful tool that allows you to scale, rotate, skew, or flip layers. It’s often used for quick visual adjustments when positioning elements.

Graphic Design

The craft of combining text, images, and other elements to communicate a message. Graphic design spans everything from branding to marketing, editorial design, and more.

Harmony

This principle describes how well elements work together to create a unified look. A harmonious design feels cohesive, where every piece looks like it belongs.

Hue/Saturation Adjustment

Allows you to modify the hue (color type), saturation (color intensity), and lightness of a layer. Great for color correction and creative color effects.

JPG

A compressed image file format best used for photographs and web images. It offers a balance between quality and file size, but does not support transparency.

Kerning

The space between two specific letters. Adjusting kerning improves readability and prevents awkward gaps or overlaps in typography.

Landscape Orientation

This layout has the width longer than the height. It’s commonly used for widescreen presentations, digital banners, or group photos.

Lasso Tool

Lets you draw a freehand selection around an object. Great for isolating irregular shapes, though precision can be tricky without a steady hand.

Layer Mask

A powerful non-destructive editing feature. Black areas on the mask hide parts of the layer, while white areas reveal them perfect for blending and selective adjustments.

L–P: Leading to PSD

Leading

Refers to the vertical spacing between lines of text. Proper leading ensures text is readable and not too cramped or too loose.

Designers who want a deeper understanding of text spacing and readability can explore in-depth typography principles from Smashing Magazine.

Magic Wand Tool

Selects pixels based on color similarity. Click once and it selects all adjacent pixels of similar color best used when working with solid backgrounds.

Place Embedded

Inserts an external file as a Smart Object within your document. The embedded file remains editable, preserving its resolution and attributes.

Portrait Orientation

A layout where the height is greater than the width. Common for books, documents, and mobile layouts.

Principles of Design

A collection of rules like balance, contrast, alignment, and hierarchy that help create visually pleasing compositions. They are the foundation of good design.

Proximity

Grouping related elements together to show a relationship. It improves organization and helps the viewer process the information faster.

PSD

The native file format for Adobe Photoshop. It supports layers, masks, adjustment layers, and more but must be opened with Photoshop.

Q–V: Quick Select to Vibrance

Quick Select Tool

Lets you “paint” a selection area that automatically detects object edges. It’s faster than the Lasso tool and great for selecting people, products, or bold outlines.

Repetition

Repeating visual elements (like colors, fonts, or shapes) across a design. It reinforces consistency and helps tie your design together.

Resolution

Measured in pixels per inch (ppi), resolution affects print quality. A higher resolution means more detail, while low resolution can appear pixelated when printed.

Scale

Altering the size of text or an object in a design. In typography, it can stretch the width or height of characters, often for stylization or emphasis.

Selection

A selected area is surrounded by “marching ants” and allows you to apply effects only within that region. You can deselect via Select > Deselect.

Shape Tools

Used to draw vector shapes like rectangles, circles, and custom polygons. These shapes can be scaled infinitely without losing quality.

Tracking

Adjusts the spacing between all characters in a line or block of text. It’s useful for tightening or loosening typography for design or readability purposes.

Typography

The art and technique of arranging type. It includes selecting fonts, adjusting spacing, and balancing readability with visual appeal.

Vibrance Adjustment

Enhances muted colors while avoiding over-saturation of already vibrant areas. It’s particularly useful for editing skin tones in photos.

Final Thoughts

Mastering these digital imaging terms gives you more than just vocabulary; it gives you control. Whether you’re tweaking contrast, masking layers, or aligning text, understanding the tools and principles behind the interface empowers you to create smarter, faster, and more confidently.

Save this Digital Imaging glossary, share it with fellow creatives, and keep learning. Because the more fluent you are in design speak, the stronger your visuals will be.