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Image
An image or picture is a visual representation. An image can
be two-dimensional, such as a drawing, painting, or
photograph, or three-dimensional, such as a carving or
sculpture. Images may be displayed through other media,
including a projection on a surface, activation of electronic
signals, or digital displays; they can also be reproduced
through mechanical means, such as photography,
printmaking, or photocopying. Images can also be animated
through digital or physical processes.
The act of making a 2D image with a
In the context of signal processing, an image is a distributed
mobile phone camera. The display of the
amplitude of color(s).[1] In optics, the term image (or optical
phone shows the photograph that will be
image) refers specifically to the reproduction of an object made and stored.
formed by light waves coming from the object.[2]
A volatile image exists or is perceived only for a short period. This may be a reflection of an object by
a mirror, a projection of a camera obscura, or a scene displayed on a cathode-ray tube. A fixed image,
also called a hard copy, is one that has been recorded on a material object, such as paper or textile.[1]
A mental image exists in an individual's mind as something one remembers or imagines. The subject
of an image does not need to be real; it may be an abstract concept such as a graph or function or an
imaginary entity. For a mental image to be understood outside of an individual's mind, however, there
must be a way of conveying that mental image through the words or visual productions of the subject.
Characteristics
Two-dimensional images
The broader sense of the word 'image' also encompasses any two-dimensional figure, such as a map,
graph, pie chart, painting, or banner. In this wider sense, images can also be rendered manually, such
as by drawing, the art of painting, or the graphic arts (such as lithography or etching). Additionally,
images can be rendered automatically through printing, computer graphics technology, or a
combination of both methods.
A two-dimensional image does not need to use the entire visual system to be a visual representation.
An example of this is a grayscale ("black and white") image, which uses the visual system's sensitivity
to brightness across all wavelengths without taking into account different colors. A black-and-white
visual representation of something is still an image, even though it does not fully use the visual
system's capabilities.
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On the other hand, some processes can be used to create
visual representations of objects that are otherwise
inaccessible to the human visual system. These include
microscopy for the magnification of minute objects, telescopes
that can observe objects at great distances, X-rays that can
visually represent the interior structures of the human body
(among other objects), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI),
positron emission tomography (PET scans), and others. Such
A synthetic-aperture radar image
processes often rely on detecting electromagnetic radiation
acquired by the SIR-C/X-SAR radar on
that occurs beyond the light spectrum visible to the human
board the Space Shuttle Endeavour
eye and converting such signals into recognizable images. shows the Teide volcano. The city of
Santa Cruz de Tenerife is visible as the
purple and white area on the lower right
Three-dimensional images edge of the island. Lava flows at the
Aside from sculpture and other physical activities that can summit crater appear in shades of green
create three-dimensional images from solid material, some and brown, while vegetation zones
appear as areas of purple, green, and
modern techniques, such as holography, can create three-
yellow on the volcano's flanks.
dimensional images that are reproducible but intangible to
human touch. Some photographic processes can now render
the illusion of depth in an otherwise "flat" image, but "3-D photography" (stereoscopy) or "3-D film"
are optical illusions that require special devices such as eyeglasses to create the illusion of depth.
Moving images
"Moving" two-dimensional images are actually illusions of movement perceived when still images are
displayed in sequence, each image lasting less, and sometimes much less, than a fraction of a second.
The traditional standard for the display of individual frames by a motion picture projector has been 24
frames per second (FPS) since at least the commercial introduction of "talking pictures" in the late
1920s, which necessitated a standard for synchronizing images and sounds. Even in electronic
formats such as television and digital image displays, the apparent "motion" is actually the result of
many individual lines giving the impression of continuous movement.
This phenomenon has often been described as "persistence of vision": a physiological effect of light
impressions remaining on the retina of the eye for very brief periods. Even though the term is still
sometimes used in popular discussions of movies, it is not a scientifically valid explanation. Other
terms emphasize the complex cognitive operations of the brain and the human visual system. "Flicker
fusion", the "phi phenomenon", and "beta movement" are among the terms that have replaced
"persistence of vision", though no one term seems adequate to describe the process.
Cultural and other uses
Image-making seems to have been common to virtually all human cultures since at least the
Paleolithic era. Prehistoric examples of rock art—including cave paintings, petroglyphs, rock reliefs,
and geoglyphs—have been found on every inhabited continent. Many of these images seem to have
served various purposes: as a form of record-keeping; as an element of spiritual, religious, or magical
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practice; or even as a form of communication. Early writing systems, including hieroglyphics,
ideographic writing, and even the Roman alphabet, owe their origins in some respects to pictorial
representations.
Meaning and signification
Images of any type may convey different meanings and sensations for individual viewers, regardless of
whether the image's creator intended them. An image may be taken simply as a more or less
"accurate" copy of a person, place, thing, or event. It may represent an abstract concept, such as the
political power of a ruler or ruling class, a practical or moral lesson, an object for spiritual or religious
veneration, or an object—human or otherwise—to be desired. It may also be regarded for its purely
aesthetic qualities, rarity, or monetary value. Such reactions can depend on the viewer's context. A
religious image in a church may be regarded differently than the same image mounted in a museum.
Some might view it simply as an object to be bought or sold. Viewers' reactions will also be guided or
shaped by their education, class, race, and other contexts.
The study of emotional sensations and their relationship to any given image falls into the categories of
aesthetics and the philosophy of art. While such studies inevitably deal with issues of meaning,
another approach to signification was suggested by the American philosopher, logician, and
semiotician Charles Sanders Peirce.
"Images" are one type of the broad category of "signs" proposed by Peirce. Although his ideas are
complex and have changed over time, the three categories of signs that he distinguished stand out:
1. The "icon," which relates to an object by resemblance to some quality of the object. A painted or
photographed portrait is an icon by virtue of its resemblance to the painting's or photograph's
subject. A more abstract representation, such as a map or diagram, can also be an icon.
2. The "index," which relates to an object by some real connection. For example, smoke may be an
index of fire, or the temperature recorded on a thermometer may be an index of a patient's illness
or health.
3. The "symbol," which lacks direct resemblance or connection to an object but whose association is
arbitrarily assigned by the creator or dictated by cultural and historical habit, convention, etc. The
color red, for example, may connote rage, beauty, prosperity, political affiliation, or other meanings
within a given culture or context; the Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman claimed that his use of
the color in his 1972 film Cries and Whispers came from his personal visualization of the human
soul.[3]
A single image may exist in all three categories at the same time. The Statue of Liberty provides an
example. While there have been countless two-dimensional and three-dimensional "reproductions" of
the statue (i.e., "icons" themselves), the statue itself exists as
an "icon" by virtue of its resemblance to a human woman (or, more specifically, previous
representations of the Roman goddess Libertas or the female model used by the artist Frederic-
Auguste Bartholdi).[4]
an "index" representing New York City or the United States of America in general due to its
placement in New York Harbor, or with "immigration" from its proximity to the immigration center at
Ellis Island.
a "symbol" as a visualization of the abstract concept of "liberty" or "freedom" or even "opportunity"
or "diversity".
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Critiques of imagery
The nature of images, whether three-dimensional or two-dimensional, created for a specific purpose
or only for aesthetic pleasure, has continued to provoke questions and even condemnation at different
times and places. In his dialogue, The Republic, the Greek philosopher Plato described our apparent
reality as a copy of a higher order of universal forms. As copies of a higher reality, the things we
perceive in the world, tangible or abstract, are inevitably imperfect. Book 7 of The Republic offers
Plato's "Allegory of the Cave," where ordinary human life is compared to being a prisoner in a
darkened cave who believes that shadows projected onto the cave's wall comprise actual reality.[5]
Since art is itself an imitation, it is a copy of that copy and all the more imperfect. Artistic images,
then, not only misdirect human reason away from understanding the higher forms of true reality, but
in imitating the bad behaviors of humans in depictions of the gods, they can corrupt individuals and
society.
Echoes of such criticism have persisted across time, accelerating as image-making technologies have
developed and expanded immensely since the invention of the daguerreotype and other photographic
processes in the mid-19th century. By the late 20th century, works like John Berger's Ways of Seeing
and Susan Sontag's On Photography questioned the hidden assumptions of power, race, sex, and
class encoded in even realistic images, and how those assumptions and such images may implicate the
viewer in the voyeuristic position of a (usually) male viewer. The documentary film scholar Bill
Nichols has also studied how apparently "objective" photographs and films still encode assumptions
about their subjects.
Images perpetuated in public education, media, and popular culture have a profound impact on the
formation of such mental images:[6]
What makes them so powerful is that they circumvent the faculties of the conscious mind
but, instead, directly target the subconscious and affective, thus evading direct inquiry
through contemplative reasoning. By doing so such axiomatic images let us know what we
shall desire (liberalism, in a snapshot: the crunchy honey-flavored cereals and the freshly-
pressed orange juice in the back of a suburban one-family home) and from what we shall
obstain (communism, in a snapshot: lifeless crowds of men and machinery marching
towards certain perdition accompanied by the tunes of Soviet Russian songs). What makes
those images so powerful is that it is only of relative minor relevance for the stabilization of
such images whether they actually capture and correspond with the multiple layers of reality,
or not.
— David Leupold, Image and ideology. Some thoughts on Berger's Another Way of Telling
Religious critiques
Despite, or perhaps because of, the widespread use of religious and spiritual imagery worldwide, the
making of images and the depiction of gods or religious subjects has been subject to criticism,
censorship, and criminal penalties. The Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) all
have had admonitions against the making of images, even though the extent of that proscription has
varied with time, place, and sect or denomination of a given religion. In Judaism, one of the Ten
Commandments given by God to Moses on Mount Sinai forbids the making of "any graven image, or
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any likeness [of any thing] that [is] in heaven above, or that [is] in the earth beneath, or that [is] in the
water under earth." In Christian history, periods of iconoclasm (the destruction of images, especially
those with religious meanings or connotations) have broken out from time to time, and some sects
and denominations have rejected or severely limited the use of religious imagery. Islam tends to
discourage religious depictions, sometimes quite rigorously, and often extends that to other forms of
realistic imagery, favoring calligraphy or geometric designs instead. Depending on time and place,
photographs and broadcast images in Islamic societies may be less subject to outright prohibition. In
any religion, restrictions on image-making are especially targeted to avoid depictions of "false gods" in
the form of idols. In recent years, militant extremist groups such as the Taliban and ISIS have
destroyed centuries-old artifacts, especially those associated with other religions.
In culture
Virtually all cultures have produced images and applied different meanings or applications to them.
The loss of knowledge about the context and connection of an image to its object is likely to result in
different perceptions and interpretations of the image and even of the original object itself.
Through human history, one dominant form of imagery has been in relation to religion and
spirituality. Such images, whether in the form of idols that are objects of worship or that represent
some other spiritual state or quality, have a different status as artifacts when copies of such images
sever links to the spiritual or supernatural. The German philosopher and essayist Walter Benjamin
brought particular attention to this point in his 1935 essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical
Reproduction."[7]
Benjamin argues that the mechanical reproduction of images, which had accelerated through
photographic processes in the previous one hundred years or so, inevitably degrades the
"authenticity" or quasi-religious "aura" of the original object. One example is Leonardo da Vinci's
Mona Lisa, originally painted as a portrait, but much later, with its display as an art object, it
developed a "cult" value as an example of artistic beauty. Following years of various reproductions of
the painting, the portrait's "cult" status has little to do with its original subject or the artistry. It has
become famous for being famous, while at the same time, its recognizability has made it a subject to
be copied, manipulated, satirized, or otherwise altered in forms ranging from Marcel Duchamp's
L.H.O.O.Q. to Andy Warhol's multiple silk-screened reproductions of the image.[8]
In modern times, the development of "non-fungible tokens" (NFTs) has been touted as an attempt to
create "authentic" or "unique" images that have a monetary value, existing only in digital format. This
assumption has been widely debated.
Other considerations
The development of synthetic acoustic technologies and the creation of sound art have led to
considering the possibilities of a sound-image made up of irreducible phonic substance beyond
linguistic or musicological analysis.
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Still or moving
A still image is a single static image.[9] This phrase is used in
photography, visual media, and the computer industry to
emphasize that one is not talking about movies, or in very
precise or pedantic technical writing such as a standard.
A moving image is typically a movie (film) or video, including
digital video. It could also be an animated display, such as a
zoetrope.
A still frame is a still image derived from one frame of a
moving one. In contrast, a film still is a photograph taken on
the set of a movie or television program during production,
used for promotional purposes.
In image processing, a picture function is a mathematical
representation of a two-dimensional image as a function of
two spatial variables.[10] The function f(x,y) describes the
intensity of the point at coordinates (x,y).[11] 2D image
Literature
In literature, a "mental image" may be developed through words and phrases to which the senses
respond.[12] It involves picturing an image mentally, also called imagining, hence imagery. It can both
be figurative and literal.[12]
See also
Cinematography
Computer-generated imagery
Digital image
Drawing
Fine-art photography
Graphics
Image editing
Imaging
Painting
Photograph
Pictorial script
Satellite image
Visual arts
References
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1. Chakravorty, Pragnan (September 2018). "What is a Signal? [Lecture Notes]". IEEE Signal
Processing Magazine. 35 (5): 175–77. Bibcode:2018ISPM...35e.175C ([Link]
du/abs/2018ISPM...35e.175C). doi:10.1109/MSP.2018.2832195 ([Link]
2018.2832195). S2CID 52164353 ([Link]
2. "optical image" ([Link] Encyclopædia Britannica.
20 Jul 1998. Retrieved 22 November 2023.
3. Matthew. "Cries and Whispers (1972)" ([Link]
-bergman-1972). Classic Arts Films. Retrieved 23 November 2023.
4. Hammond, Gabriela. "The Woman Behind the Statue of Liberty: Who Is Lady Liberty?" ([Link]
[Link]/blog/the-woman-behind-the-statue-of-liberty-who-is-lady-liberty/#:~:text=
So%20who%20was%20the%20Statue,in%20the%20artist's%20own%20mind.). Statue of Liberty
Tour. Retrieved 23 November 2023.
5. "The Allegory of the Cave" ([Link]
[Link]) (PDF). [Link]. 2016. Retrieved April 28, 2024.
6. Leupold, David (2020-04-08). "Image and ideology. Some thoughts on Berger's Another Way of
Telling" ([Link]
f-telling-1995-d8c4861c1473). Medium. Archived ([Link]
tps://[Link]/@davidleupold/arresting-images-a-reading-of-bergers-another-way-of-telling-19
95-d8c4861c1473) from the original on Feb 2, 2021. Retrieved 2020-09-28.
7. Benjamin, Walter (1969). "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" ([Link]
[Link]/allanmc/www/[Link]) (PDF). Illuminations. New York: Schocken Books.
8. Warhol, Andy. "Mona Lisa" ([Link] The Met.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
9. "Still Image File" ([Link]
National Archives. Archived ([Link]
ov/preservation/products/definitions/[Link]) from the original on Oct 16, 2022.
10. "Meaning and Function of a Picture, published by Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of the
Mathematical Association of America, DOI: 10.2307/2301228on [Link]" ([Link]
able/2301228). JSTOR 2301228 ([Link]
11. Forsyth, David; Ponce, Jean (2002). Computer Vision: A Modern Approach ([Link]
[Link]/~daf/[Link]). Prentice-Hall. ISBN 978-0-13-085198-7.
12. Baldick, Chris (2008). The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms ([Link]
=mp0s9GgrafUC&pg=PA165). Oxford University Press. pp. 165–. ISBN 978-0-19-920827-2.
External links
Media related to Images at Wikimedia Commons
Quotations related to Image at Wikiquote
The dictionary definition of image at Wiktionary
The dictionary definition of picture at Wiktionary
Retrieved from "[Link]
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