Glossary 211Megabyte When you combine 1,024 kilobytes, you have a
megabyte (MB), or “meg.”
Metafi le This graphics fi le type accommodates both vector
and bitmapped data. More popular in the Windows environment.
Apple’s PICT format is also a metafi le.
Moiré (pronounced “mwah-RAY”). Pattern that is an optical
illusion caused by a confl ict with the way the dots in an image
are scanned and then printed. A single-pass scanner is all that
most people require for scanning an original photograph, but
when scanning printed material, a three-pass scan (one each for
red, green, and blue) will almost always remove the inevitable
moiré, or dot pattern.
MTF Modulation Transfer Function curves show how much
contrast is retained by a lens in a given image point. For example,
0.9 means that 90 percent of the original scene’s contrast was
retained.
Multizone metering Through-the-Lens metering where the
exposure is measured by several metering cells, depending on
the subject distance.
Nano- Prefi x that means one-billionth.
ND fi lter Neutral-density fi lters are rated by how many f-stops
they decrease your lens-aperature setting. An ND fi lter lets you
control an image when the stated combination of fi lm speed, lens
aperture, and shutter speeds won’t let you produce the effect
you’re attempting to produce.
NTSC National Television Standards Committee. NTSC sets
the standards that apply to television and video playback on
resolution, speed, and color. All television sets in the United
States (and Japan too) follow the NTSC standard and videotape
and other forms of video display (such as games) meet NTSC
standards.
PCX Not an acronym, but rather a bitmapped fi le format
originally developed for the Windows program PC Paintbrush.
Most Windows graphics programs read and write PCX fi les.
PDF Portable Document Format. A standard fi le format
invented by Adobe Systems. PDF allows people to send graphics
fi les that include text and graphics. Using the free Adobe
Reader software, these fi les can then be read by the recipient,
exactly as the fi les were created. You can download free Mac
OS, Windows, and UNIX versions of Acrobat Reader from
http://www.adobe.com.
Photo CD Kodak’s proprietary digitizing process stores pho-
tographs onto a CD-ROM disc. The Photo CD process can
digitize images from color slides and black-and-white or color