Photo forum abbreviations
If you're new to an online photo forum, you may find some of the initials used in posts confusing. Here are some of the most common initialisms and the photography terms they represent:
AE - Auto Exposure
AF - Auto Focus
AP - Aperture Priority
AS - Antishake - often understood to be the same as Image Stabilization, but may only refer to a camera automatically increasing ISO
CAF - Continuous Auto Focus
DOF - Depth of Field
DZ - Digital Zoom
EC - Exposure Compensation
EV - Exposure Value
FOV - Field of View
IQ - Image Quality
IS - Image Stabilization - usually refers to optical IS
ISO – Number indicating a digital camera sensors sensitivity to light
MF - Manual Focus
NI - Neat Image - noise reduction software
NN - Noise Ninja – noise reduction software
NR - Noise Reduction
NT or (NT) - comments written only in a subject line of a post, indicating no reply in the main subject area
OIS - Optical Image Stabilization
OOF - Out of Focus
OP - Original Poster – person who starts a new forum topic
OZ – Optical Zoom
PIC - Picture
PICS, PIX - pictures
PP - Post Processing - editing digital images
PS - Photoshop - photo editing program considered by many to be the "gold standard"
PSE - Photoshop Elements - "little brother" of Photoshop
PSP - Paintshop Pro - similar to Photoshop but less expensive
SP - Shutter Priority
TCon - Telephoto converters for increasing focal length.
USM - Unsharp Mask - sharpening tool found in many photo editing programs
WB - White Balance
WCon - Wide Angle Converters
100% crop - a section of a full sized image cropped at an 1:1 ratio
