pixelation

Definition: Appearance of a digital image whose individual pixels are clearly discernible. * Usually objectionable, as it means the resolution of the image is rather lower than the viewer's and our visual culture expects images normally to have sufficient resolution to hide image structure. * It follows that pixellation is a relative term of abuse - an image pixellated at one magnification may look acceptable at a lower magnification. * Also occurs when image has been over-compressed with a lossy process e.g. with JPEG. You say 'pixillation' and we say 'pixelation' You being cinematographers and we being photographers -- and that is for the good reason that we mean different things. Pixillation means the break-up of the normally smooth motion picture into jerky movement by skipping or repeating frames, etc.

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