Image

:For the film "Pictures", see Pictures (film)

Specialized meanings

The word also has many specialized meanings in various disciplines and contexts:

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

• In geometric optics, a lens can produce a real image or a virtual image.
• In many other scientific and technical contexts, image usually means a two-dimensional signal—a physical phenomenon that can be modeled as a function from a two-dimensional domain (such as the plane or a rectangle) to some set of values, usually real numbers or vectors. This sense covers not only digital images but also analog ones, such as photographs. See image processing.
• In computer graphics and digital image processing, the word image almost always means digital image or, by extension, any computer description of an image, e.g. a raster map, an image file, or a 2D computer graphics model. For embedding an image in a webpage, see HTML element#Images.
• In computer science the word image can also mean an exact (bit-by-bit) copy of the contents of some device, such as a hard disk, floppy disk, CD-ROM, semiconductor storage chip, etc. In particular,
• A core image (or core dump, from magnetic core memory, the predominant RAM technology of the 1960s) is a faithful copy of the data stored in the main memory of a computer or process.
• An executable image is a structured file containing machine instructions and data, which can be loaded into a process's virtual memory and executed. See kernel (computers).
• A ROM image is a copy of the contents of an entire ROM chip, typically a video game executable, which may then be stored on another medium (in the case of copyrighted games, this comes under the category of software piracy).
• In mathematics, an image of a function consist of the output values of the mathematical function.
• In finance, the image is a coefficient (stock image) that bridges a stock's fundamental value and its market price.
• In philosophy, an image is a conception or idea.
• In religion, an image is an idol or icon, although these terms have very specialised meanings within certain sects and should not be held as always synonymous.
• In social psychology an image is a representation.
• In marketing image is often used as shorthand for the perception that consumers have for a brand, its values and its benefits (often referred to as brand image).
• Image Comics is an American publisher of comic books.
• The IMAGE spacecraft currently observing the Earth's magnetosphere