International Fine Art Academy

The Daguerreotype was the first commercial photographic process. Named for Louis-Jacques Monde Daguerre, it is a positive print on a light-sensitive copper plate.

Decorative arts: collective term for such art forms as ceramics, enamels, furniture, glass, ivory, metalwork and textiles, especially when they take forms used as interior decoration.

Decoupage: the Victorian craft of cutting out motifs from paper gluing them to a surface and covering with as many layers of varnish as is required to give a completely smooth finish.

Depth of field: in photography, the area in front of and behind the focused point that is sharp. A shallow depth of field is used in portraits to provide a soft backdrop, whilst a greater depth of field is useful for landscapes to ensure everything from the foreground to the background is in focus. Shorter (wide angle) lenses and smaller apertures increase depth of field.

Design: the arrangement of the design elements to create a single effect. The organization or composition of a work; the skilled arrangement of its parts. An effective design is one in which the elements of art and principles of design have been combined to achieve an overall sense of unity.

Designing: the process of relating the elements whether they are similar or contrasting and visually arranging an interesting unity with them using the design principles.

Digital photography refers to electronically captured images composed of digital values, or pixels. Iris prints, giclee prints, and digital archival prints are three examples of popular digital printing methods.

Dominance: the emphasis placed on a particular area or characteristic of a work, with other areas or aspects given subordinate or supporting roles.

Double exposure: a technique used in film and photography to expose two images onto one negative, or sheet of photographic paper.

Double loading: refers to loading a brush with two colors side by side. This is a technique typical of tole and other kinds of decorative painting. Also known as "side loading".

Drawing: the act of representing an image on a surface by means of adding lines and shades, as with a pencil, crayon, pen, chalk, pastels, etc. Also refers to an illustration that has been drawn by hand.

Dye destruction prints are characterized by their vibrant color. These prints are created using three emulsion layers, each one specifically sensitized to a different primary color and containing a dye relevant to that color. During the process, different information is recorded from each layer creating the final image in which three layers are perceived as one.

Dye transfer prints are created from three separate negatives by photographing the original negative through red, green, and blue filters. The result is a richly colored image on gelatin coated paper.