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Look up picture plane in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

A picture plane is the imaginary flat surface which is usually located between the station point and the object being viewed and is ordinarily a vertical plane perpendicular to the horizontal projection of the line of sight to the object's order of interest.

In painting the picture plane refers to the flat surface of the canvas or the physical material onto which the paint is applied. It generally refers to the front of the surface image, especially in the case of illusionary depth, although it can also refer to the picture's ground. The illusion of depth and three dimensionality that accompanies certain types of pictures is described as penetrating the picture plane.

In photography the physical surface of a print can be thought of as the manifestation of its picture plane. The position of the camera at the time of image capture is the station point, and the edges of the camera's field of view create the imaginary borders of the picture plane, finally translating to the physical edges of a photographic print.

[edit] See also

• Perspective projection

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