Eli5: How can there be ‘noise’ in an image?
In: Technology
“Noise” refers to random information added into any signal or data collection that isn’t the thing you’re trying to actually collect. The term comes from its use in radio, where random radio waves flying around would add a staticy sound to a radio transmission (hence, “noise”). A more literal example would be the low murmur of a crowd in a packed room. As a general rule, you want your signal to be stronger than your noise, or it’s hard to tell the difference between the signal and random patterns in the noise.
In the case of images, it’s things like little distortions from the air, electronic noise in the camera you took the picture with, jitter from the camera or hand moving slightly, and so on. These degrade the quality of the image by increasing the amount of noise relative to the signal (the actual picture you’re trying to take).
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