Depth cue

Also called depth cues, pictorial cue, monocular cue

This entry has not been translated yet and is shown in English.

Any feature of a flat image a viewer reads as depth: overlap, relative size, atmospheric perspective, linear perspective, texture gradient, height in the field, shadow. Pictorial cues need only a plane, which is why they are the whole toolkit in print. They accumulate, and they can be set against each other.

A single scene in which four cues are labelled at once: nearer forms overlapping farther ones, forms shrinking with distance, a converging ground texture, and distant forms fading toward the sky tone.

In practice

'Depth' in 2D work is never depth — it's a set of cues the eye accepts. Cues conflict cheaply, and a conflicting set reads as wrong before anyone can say why.

Not to be confused with

Picture planeThe flat surface an image is constructed on — in perspective theory, the transparent plane the scene is projected onto, standing between eye and subject. Everything a composition does happens on it, and depth is only ever asserted against it. Flattening the picture plane is the modernist move of insisting it exists.

How this term connects

Related Confused with

In practice

Not to be confused with

Related

How this term connects

Referenced by