ELI5: What Is Photorealism?

Photorealism is when an artist draws, paints, or builds something on a computer that looks so real you mistake it for an actual photograph.

Imagine you are eating a shiny red apple for a snack. If you take a picture of it with a phone, the camera captures every tiny detail: the shiny white glare from the kitchen lights, the little brown spots on the skin, and the rough texture of the wooden stem.

Now, imagine an artist sits down with some colored pencils or paint. Instead of making a simple cartoon apple, they carefully copy every single dot, shadow, and reflection they see in real life. When they finish, the drawing looks so lifelike that you want to reach out and take a bite! That is photorealism.

You can find examples of this in your everyday life:

• Video Games: Modern racing games show cars with tiny scratches, tires kicking up individual specks of dust, and puddles that reflect the sky just like a rainy street outside your window.
• Movies: When you watch a superhero movie, the giant spaceships or furry alien creatures aren't real, but computer artists add realistic lighting, wrinkles, and shadows so your eyes believe they are truly standing next to real actors.
• Online Shopping: Sometimes the picture of a couch or a pair of sneakers on a store website isn't a real photo at all. It is a computer-made image designed with photorealistic details like fabric stitches and soft shadows to show you exactly what the item looks like.
• Pencil Drawings: Some artists spend hundreds of hours using just a pencil to draw a person's face, capturing every individual eyelash, freckle, and pore on the skin.