photorealism

noun

pho·​to·​re·​al·​ism ˌfō-tō-ˈrē-ə-ˌli-zəm 

variants or less commonly photo-realism

1

: the quality in art (such as animation or painting) of depicting or seeming to depict real people, objects, etc. with the exactness of a photograph

Luca is largely a departure from the sort of animation style we're used to seeing in Pixar movies, swapping photorealism for something more stylised …

—Patrick Cremona

Photorealism in gaming means the characters and scenery are supposed to mirror real life in visuals as closely as possible.

—Elizabeth Gipe

[Robyn] Penn works from found images … and in the process of painting brings a ghostly, ephemeral quality to the photorealism of the documented ice-scapes.

—Alexandra Dodd

2

: a movement in painting characterized by photographic exactness of detail

A couple of years later his friend and fellow tennis pro Vitas Gerulaitis introduced him to photorealism. Now that's really art, McEnroe thought. It looks just like photographs.

—Franz Lidz

photorealist

ˌfō-tō-ˈrē-ə-list 

adjective

or less commonly photo-realist

A natural offshoot of Pop Art and heir to one-man movements like Edward Hopper, photorealist paintings depicted the postwar American landscape, highlighting Vietnam War pessimism and the plight of working-class people in the recession-era '70s.

—Martha Schwendener

photorealist noun

or less commonly photo-realist

plural photorealists also photo-realists

[Don] Coen's goal, like that of the early photorealists, is to paint the images just as they would appear as projected slides.

—Carol Dickinson

photorealistic

ˌfō-tō-ˌrē-ə-ˈli-stik 

adjective

or less commonly photo-realistic

… using machine learning to make rendered footage look photorealistic.

—Nathan Ord

Examples of photorealism in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Characters, though, came first, having to be modeled in cubic fashion and keyframe-animated with tactile photorealism. —Bill Desowitz, IndieWire, 26 Apr. 2025

Rather than aiming for photorealism, everything in Minecraft, from the ground to the trees to the animals to the sun and moon themselves, is represented by large, chunky blocks. —Issy Van Der Velde, Rolling Stone, 5 Apr. 2025

The designers have managed to capture the predecessor's style, opting for a hyper-real aesthetic rather than going for straight photo-realism. —Justin Gest, Newsweek, 20 Jan. 2025

The new model, by contrast, can generate clear text, maintain a consistent protagonist over multiple images, and faithfully replicate artistic styles ranging from hand drawing to photorealism. —Kyle Chayka, New Yorker, 2 Apr. 2025

Animation appears to be a popular way to get around the photorealism limitations. —Emily Forlini, PC Magazine, 27 Mar. 2025

However, the move to complete photorealism imposed limits on the animation, which MPC did its best to turn into advantages, dialing down movement, gesture, and lip sync. —Bill Desowitz, IndieWire, 26 Mar. 2025

Each area feels richly distinct from the others, harnessing abstract dreamlike designs rather than sheer photorealism, for the better. —Hayes Madsen, Rolling Stone, 13 Feb. 2025

In the past, many critics dubbed photorealism gauche and consigned the movement to painting’s past. —Carolina A. Miranda, ARTnews.com, 15 Jan. 2025

Word History

First Known Use

1961, in the meaning defined at sense 2

Rhymes for photorealism

• neorealism
• idealism
• surrealism