Glossary
Vehicle photo & listing terms, defined.
Every term dealers actually run into around photos and listings — hero shots, cutouts, window stickers, damage disclosure — defined plainly in one sentence, with the detail underneath it. Jump straight to a term or scan the whole list below.
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- 360° spin
- A 360° spin is an interactive viewer, built from a sequence of photos taken around a vehicle, that lets a shopper drag or tap to rotate it and look at it from any angle.
A
- Aspect ratio
- Aspect ratio is the proportional relationship between a photo’s width and height, expressed as a ratio like 4:3 or 16:9, and it determines whether a photo displays as landscape, portrait, or square.
B
- Background replacement
- Background replacement is the process of taking a cutout of a vehicle and placing it onto a new background — a clean studio backdrop, a branded scene, or an outdoor setting — in place of whatever was behind it in the original photo.
C
- Cutout
- A cutout is a photo with its background completely removed, leaving just the vehicle isolated on a transparent or solid-color canvas.
D
- Damage disclosure
- Damage disclosure is the practice of keeping a truthful, visible record of a vehicle’s condition — scratches, dents, rust, or other damage — even after its photos have otherwise been cleaned up for a listing.
F
- Feathering
- Feathering is a photo-editing technique that softens the hard edge of a selection or mask by blending it gradually into the pixels around it, instead of leaving an abrupt, sharp boundary.
- Floorplan tour
- A floorplan tour is a walkthrough of an RV or boat’s interior layout built from photos or video, a different thing entirely from “floorplan financing,” the far more common industry use of the word, which refers to the line of credit a dealer uses to finance the inventory sitting on their lot.
- FTC Buyer’s Guide
- The FTC Buyer’s Guide is a window sticker federal law generally requires used-vehicle dealers in the United States to display, stating whether the vehicle is sold with a warranty and disclosing that a buyer should get any promises in writing.
G
- Gallery photo / primary image
- In a listing gallery, the primary image — sometimes called the main image or gallery photo — is the one photo a marketplace displays next to the listing in search results, while the rest of the gallery only appears once a shopper opens the full listing.
- Glare and reflection control
- Glare and reflection control is the set of edits that tame bright hot spots and unwanted reflections on shiny surfaces — paint, chrome, glass, and gelcoat — caused by direct sun or a flash.
H
- HDR (high dynamic range)
- HDR, or high dynamic range, is an image-enhancement technique that recovers detail in both the brightest and darkest parts of a photo that a single normal exposure would otherwise lose.
- Hero shot
- The hero shot is the single photo a dealer or marketplace chooses to represent a vehicle everywhere shoppers see it before opening the full listing — search results, thumbnails, and ads.
M
- Matting
- In photo editing, matting (or alpha matting) is the technique of calculating how much of each pixel along a subject’s edge belongs to the foreground versus the background, producing a soft, graduated mask instead of a hard, all-or-nothing cutout line.
- Monroney label
- The Monroney label is the federally mandated sticker that must be displayed on the window of every new vehicle sold in the United States, listing its manufacturer, model, standard equipment, options, and price.
O
- Odometer photo
- An odometer photo is a close-up shot of a vehicle’s mileage display, included in a listing so a shopper can verify the mileage against what the listing states.
P
- Plate blur
- Plate blur is the practice of automatically detecting a license plate in a vehicle photo and obscuring it — by blurring, pixelating, or covering it with a dealer-branded plate frame — before the photo is published.
S
- Shot list
- A shot list is the specific set of angles and views expected for one vehicle — front, sides, rear, interior, engine bay, and any other required shots — so a listing’s photos are complete before it’s used for a listing.
- Stock photo vs. real photo
- A stock photo is a generic image of the same make and model pulled from a library rather than a photo of the specific unit for sale, and most marketplaces either restrict or outright ban using one in place of a real photo of the actual vehicle.
- Syndication feed
- A syndication feed is a structured file — usually XML or JSON — that a dealer’s inventory system sends to a marketplace on a schedule, listing every vehicle for sale along with its photos, price, and specs so the marketplace can build a listing automatically.
V
- Vehicle detail page (VDP)
- A vehicle detail page, or VDP, is the single web page — on a dealer’s own site or a marketplace listing — that shows one specific vehicle’s photos, price, specs, and description to a shopper.
- VIN decode
- A VIN decode is the process of turning a vehicle’s 17-character vehicle identification number into structured data — year, make, model, trim, engine, and drivetrain — usually by looking it up against a manufacturer or government database.
W
- Walkaround
- A walkaround is a short video that moves around and through a vehicle the way a shopper would if they walked up to it in person, covering the exterior, the interior, and usually the engine bay.
- Window sticker
- A window sticker is a printed summary of a vehicle’s specs, features, and pricing meant to be displayed on or near the vehicle, and the term covers both the manufacturer’s federally required new-vehicle label and a dealer’s own printed spec sheet for a used vehicle.
VehiclePhoto puts these into practice automatically — clean backgrounds, matching angles, privacy masking, and grounded listing copy, from the photos you already have.
See how it works