An image having the attributes of a photograph of real life, although it is synthetic. The first generation of American photorealists includes such painters as Richard Estes, Audrey Flack, Robert Cottingham, Don Eddy, Ron Kleemann, Tom Blackwell, Charles Bell, John Kac-ere, David Parrish, Robert Bechtle, Ralph Goings, Richard McLean, John Salt and Ben Schonzeit. Most often independently of each other and with widely different starting points they developed their painting in the direction of Photorealism during the 1960s and beginning of the 1970s. [1]

The phrase is used at Pixar, to describe their RenderMan rendering software.