The Many Dimensions of Perspective

Perspective Categories
A principal source or mode of a perspective process.
Perspective Visual Perspective (Type 1) Optical Perspective Technical Perspective
Natural
Perspective
Visual
Perspective
(Type 2 /
Retinal)
Graphical
Perspective
Mathematical
Perspective
Instrument
Perspective
Simulated
Perspective
New Media
Perspective
Analytical level
← Home How to Use the Perspective Navigation Maps → Select a concept to open.

The Perspective Research Centre (PRC) is the world’s leading institute devoted to the study of perspective. Built on more than 40 years of research, PRC unifies perspective knowledge across art, science and technology.

Open-Access Digital Materials

A Familiar Subject, Studied as a Whole

Perspective is not a newly invented subject. Its principles, processes and phenomena have been studied for centuries across art, geometry, optics, vision, photography, architecture and imaging science. Perspective provides powerful means of viewing, modelling and representing spatial reality, and of developing solutions to problems of exceptional scale, depth, complexity and accuracy.

Perspective serves as the intellectual prism through which the PRC examines vision, projection, perception and representation. It links spatial reality with the ways it is viewed, optically imaged, projected, perceived, transformed and represented, providing a means of examining and integrating the relationships between these fields.

The PRC therefore brings dispersed knowledge together within a systematic terminology, classification and theoretical framework. It synthesises, organises and extends a historically fragmented field, treating perspective as a real and coherent subject with its own principles and structures, while developing new concepts as extensions of established knowledge rather than replacements for existing disciplines.

Learn, Search & Research Perspective

Explore the searchable Abridged Dictionary of Perspective, an A–Z gateway to the full Dictionary, covering 1,226 perspective types and forms while also serving as a taxonomy, concise encyclopaedia and theoretical map.

Want to learn what perspective is or what perspective means? You are in the right place. Explore a clear definition of perspective, the many types of perspective, new concepts in perspective, 3D space and perspective theory. 

The PRC has assembled a vast body of historical and original material on perspective, much of it unavailable anywhere else. Only a portion can be presented on this website; the wider research, definitions, classifications and new ideas are being organised, clarified and made more accessible through the Art and Science of Perspective book series, which brings this extensive body of knowledge together within a coherent framework.

Explore Perspective Your Way

PRC provides multiple routes through the world of perspective:

  • Visually — through navigation maps, diagrams, infographics, image and view collections, and downloadable reference charts.
  • Conceptually — through theory, concepts, classifications, categories, types, forms, phenomena and fundamental problems.
  • Alphabetically — through the Abridged Dictionary of Perspective, three searchable A–Z knowledge catalogues: People in the History of Perspective, Theory & Concepts Catalogue and Applications Catalogue.
  • By database — search the 1,226 Types & Forms of Perspective and 215 Concepts of Perspective databases.
  • By search — search across 440+ specialist web pages and more than one million words using the PRC search box at the top right.
  • By question — through nearly 1,500 Questions & Answers, common problems, errors, misconceptions and explanatory guides.
  • Historically — through timelines, key people, archives and the development of perspective across centuries.
  • By application — through art, science, architecture, photography, imaging, technology and professional practice.
  • Through the literature — using the bibliography, specialist library and research resources.

Start Here

Choose a starting point based on your interests and experience.

Perspective Theory

Explore the principal frameworks, forms, geometry and phenomena of perspective.

Perspective Images & Views

Browse visual examples and image collections across the major forms of perspective, from linear and parallel perspective to optical, natural, curvilinear, stereoscopic, immersive and other forms.

Go to the Perspective Images & Views Catalogue →

Explore contemporary developments in Artificial Intelligence Perspective and AI-Generated Images.

Finding Perspective Confusing?

Many excellent books, papers and treatises have been published on perspective, and much has been learned about spatial modelling, representation and human visual perception.

However, errors, misconceptions and false assumptions remain widespread in textbooks, teaching and established accounts. Perspective is deceptively familiar: much of its underlying geometry, optics and perceptual structure is hidden from ordinary awareness, making it surprisingly complex and easy to misunderstand. These sections examine some of the most common problems.

Size and Scope of the Project

Perspective encompasses both natural perspective—how spatial reality appears—and artificial perspective—how it is represented through drawings, photographs, films, diagrams and digital media.

The Perspective Topics A–Z Master Index → (4.5 MB PDF) contains 2,516 topics drawn from approximately 4,000 terms, including around 1,200 perspective types and forms.

Applications of perspective organised by discipline and
by five principal goals: View, Match, Represent, Illusion and Immersion.

Describing, Mapping and Clarifying Perspective

Perspective remains only partially documented and lacks a comprehensive systematic description. Its principles, types, forms, phenomena, applications, techniques and methods are dispersed across numerous disciplines, while new technological forms continue to emerge and fundamental theoretical questions remain unresolved. Its terminology is particularly problematic, frequently giving one concept several names—or one name to different, even opposing, ideas.

The task is therefore not simply to clarify perspective, but to describe and map the field as a whole; organise and connect its parts; provide clear routes through this body of knowledge; document its techniques, methods and applications; resolve errors and misconceptions; and develop a more integrated theory linking spatial reality, visual experience and representation.

Perspective Category Theory

Perspective Category Theory (PCT) is an integrated theory of projection, vision, perception and representation, examining how spatial reality is viewed, imaged, experienced, transformed and represented.

PCT analyses these relationships through seven levels—Category, Class, Type, Form, Phenomenon, Function and Product—providing a conceptual structure for examining established principles, unresolved problems and new perspective phenomena together.

A conceptual diagram showing the seven analytical levels through which a perspective system or image may be analysed: Category, Class, Type, Form, Phenomenon, Function and Product.

Library, Bibliography and Archives 

The PRC maintains a specialist Library of Perspective, an extensive bibliography and an image archive, together with the Kim Veltman Archive of approximately 400 publications covering perspective, visual knowledge, Leonardo da Vinci, media theory and the history of science.

Teaching Perspective 

The PRC examines not only how perspective is taught, but which underlying geometrical principles are actually explained. Recent research comparing 87 teaching sources reveals significant differences between the teaching of familiar procedures and the underlying geometrical principles on which they depend.

Explore Perspective Teaching Research →
View the 87-Source Teaching Audit →

Explore Perspective

Choose where to go next.

Start Here →   ·   Search the Abridged Dictionary →   ·   Knowledge Catalogue →