Visual artifacts (also artefacts) are anomalies apparent during visual representation as in digital graphics and other forms of imagery, especially photography and microscopy.

In digital graphics

In video entertainment

Many people who use their computers as a hobby experience artifacting due to a hardware or software malfunction. The cases can differ but the usual causes are: The differing cases of visual artifacting can also differ between scheduled task(s).

In photography

These effects can occur in both analog and digital photography.

In microscopy

In microscopy, an artifact is an apparent structural detail that is caused by the processing of the specimen and is thus not a legitimate feature of the specimen. In light microscopy, artifacts may be produced by air bubbles trapped under the slide's cover slip. In electron microscopy, distortions may be produced in the drying out of the specimen. Staining can cause the appearance of solid chemical deposits that may be seen as structures inside the cell. Different techniques including freeze-fracturing and cell fractionation may be used to overcome the problems of artifacts. A crush artifact is an artificial elongation and distortion seen in histopathology and cytopathology studies, presumably because of iatrogenic compression of tissues. Distortion can be caused by the slightest compression of tissue and can provide difficulties in diagnosis. It may cause chromatin to be squeezed out of nuclei. Inflammatory and tumor cells are most susceptible to crush artifacts.

In radiography

In projectional radiography, visual artifacts that can constitute disease mimics include jewelry, clothes and skin folds.

In magnetic resonance imaging

In Magnetic resonance imaging, artifacts can be classified as patient-related, signal processing-dependent or hardware (machine)-related.