 First, pictures belong to “information systems”, and transmit perceptual information from their subjects (Lopes 1996: 107), thereby engaging (and also extending) the recognitional skills spectators exercise in ordinary visual perception. “The ability to work out what pictures depict covaries with the ability to recognize their depicta in the flesh” (2005a: 170). Second, Lopes adopts Walton’s claim that photographs are “transparent”, i.e., spectators literally see the objects that appear in photographs, as if through a pane of glass, and not merely visual records or sources of information about them. However, Lopes extends this claim to encompass every kind of picture: “there is as much reason to believe that we see through paintings and drawings as through photographs” (1996: 181). Third, pictures present aspects of their subjects, by making both “commitments” and “non-commitments” regarding their properties: “Every picture represents its subject as having some property that precludes it from making commitments about some other property” (Lopes 1996: 125). For example, a picture that depicts a man sporting a beard makes a commitment regarding the property of being hirsute, but by the same token is non-commital regarding the property of having a dimpled chin. Explicit “non-commitment” distinguishes depiction from other kinds of representation. (For criticism see Herwitz 2000, Savile 2000, Kulvicki 2006.) Fourth, pictorial styles, or systems of pictorial representation, differ from each other in the kinds of aspects they typically present. Pictorial competence is relative to specific styles or systems: to be able to interpret a picture, one needs to have the recognitional skills corresponding to the system to which it belongs (Lopes 1996: 152–3).