Multitasking
From The Glossary of Digital Photography
The technique utilized in microprocessors and computer systems to do more than one operation at a time to speed up processing. Even though the central processing unit (CPU) portion of the computer only performs one operation at a time, the computer is running multiple programs at the same time. These programs are switched in and out of the CPU to maximize CPU usage while the rest of the computer is performing other operations such as input and output. Digital photographers often multitask, for example, by printing images, working on other images in Photoshop, and downloading e-mail simultaneously.
