As photography started to open up to digital imaging technologies the territory has changed, rather than the 'digital' being another artistic practice. What has emerged from this opening up is the idea of the photographic style in which images are produced that look like photographs.
This is work using digital imaging technologies that is done 'in the manner of photography', and it represents the marriage of the photographic with the graphic (hence the term 'photographics').
A style might be called 'photographic' when the reference to a photographic reality is left intact. The photographic style is an image's ability to reference a reality, as it would look in a
photograph. Before the advent of image computation, photographic reality could only be
represented in photographs, whereas in our digital age photography is no longer a
prerequisite for the achievement of photographic reality.