I'm annoyed by how poor so many web sites try to describe or categorize camouflages without any significant categorization. This is an attempt to have a richer language describing different variations on military camouflage. This is a work in progress...
Definitions
A sharp-edged shape is a region of a camouflage that tends to have the same color and can perhaps most easily be described as any part of a camouflage pattern that can be easily cut out with a razor blade.
A soft-edged shape is a region of a camouflage that is approximately uniform but where there is a more ambiguous border. A soft-edged shape is generally the result of either blending, brushstrokes or digital camouflage patterns.
Note that most camouflages use sharp-edged shapes. Notable exceptions are A-TACS which has blended soft edges. Of course, there is a spectrum, and some patterns have shapes with speckled or streaked edges, but which may generally be described as sharp, including the Disruptive Pattern Material of the UK, Flächentarn of East Germany, and Leibermuster/TAZ 83 have speckled or streaked edges.
In the Operational Camouflage Pattern we have sharp-edged shapes that themselves contain two soft-edged regions; specifically, a sharp-edged green region which itself has blended light green and darker green shapes.
The boundary of a sharp-edged region can be convex (often elliptical or oval) or irregular.
A shape can either be a uniform or directional. Uniform shapes can be rotated without affecting the pattern. One of the earlier examples of a directional pattern is the familiar Tigerstripe pattern.
Here are various categories of camouflage:
Directional or omni-directional
A camouflage such as Tigerstripe is directional, specifically, when standing up, left-to-right. Most camouflages are omni-directional; the orientation of the material prior to cutting that material to make a uniform normally does not cause significant difference. While CADPAT may appear to be directional, as there is a standard orientation, that is more an aesthetic choice, as opposed to a necessary choice. Camouflage patterns such as the Swiss TAZ 83 are marginally directional, as there is bleeding in the pattern which from close up would look odd if was bleeding in any direction other than "down," however, rotating such a pattern would at worst would cause an aesthetic offence to the appropriate fashion police.
Monolayered or multilayered
Many military patterns have all shapes at approximately the same resolution and style, such as the woodland camouflage, many of the digital camouflages such as AOR-1 and -2, CADPAD, MARPAT, flecktarn, etc.
Sharp shapes, blended shapes or blends
The lines that separate one color from another may be dominant and sharp, such as in the woodland camouflage, or there an attempt to blend one color into another. Sharp lines will make a camouflaged pattern more conspicuous than blended, for apart from the edges of leaves, the edges of tree trunks and branches, sharp lines between colors
Convex versus concave shapes
A shape is concave if given any two points in the shape, all points on the line between appear within the shape, and irregular otherwise. Almost no patterns are strictly convex, but the Polish Puma is very close.
Geometric sharp edges or organic sharp edges
Sharp edges may be further distinguished into shapes that have generally straight lines versus others that are generally curved. The U.S. Woodland pattern is organic, while the Swedish M90 pattern is geometric.
There are two possible techniques for blending colors. The first is to have an actual and gradual change in the hue or saturation in the pigment; this is generally more expensive, and is therefore often limited to commercially available camouflages. This is seen in the various layers of the Operation Camouflage Pattern (both the base layer bends tan and brown but the upper lays occasionally blend light and dark green) but also in the A-TACS camouflage. The second is to have finer detail along the edges. This is achieved with digital camouflage and the older
Monotonic base
Some camouflage patterns have a clear base color upon which patterns are placed. This is visible in Frog Skin camouflage, which has a light green monotonic base; the Australian Disruptive Pattern, which has a monotonic tan base, and to a lesser extent, the original Tigerstripe camouflages.
Overprints
A camouflage may contain overprints that are distinguishable from a base camouflage where these overprints do not follow any pattern appearin in the base. Technically, all camouflages with a monotonic base have the additional patterns appearing as overprints, but there are others. For example, the six-color chocolate chip Desert Battle Dress has a four-color base camouflage over which there appear black-and-white chocolate chips, or imitation stones. The Operation Camouflage Pattern has a blended base that varies between shades of tan and brown. It is above this that overprints of even lighter tan and darker brown as well as light and dark green are printed.
Large spectrum or narrow spectrum
For environments that are naturally multicolored, such as forests and brush, it makes sense to include a broad range of colors in both hue, saturation and intensity; however, in environments that are more monotonous, a smaller range of hues and
This author does not appreciate any desert or winter camouflage that has a large spectrum, even within the constraints. For example,
The UK Multi-terrain pattern may be described as two-layered. The base layer has three-color (green-brown-olive) irregular organic non-directional patterns with generally sharp boundaries but including speckling and blending. The top layer are smaller white and black irregular patterns with generally sharp boundaries but including speckling.
The US Woodland pattern may be described as two-layered. The base layer has three-color (green-brown-tan) irregular organic non-directional patterns with sharp boundaries. The top layer includes irregular elongated organic non-directional black patterns with sharp boundaries.
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Note, it may be argued that the US Woodland pattern is single layered; however, the black patterns tend to occupy less area than the other three colors, and in general it is easy to transpose and rotate the black patterns without adversely affecting the effectiveness of the pattern.
The East German 1968 Strichmuster has a monotonic tan base layer and an ornamental layer of directional brown lines.
The Swedish M90 pattern may be described as single layered with a four-color (tan, light green, dark green and black) approximately convex geometric non-directional patterns with sharp boundaries.
Observe that in designing a new camouflage, one could easily take one layer from one pattern and combine it with a layer of another.