Relief is a term from sculpture. A relief is a sculpted work of art where a carved form is raised (or in the case of a sunken relief, lowered) from a plane from which the main elements of the composition project (or sink). Raising or lowering the plane is achieved by removing material not relevant to the image. In the case of sunken relief, the material composing the central image is carved out.
In a landscape viewed from above, mountains can be said to stand out in relief. Some areas of Mars show inverted relief, where features that were once depressions, like streams, are now instead above the surface.
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