Eidetic memory, popularly known as "photographic memory," refers to the rare ability to recall a recent visual scene—a page of text, an image, a room—with unusual perceptual detail for a short period afterward. True eidetic memory has been studied primarily in children (often estimated at a few percent of children, fading in adolescence) and is significantly less common in adults than popular culture suggests.
Eidetic memory is not the same as hyperphantasia. Hyperphantasia is very vivid voluntary mental imagery generated from existing knowledge; eidetic memory is a brief, perception-anchored replay of a specific external scene. Many hyperphantasics are mistakenly described as having photographic memory; in reality they have rich imagination, not perfect recall. Documented cases of true eidetic memory in adults are rare, and most claims to "photographic memory" describe well-developed encoding strategies or vivid voluntary imagery rather than literal scene replay.