What is Computer Graphics?

People define “computer graphics” loosely depending on the context. Most simply, computer graphics are images that are generated by a computer. Anywhere you look today, there are examples to be found. Let us examine the story that you are reading right now. Every character in this story is “drawn” from a library of character shapes stored in memory. Similarly, books and magazines abound with character shapes and images that are created and printed using a computer. Sometimes, computer-generated images look so natural that they are hard to distinguish from photographs of a “real scene”. Computer graphics not only deals with still images but also with dynamic scenes. Recently, computers allow scenes to be carefully and meticulously made although these scenes never really existed. As a result, reality and imagination can be showcased in one magnificent film.

Computer graphics also refers to the tools used to make such images. There are both hardware and software tools. Hardware tools are those that displays images, as well as those that allow users to point, draw, edit and manipulate images. All of these capabilities are made possible by the software tools.

Finally, computer graphics often means the whole field of study that involves these tools and the images they produce. Because the interest in computer graphics grew quickly, there are rapid advances in display technology and in the algorithms that manage image information.

Computer graphics is a very appealing field of study. Humans respond readily to visual information. As a result, humans absorb much more information from images than from a collection of numbers (although images are in fact just a collection of numbers). What might be a matrix of numbers, when presented as an image, becomes an instantly recognizable shape or pattern.

Lenna, the standard test image widely used in the field of image processing since 1973.

I’m Ryan. This is my first of many stories about the fundamentals in the field of computer graphics. I am relatively new in the field. As I continuously learn, I would like to share my knowledge. I hope this would also serve as an inspiration to other people. Please follow, recommend, or add your thoughts in a response. Thank you.

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