Computer Graphics and Image Processing

Lecturer: Dr N.A. Dodgson (nad@cl.cam.ac.uk)

No. of lectures: 16 (Continued into Easter Term)  

Background.

What is an image? What are computer graphics, image processing, and computer vision? How do they relate to one another? Image capture. Image display. Human vision. Resolution and quantisation. Colour and colour spaces. How a CRT, an LCD, and a printer work.

2D Computer graphics.

Drawing a straight line. Drawing a curve. How curves are specified. Filling regions: polygons. D drawing. Clipping. 2D transformations, vectors and matrices, homogeneous co-ordinates. Uses: HCI, typesetting, graphic design.

3D Computer graphics.

Projection: orthographic and perspective. 3D clipping. 3D curves. 3D transforms and matrices. 3D scan conversion. Sampling. Z-buffer. A-buffer. Lighting: theory, flat shading, Gouraud, Phong. Ray tracing. Radiosity.

Image processing.

Operations on images: filtering, point processing, compositing. Halftoning and dithering, error diffusion. Encoding and compression: difference encoding, predictive, run length, quadtree, transform encoding (including JPEG).

Recommended books:

Foley, J.D., van Dam, A., Feiner, S.K. & Hughes, J.F. (1990). Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice. Addison-Wesley (2nd ed.).

Gonzalez, R.C. & Woods, R.E. (1992). Digital Image Processing. Addison-Wesley. [Gonzalez, R.C. & Wintz, P. (1977) is the earlier edition and is almost as useful.]