Computer Graphics and Image Processing

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

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

This course is a prerequisite for Advanced Graphics (Part II).

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. Display devices: the inner workings of CRTs, LCDs, and printers. [3 lectures]

2D Computer graphics.

Drawing a straight line. Drawing circles and ellipses. Cubic curves: specification and drawing. Clipping lines. Filling polygons. Clipping polygons. 2D transformations, vectors and matrices, homogeneous co-ordinates. ``Tricks of the trade.'' Uses of 2D graphics: HCI, typesetting, graphic design. [4 lectures]

3D Computer graphics.

Projection: orthographic and perspective. 3D transforms and matrices. 3D clipping. 3D curves. 3D scan conversion. Z-buffer. A-buffer. Ray tracing. Lighting: theory, flat shading, Gouraud, Phong. Texture mapping. Radiosity. [6 lectures]

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). [3 lectures]

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.]