Computer graphics have enhanced the graphical world and have shown great breakthroughs in the recent future. While it is still an emerging area, there have been some very prospective gains in the field and I hope to show the areas of usage and the types. You can find these computer-generated graphics to be used in printing, product design and manufacturing, scientific research, and entertainment. Computers routinely create graphs and tables to illustrate text information in the business world. Computer-aided design systems have replaced drafting boards. Computers are also often used to test various technical, electrical, or thermal properties of an item under design. Scientists use computers to simulate the behavior of complicated natural systems in animated motion-picture sequences. Computer graphics are nowhere as visible as in the entertainment industry, which uses them to create the interactive animations of video games and the special effects in motion pictures. Computers have also come into increasing use in commercial illustration and in the digitalization of images for use in CD-ROM products, online services, and other electronic media (Carelli, 26-27).

Computer graphics is the field that deals with display and control of images on the computer screen and has been quite evident since the 1960’s. Applications may be broken down into four major categories: Design (computer-aided design [CAD] systems), in which the computer is used as a tool in designing objects by providing an interactive drawing tool and an interface for the engineer. Fine arts are an area where artists use the computer screen to create images of beauty, special effects, animated cartoons, and television commercials. Scientific visualization is where simulations of scientific events are exhibited pictorially and in motion to provide far more insight than would tables of numbers, and human-computer interfaces (Computer Science, 1).

Graphics software programs enable a user to draw, color, shade, and manipulate an image on a display screen with commands input by a keyboard. A picture can be drawn onto the screen with the use of a mouse, a pressure-sensitive tablet, or a light pen. Preexisting images on paper can be scanned into the computer through the use of scanners, digitizers, pattern-recognition devices, or digital cameras. Frames of images on videotape can be entered into a computer. Various output devices have been developed as well which print the image on paper or on photographic film. The computer can also generate hard copy by means of plotters and laser or dot matrix printers.  The growth of the industry as a whole has grown exponentially and the revenue generated by animation and graphics is enormous (Computer Graphics, 2).
 
 

The images produced can be printed documents or animated motion pictures, but the term computer graphics refers particularly to images displayed on a video display screen, or display monitor. These screens can display the graphic. A computer-graphics system basically consists of a computer to store and manipulate images, a display screen, various input and output devices, and a graphics software package that enables a computer to process graphic images by means of mathematical language. These programs enable the computer to draw, color, shade, and manipulate the images held in its memory (Thompson, 1094).

A computer displays images on the phosphor-coated surface of a graphics display screen by means of an electron beam that sweeps the screen many times each second. Those portions of the screen energized by the beam emit light, and changes in the intensity of the beam determine their brightness. The brightness of the resulting image fades quickly, however, and must be continuously refreshed by the beam, which is usually thirty times per second (Computer Graphics, 1).

Graphics-based computer interfaces, which enable users to communicate with the computer by such simple means as pointing to an icon with a handheld device known as a mouse, have allowed millions of non-expert computer users to control application programs like spreadsheets and word processors. Graphics technology also supports window environments on the workstation or personal computer screen, which allow users to work with different applications simultaneously, one in each window. Graphics also provide realistic interfacing to video games, flight simulators, and other simulations of reality or fantasy. The term virtual reality has recently been coined to refer to interaction with a computer-simulated virtual world as if with reality (Thompson,1097).

Pictures are stored and processed in a computer's memory by either of two methods: raster graphics and vector graphics. Raster-type graphics maintain an image as a matrix of independently controlled dots, while vector graphics maintain it as a collection of points, lines, and arcs. Raster graphics are now the dominant computer graphics technology (Carelli, 27).

In raster graphics, the computer's memory stores an image as a matrix, or grid, of individual dots, or pixels. Each pixel is encoded in the computer's memory as one or several bits. The thousands of tiny pixels that make up an individual image are projected onto a display screen as illuminated dots that from a distance appear as an image (Carelli, 27).

In vector graphics, images are made up of a series of lines, each of which is stored in the computer's memory as a vector. On a vector-type display screen, an electron beam sweeps back and forth between the points designated by the computer and the paths so energized emit light, thereby creating lines. Grouping lines close enough to form a uniform image creates solid shapes. Its application is now largely restricted to highly linear work in computer-aided design and architectural drafting, and even this is performed on raster-type screens with the vectors converted into dots (Computer Graphics, 3).

Hopefully this report showed you a little bit of what the computer graphics field can offer as far as the types of graphics, its types of uses and its relatively new occurrence. With an ever-changing world when it comes to the computer world, we are sure to see even more advancement in this field of computer knowledge and usage will only increase. While the history of the field is so young, the advancement is insurmountable and the success of computers will be based on how and what they are used for (Addie, brain).
 
 
 

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Thompson, John M.(Nov99). The Convergence of Robotics, Vision, and Computer Graphics for User Interaction. International Journal of Robotics Research,18, 1088-1101.