The Difference between Computer Graphics and Image Processing

The Difference between Computer Graphics and Image Processing:

·         Computer Graphics: Synthesize pictures from mathematical or geometrical models.

·         Image Processing: analyze pictures to derive descriptions (often in mathematical or geometrical forms) of objects appeared in the pictures.

Representative uses of Computer Graphics

Computer graphics is used today in many different areas of science, engineering, industry, business, education, entertainment, medicine, art and training, All of these are included in the following categories.

1.     User interfaces

Most applications have user interfaces that rely on desktop windows systems to manage multiple simultaneous activities , and on point-and click facilities to allow users to select menu items, icons and objects on the screen. These activities fall under computer graphics. Typing is necessary only to input text to be stored and manipulated. For example, Word processing, spreadsheet, and desktop-publishing programs are the typical examples where user-interface techniques are implemented.

2.     Plotting

Plotting 2D and 3D graphs of mathematical, physical, and economic functions use computer graphics extensively. The histograms, bar, and pie charts; the task-scheduling charts are the most commonly used plotting. These  all are used to present meaningfully and concisely the trends and patterns of complex data.

3.     Office automation and electronic publishing

Computer graphics has facilitated the office automation and electronic publishing which is also popularly known as desktop publishing, giving more power to the organizations to print the meaningful materials in-house. Office automation and electronic publishing can produce both traditional printed (Hardcopy) documents and electronic(softcopy) documents that contain text, tables, graphs, and other forms of drawn or scanned-in graphics.

4.     Computer Aided Drafting and Design

One of the major uses of computer graphics is to design components and systems of mechanical, electrical, electrochemical, and electronic devices, including structures such as buildings, automobile bodies, airplane and ship hulls, very large scale integrated (VLSI) chips, optical systems,. and telephone and computer networks. These designs are more frequently used to test the structural, electrical, and thermal properties of the systems.

5.     Scientific and business Visualization

Generating computer graphics for scientific, engineering, and medical data sets is termed as scientific visualization whereas business visualization is related with the non scientific data sets such as those obtained in economics. Visualization makes easier to understand  the trends and patterns inherent in the huge amount of data sets. It would , otherwise , be almost impossible to analyze those data numerically.

6.     Simulation and modeling

Simulation is the imitation of the conditions like  those , which is encountered in real life. Simulation thus helps to learn or to feel the conditions one might have to face in near future without being in danger at the beginning of the course. For example, astronauts can exercise the feeling of weightlessness in a simulator; similarly a pilot training can be conducted in flight simulator. The military tank simulator, the naval simulator, driving simulator, air traffic control simulator, heavy-duty vehicle simulator, and so on are some of the mostly used simulator in practice. Simulators are also used to optimize the system, for example the vehicle, observing the reactions of the driver during the operation of the simulator.

7.     Entertainment

Disney movies  such as Lion Kings and The Beauty of Beast, and other scientific movies like Jurassic Park, The lost world etc are the best example of the application of computer graphics in the field of entertainment. Instead of drawing all necessary frames with slightly changing scenes for the production of cartoon-film, only the key frames are sufficient for such cartoon-film where the in between frames are interpolated  by the graphics system dramatically decreasing the cost of production  while maintaining the quality. Computer and video games such FIFA, Doom ,Pools are few to name where graphics is used extensively.

8.     Art and commerce

Here computer graphics is used to produce pictures that express a message and attract attention such as a new model of a car moving along the ring of the Saturn . These pictures are frequently seen at transportation terminals supermarkets , hotels etc. The slide production for commercial , scientific, or educational presentations is another cost effective use of computer graphics. One of such graphics packages is a PowerPoint.

9.     Cartography

Cartography is a subject , which deals with the making of maps and charts. Computer graphics is used to produce both accurate and schematic representations of geographical and other natural phenomena from measurement data. Examples include geographic maps , oceanographic charts, weather maps, contour maps and population-density maps. Surfer is one of such graphics packages , which is extensively used for cartography.