Computer graphics

Computer graphics are graphics created using computers and, more generally, the representation and manipulation of image data by a computer with help from specialized software and hardware.

The development of computer graphics has made computers easier to interact with, and better for understanding and interpreting many types of data.

Developments in computer graphics have had a profound impact on many types of media and have revolutionized animation, movies and the video game industry.

The term computer graphics has been used in a broad sense to describe "almost everything on computers that is not text or sound".


Typically, the term computer graphics refers to several different things: Computer graphics is widespread today.

Computer imagery is found on television, in newspapers, for example in weather reports, or for example in all kinds of medical investigation and surgical procedures.

Computer generated imagery can be categorized into several different types: 2D, 3D, and animated graphics.

As technology has improved, 3D computer graphics have become more common, but 2D computer graphics are still widely used.


Computer graphics has emerged as a sub-field of computer science which studies methods for digitally synthesizing and manipulating visual content.

The field of computer graphics developed with the emergence of computer graphics hardware.

Further advances in computing led to greater advancements in interactive computer graphics.

A light pen could be used to draw sketches on the computer using Ivan Sutherland's revolutionary Sketchpad software.


IBM was quick to respond to this interest by releasing the IBM 2250 graphics terminal, the first commercially available graphics computer.

In 1968 the University of Utah recruited Evans to form a computer science program, and computer graphics quickly became his primary interest.

In 1969, the ACM initiated A Special Interest Group in Graphics (SIGGRAPH) which organizes conferences, graphics standards, and publications within the field of computer graphics.

A student by the name of Edwin Catmull started at the University of Utah in 1970 and signed up for Sutherland's computer graphics class.


Tom Stockham led the image processing group at UU which worked closely with the computer graphics lab.

In order to draw a representation of a 3D object on the screen, the computer must determine which surfaces are "behind" the object from the viewer's perspective, and thus should be "hidden" when the computer creates (or renders) the image.

Since then, computer graphics have only become more detailed and realistic, due to more powerful graphics hardware and 3D modeling software.

2D computer graphics are the computer-based generation of digital images—mostly from two-dimensional models, such as 2D geometric models, text, and digital images, and by techniques specific to them.


In those applications, the two-dimensional image is not just a representation of a real-world object, but an independent artifact with added semantic value; two-dimensional models are therefore preferred, because they give more direct control of the image than 3D computer graphics, whose approach is more akin to photography than to typography.

Pixel art is a form of digital art, created through the use of raster graphics software, where images are edited on the pixel level.

Raster graphics is the representation of images as an array of pixels and is typically used for the representation of photographic images.
3D computer graphics in contrast to 2D computer graphics are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data that is stored in the computer for the purposes of performing calculations and rendering 2D images.

Despite these differences, 3D computer graphics rely on many of the same algorithms as 2D computer vector graphics in the wire frame model and 2D computer raster graphics in the final rendered display.

In computer graphics software, the distinction between 2D and 3D is occasionally blurred; 2D applications may use 3D techniques to achieve effects such as lighting, and primarily 3D may use 2D rendering techniques.