Graphics Versus Imaging

At the onset, it is necessary to separate the notions of graphics and imaging. Graphics refers to the drawing of two-dimensional geometric shapes and text, whereas imaging is reserved to mean the spatial representation of some physical quantity. In the case of digital photography, for example, the physical quantity is light intensity across the rectangular view area of the camera. A texture is somewhere in between a graphic and an image in that a texture is typically a programmed pattern that is treated more or less like an image. As an aside, we note that generating images from graphics is straightforward; however, the reverse isn't true. The generation of geometric shapes from images is a fundamental problem in computer vision and image analysis.

Although some overlap will exist between the operations performed on graphics and images, they will, in general, be treated as separate here.