Computer Graphics Introduction

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Computer graphics is a big topic. I will just scratch the surface here at this blog to briefly cover the topic in general terms and then followup with a few specific blogs on specific graphics topics or specific software programs.

Wikipedia defines computer graphics simple as the “discipline of generating images with the aid of computers.” The application of graphics can be found on computer screens, cellphone screens, video games, movies, and so on. Wikipedia says: “Some topics in computer graphics include user interface design, sprite graphics, rendering, ray tracing, geometry processing, computer animation, vector graphics, 3D modeling, shaders, GPU design, implicit surface visualization, image processing, computational photography, scientific visualization, computational geometry, and computer vision, among others.”

Two-dimensional Images

These two-dimensional images include things such as clip art, web graphics, logos, headings, backgrounds, and digital photos. There are two general types of picture files as covered in our blog called Picture File Types for the Web. We have an article on Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG).

Graphics Software

Graphics software creates, edits, and manages two-dimensional images. Adobe has several software programs that work with graphics, including, Photoshop and Illustrator. However, there are some decent free software programs out there. LibreOffice Draw. Some graphics software offers some limited editing capability but is optimized for display. The Photos program in Windows 10 is a great example, as is the free IrfanView viewer. There are lots of programs out there.

  • Adobe Photoshop
  • Adobe Illustrator
  • Adove Lightroom
  • CorelDRAW
  • Paint Shop Pro
  • IrfanView
  • Paint 3D (in Windows)
  • Canva
  • Lucidchart
  • Krita

What is NOT Graphics Software?

programs that don’t directly manipulate individual images are not considered to be graphics programs. Page layout software such as InDesign, QuarkXpress, and Publisher as well as presentation software such as PowerPoint or Apple Keynote aren’t graphics programs.

Pictures

There are lots of pictures on the web. You can Google using their Images search. We have a post called Free Pictures that lists just a few free picture sites.

IrfanView

IrfanView is an image viewer, editor, organiser and converter program for Microsoft Windows that can also play video and audio files, and has some image creation and painting capabilities. IrfanView has been around since 1996 and is noted for the fact that it is free and can load a large number of graphic file types. To be able to load the most amount of types you need to install the plugin. If you are on the 64-bit version of Windows you can download the plugins using the last 2 links on this 64-bit downloads page. The current version of IrfanView is 4.54, as of February 2020. IrfanView is named after its creator, Irfan Škiljan, from Jajce, Bosnia, and Herzegovina, living in Vienna. I like how fast it loads and displays the pictures you click on.

VLC Media Player

VLC media player (commonly known as just VLC) is a free and open-source portable cross-platform media player software. It is also a streaming media server. VLC is available for desktop operating systems and mobile platforms, such as Android, iOS, iPadOS, Tizen, Windows 10 Mobile and Windows Phone. VLC is also available on digital distribution platforms such as Apple’s App Store, Google Play and Microsoft Store. VLC supports many audio and video compression methods and file formats. It is able to stream media over computer networks and to transcode multimedia files.