Types Of Computer Graphics

Discover Types of computer graphics. The birth of the multitasking operating systems brought about the revolutionary graphic user interface that made computers much more user friendly. The graphic user interface represented commands using icons (small pictures on the computer screen) as opposed to the menu driven interface or the command line interface. These icons could represent a single image data, several images and even images from a multiplicity of sources. Over the years, these have brought about the existence of different types of computer graphics.

The types of computer graphics can be broadly placed into three groups based on the image type. Notice that the image types affect both the input and output systems of computer. We shall now take a closer peek into the three major types of computer graphics.

The three types of computer graphics are: the two dimensional (2D), the three dimensional (3D) and computer animation. Although many years have passed since their inception, the 2D graphics have stood the test of time and are still used. Although not used very often compared to the pre-3D era, most people still use them to represent graphic data.

Steve Jobs, who revolutionized the technology industry with his brilliant ideas, used typography, one of the traditional drawing techniques that solely relied on two dimensional graphics. It is safe to say that the 2D graphics helped in the design of modern typefaces of modern gadgets. The 2D graphics are still preferred in certain fields which deem them more holistic in representing the information they intend to convey.

The 2D graphics can be further placed into two groups: the raster and the vector graphics. Raster graphics are an aggregation of pixels. As the cell is the basic unit of life, a pixel is the basic unit of raster graphics images. The images on your computer screen can be magnified until a single uniform physical point is identified. This is a pixel. The colors and shades of each pixel can vary.

The term vector is derived from math. Those of us who last saw the inside of a mathematics class in high school remember drawing lines in an x-y grid known as vectors. The more indelible example of vectors was the null or zero vectors. Indeed the vector graphics images are defined by mathematics equations. This should give you idea of the intense precision, flexibility and quality of such images. It is for this reason that they are popular in professional photography. The basic unit of vector graphics images is an object. This could be of any shape of color. The equations manipulate the position of the objects.

Three dimensional graphics images also make use of mathematics to represent 3D objects. Special kind of software is used for this. This makes using 3D images very user friendly and popular.

Computer animation graphics is the final example of the types of computer graphics. To animate means to give life. Therefore, the software that generates such graphics quite literally gives life to the traditional form of images. These programs make 2D and 3D images move.