Chapter two

Graphics Hardware And Software

 Introduction

• Important elements of computer graphics in detail which are: hardware and software.
• Hardware components include,
• Video monitors,
• Hard-copy devices,
• Graphics input devices
• Graphics output devices.
• Graphics software includes
• Applications packages and
• General programming packages
• Hard-copy devices for graphics
• Standard printers and
• Plotters.
• Input devices include image scanners, digitizers, touch panels, light pens, and voice systems.
• Graphics Systems is display by CRT, flat-panel technology. Flat panel include plasma panels and liquid-
crystal devices.
 Hardware components: Video Display Devices:

• Typically, the primary output device in a graphics system is a video monitor

shown in the figure below.
• The operation of most video monitors is based on the standard cathode-ray tube
(CRT) design.
• Basic operation of CRT
• A beam of electrons, emitted by an electron gun
passes through focusing and deflection systems
• Display on the phosphates screen
• The phosphor then emits a small spot of light at each position

Computer Graphics Workstation

 Cont’d

• Raster-scan displays
• The most common type of graphics monitor employing a CRT is the raster-scan display, ,
based on television technology
Electron beam is swept across the screen one row at a time from top to bottom
• As, the electron beam moves across each row, the beam intensity is turned on and off to
create a pattern of illuminated spots.
 Cont’d

• Random-Scan Displays
• When operated as a random-scan display unit, a CRT has the electron beam directed only to
the parts of the screen where a picture is to be drawn.
• Random- scan monitors draw a picture one line at a time so it is also referred to as vector displays.
• The component lines of a picture can be drawn and refreshed by a random-scan system in any specified order
• Random-scan displays are designed to draw all the component lines
• Random-scan systems are designed for line drawing applications and cannot display realistic shaded scenes.
• vector displays generally have higher resolution than raster systems.
 Cont’d

• Colour CRT Monitors

• A CRT monitor displays colour pictures by using a combination of phosphors that emit
different-coloured light.
• By combining the emitted light from the different phosphors, a range of colours can be
generated.
• The two basic techniques for producing colour displays with a CRT are the beam penetration
method and the shadow-mask method.

 Beam Penetration Method Shadow Mask Method

 Cont’d

• Flat-Panel Displays
• Although most graphics monitors are still constructed with CRTs, other technologies are
emerging that is replacing CRT monitors is flat-panel displays.
• It is thinner than CRTs, and we can hang them on walls or wear them on our wrists.
• There are two types of flat-panel displays: emissive displays and non-emissive displays.
• 1. Emissive (አፍላቂነት) Display: The emissive displays are devices that convert electrical energy
into light.
• Examples are Plasma Panel, thin film electroluminescent display and LED (Light Emitting Diodes).
• 2. Non-Emissive (ኢ-አፍላቂነት) Display: The Non-Emissive displays use optical effects to convert
sunlight or light from some other source into graphics patterns.
• Examples are LCD (Liquid Crystal Device).
 Three-Dimensional Viewing Devices

• Graphics monitors for the display of three-dimensional scenes have been devised using a
technique that reflects a CRT image from a vibrating, flexible mirror.
• The operation of such a system is uses varifocal mirror vibrates, change of focal length.
• These vibrations are synchronized with the display of an object on a CRT.
• each point on the object is reflected from the mirror into a spatial position corresponding to
the distance of that point from a specified viewing position.
• This allows us to walk around an object or scene and view it from different sides.
 Cont’d
• Stereoscopic (ጠልቅ) and virtual reality systems
• The technique for representing three dimensional objects is displaying stereoscopic views.
• This method does not produce hue three-dimensional images, but
• It does provide a three-dimensional effect by presenting a different view to each eye of an
observer
• So that scenes do appear to have depth.
• An interactive virtual-reality environment can also be viewed with stereoscopic glasses and a
video monitor, instead of a headset.
• This provides a means for obtaining a lower cost virtual-reality system.
• Stereoscopic vision is what gives
us the ability to see objects with
height, width, and depth.
• Find out how depth perception
and stereoscopic vision works.
 RASTER-SCAN SYSTEMS
• Video Controller:
• a commonly used organization for raster systems.
• Video controller is given direct access to the frame-buffer
memory.
• A fixed area of the system memory is reserved for the
frame buffer
• Frame buffer locations, and the corresponding screen
positions, are referenced in Cartesian coordinates.
• For many graphics monitors, the coordinate origin is
defined at the upper left screen corner.
Basic video-controller refresh operations.
• The screen surface is then represented as the first
quadrant of a two-dimensional system
• Positive x values increasing to the right and positive y values increasing from top to bottom.
• Two registers are used to store the coordinates of the screen pixels.
• After cycling through all pixels along the bottom scan line, the video controller resets the
registers to the first pixel position on the top scan line and the refresh process starts over.
 Cont’d

• Raster Scan Display Processor

• A major task of the display processor is digitizing a picture
definition given in an application program into a set of pixel-
intensity values for storage in the frame buffer.
• This digitization process is called scan conversion. Character defined as a rectangular grid
• Graphics commands specifying straight lines and other of pixel position
geometric objects are scan converted into a set of discrete
intensity points.
• Display processors are also designed to perform a number of
additional operations.
• These functions include generating various line styles (dashed,
dotted, or solid), displaying colour areas, and performing certain Character defined as a curve outline
transformations and manipulations on displayed objects.
• Also, display processors are typically designed to interface with
interactive input devices, such as a mouse.
 Understanding: Natural light and Colour
• Color is all around us.
• It is a sensation that adds excitement and emotion to our life.
• In order to understand color we need a brief overview of light.
• Without light, there would be no color.
• Light is made up of energy waves which are grouped together in what is called a spectrum.
• Light that appears white to us, such as light from the sun, is actually composed of many colors.
• The wavelengths of light are not colored, but produce the sensation of color.
 Cont’d

• Computerized colour:
• In computer colours can be described and represented by numbers of tuples  with the help of
mathematical model.
• Typically as three or four values or colour components are RGB, CMY and many more.
• Colour palettes:
• In computer graphics a palette is a finite set of colours.
• Palettes can be optimized to improve image accuracy in the presence of software or hardware
constraints
 INPUT DEVICES:
• Keyboards
• Mouse
• Z - mouse : viewing position and orientation through a three dimensional scene.
• Applications of the Z mouse include virtual reality, CAD, and animation.
• Trackball and Space-ball: Trackballs are often mounted on keyboards or other devices such as the Z mouse.
• Space balls are used for three-dimensional positioning and selection operations in virtual-reality systems, modeling,
animation, CAD, and other applications
• Joysticks :A joystick consists of a small, vertical lever (called the stick) mounted on a base that is used to steer the
screen cursor around.
• Data Gloves: The glove is constructed with a series of sensors that detect hand and finger motions.
• Input from the glove can be used to position or manipulate objects in a virtual scene.
• Digitizers: A common device for drawing, painting, or interactively selecting coordinate positions on an object is a
digitizer.
• Image Scanners
• Touch Panels
• Light Pens : pencil-shaped devices are used to select screen positions by detecting the light coming from points on
the CRT screen.
• Voice Systems
• HARD-COPY DEVICES: plotters and printers
 GRAPHICS SOFTWARE
• GRAPHICS SOFTWARE
• There are two general classifications for graphics software:
• general programming packages and special-purpose applications packages.
• A general graphics programming package provides an extensive set of graphics functions
that can be used in a high-level programming language, such as C or FORTRAN.
• GRAPHICS FUNCTION
• A general-purpose graphics package provides users with a variety of functions for
creating and manipulating pictures
•
 COLOR MODELS AND COLOR APPLICATIONS

• Light sources are described in this unit in terms of their dominant frequency brightness, and
saturation.
• Complementary colour sources are explain, that combine to produce white light.
• Common colour model are defined in this unit with three primary colours are the RGB and
CMY models.
• Moreover Video monitor displays are explain use of RGB model, while hardcopy devices
produce colour output using the CMY model.
 Cont’d

• Visible light: The wavelengths that our eyes can detect is only a small portion of the electromagnetic
energy spectrum.
• We call this the visible light spectrum.
• At one end of the visible spectrum are the short wavelengths of light we perceive as blue.
• At the other end of the visible spectrum are the longer wavelengths of light we perceive as red.
• All the other colors we can see in nature are found somewhere along the spectrum between blue and red.

Primary colors Extraction of colors from sun light

• If the visible portion of the light spectrum is divided into thirds, the predominant colors are red, green and
blue.
• These three colors are considered the primary colors of the visible light spectrum.
•  In between the primary colors are the secondary colors, cyan, magenta and yellow (CMY), which form
another triangle.
 Cont’d

• Properties of Light:
• What we perceive as 'light", or different colours, is a narrow frequency band within the
electromagnetic spectrum.
• A few of the other frequency bands within this spectrum are called radio waves, microwaves,
infrared waves, and X-rays.
 Cont’d

• XYZ
  Colour Model: The set of CIE (Commission International De Eclarite) primaries is generally
referred to as the XYZ, or (X, Y, Z), colour model, where
• X, Y, and Z represent vectors in a three-dimensional, additive colour space.
• Any colour Ch, is then expressed as
Cx=XX’+YY’+ZZ’
• where X’, Y’, and Z’ designate the amounts of the standard primaries needed to match C,. In
discussing colour properties, it is convenient to normalize the amounts in
y z
• with x + y + z = 1. Thus, any colour can be represented with just the x
and y amounts.
 Cont’d

• CIE Chromaticity Diagram

• When we plot the normalized amounts x and y for colors in the visible spectrum, we obtain the
tongue-shaped curve shown in Fig.
• This curve is called the CIE chromaticity diagram.
• A color can be specified by its chromaticity and luminance
Luminance of a color is the color’s brightness, or the intensity
of the light it represents, without regard for its actual color.

brightness ratios are approximately 6:3:1 for green : red : blue

CIE Chromaticity Diagram Spectral color positions along

curve are labeled in wavelength units (nm).
 Cont’d

• Intuitive Colour Concepts

• An, artist creates a colour painting by mixing colour pigments with white and black pigments
to form the various shades, tints, and tones in the scene.
• It is generally much easier to think of making a color lighter by adding white and making
a color darker by adding black.
• Therefore graphic packages providing color palettes to a user often employ two or more color
models.
• One model provides an intuitive color interface for the user, and others describe the color
components for the output devices.
 RGB Colour Model:
• RGB Colour Model:
• Based on the tri stimulus theory of vision, our eyes perceive color through the stimulation of
three visual pigments in the cones of the retina.
• By comparing intensities in a light source, we perceive the color of the light.
• This theory of vision is the basis for displaying color output on a video monitor using the
three color primaries, red, green, and blue, referred to as the RGB color model.
• We can represent this model with the unit cube defined on R, G, and B axes

Thus, a color Cx, is expressed in

RGB components a

Cx=RR+GG+BB
The RGB color model
The RGB color model
• CMY COLOR MODEL:
• A color model defined with the primary colors cyan, magenta, and yellow (CMY) is useful for
describing color output to hard-copy devices.
• when white light is reflected from cyan-colored ink, the
reflected light MY must have no red component.
• That is, red light is absorbed, or subtracted, by the ink.
• Similarly, magenta ink subtracts the green component from
incident light, Magenta and yellow subtracts the blue
component.
• A unit cube representation for the CMY model is illustrated
in fig. CMY model defining colors with
 Cont’d

• HSV Colour Model :

• Instead of a set of color primaries, the HSV model uses color descriptions that have a more intuitive
appeal to a user.
• To give a color specification, a user selects a spectral color and the amounts of white and black that are to
be added to obtain different shades, tints, and tones.
• Color parameters in this model are: hue (H), saturation (S), and value (V) .
• hue (intuitively, a descriptive variation on a standard color such as red, or magenta, or blue, or cyan, or
green, or yellow)
• value (a property of darkness or lightness)
• Saturation (a property of brightness)
• colors getting lighter have the same
behavior as colors getting less saturated.
• Hue and saturation have the same meaning as HSV but lightness replaces value, and lightness
corresponds to the brightest colors at a value o
 Colour Selection and Applications:
• A graphics package can provide color capabilities in a way that aids us in making color
selections.
• Various combinations of colors can be selected using sliders and color wheels, and the system
can also be designed to aid in the selection of harmonizing colors.
• In addition, the designer of a package can follow some basic color rules when designing
the color displays that are to be presented to a user.