This book is about the computer image, emphasising the 'how', but also addressing the 'whys' and 'wherefores' of this creation of the 20th century. Where did it come from? Where is it going? What is its importance? These questions cannot be answered without a knowledge of the technology itself, its past and its evolutionary forces. The three main fields of computer imagery; computer graphics, image processing and computer vision, are merging in many applications. Computer vision techniques are used in computer graphics to collect and model complex scenes; computer graphics techniques are used to constrain the recognition of 3D objects by computers; image processing techniques are routinely used by graphic designers to manipulate photographs. For the first time this textbook brings all three areas together in a coherent overview.