Editorial Review

Reviews (2)

complete text
Interesting and rather complete introduction to machine vision and provides enough information for implementation of practical algorithms. It covers many of the theories useful for information extraction.

Machine Vision
This book has a thorough discussion of the topics of computer vision.It starts with the basic elements of computer images and eventually explains stereo images and 3-dimensionality.

Reviews (1)

Reviews (7)

Image Analysis Book Review
I found the book to be very informative and I acquired several ideas from reading it. But, I repeatedly found myself searching the book for definitions of some of the terms it uses throughout its text. Practical Algorithms for Image Analysis will introduce new terms without any hint of their meaning, assuming that the reader already knows all they need to know about the subject matter (which would negate the need to buy the book!). This book sorely needs a glossary.

It's just great
The book is just great! I used the source code from the CD-ROM for various image processing projects. The algorithms are also very practical if you have to deal with images. The code is neat and ready to compile and run.

Also this book is good on the description of image process and image analysis algorithms. I read the whole book and use it as a reference during my programming. It sits in my bookshelf and I use it almost everyday.

I recommend anybody who wishes to do serious image programming to have this book. It's just great!

Reviews (2)

Best Intro. Text I've Used
This text is excellent as the basis for an introduction to CV, it treats a wide variety of topics in a clear and accessible manner. I particularly appreciated the books coverage of topics which aren't traditionally considered to be CV topics (like classification and some material on probabilistic inference). Highly recommended.

Excellent introduction guide
The book presents a nice complement to Image Processing, Analysis and Machine Vision (Image Processing, Analysis, and Machine Vision, 2nd ed., M. Sonka, V. Hlavac, and R. Boyle, 1998, IPAMV). As the difference in names implies, Computer Vision is not appropriate as an image processing textbook. It contains sufficient information on image processing to implement computer vision algorithms, but the focus of the book is on image analysis and high-level vision. The result is that the combination of IPAMV and Computer Vision cover the spectrum from intensive image processing and manipulation to high level analysis, object recognition and content-based image retrieval.

Computer Vision contains sixteen chapters that fall into roughly four categories: overview, 2-D CV topics, 3D CV topics, and special CV topics. Since it was written with the intent of reaching a broader audience than IPAMV, this book is appropriate as a primary text or reference for a wider variety of courses. For example, it would be appropriate for courses ranging from an introduction to imaging for non-scientists to a sophomore-junior elective to a first-year graduate seminar.

The overview chapters (chapters 1-4) include a summary of problems in CV, imaging and image representations, simple binary image analysis and a survey of pattern recognition concepts. The 2-D processing topics (chapters 3, 5-7, and 11) include thresholding and binary image analysis, filtering and enhancement, edge detection, Fourier Transforms, color, texture, segmentation, and 2-D matching and pose calculation. The 3-D computer vision topics (chapters 9-10, and 12-14) include motion detection and analysis, range image analysis, stereo, calibration, intrinsic image analysis and line labeling, shape from X, and camera models. The special topics (chapters 6-8, 15-16) include color and shading, texture, content-based retrieval, virtual reality, and a set of case studies of CV systems. Different combinations of these are appropriate for different types of courses.

In comparison with other texts, the coverage of color and shading in Computer Vision is the best available without consulting a color reference such as Fairchild's Color Appearance Models (described below). However, it still does not contain adequate coverage of physical models of reflection or color appearance. The texture chapter is comparable to Sonka et. al., and the CBIR and VR chapters are unique. It is these latter two areas that give Computer Vision a nice high-level flavor and provides a reference for these growing areas of CV.

Like IPAMV, Computer Vision contains a large number of example images, diagrams, and algorithms. The writing is clear and the mathematics--when it is necessary to present it--is complete and accessible. Since the book is designed with multiple audiences in mind, the heavy mathematical sections are flagged and the book can be used effectively with or without them.

Of particular interest to CV practitioners and students dealing with issues of calibration, chapter 13 contains a nice description of Roger Tsai's camera calibration algorithm, complete with an example. Note that Trucco and Verri (see below) also cover Tsai's calibration algorithm.

Reviews (3)

The cover shown is for the 1976 edition description 1990 ed
The cover shown is for the 1976 edition, which, incidentally
sold originally for $9.95. The description given is for the 1990
edition! This could very well confuse a buyer and needs to be
corrected.

Dave Rogers

Mathematical Elements for Computer Graphics
While written over 24 years ago, I was hoping this book would give me an understanding of the mathematical basis (if not the current state-of-the art;) ) of computer graphics.Despite (arguable to many) years ofuniversity math courses, I found this volume merely humbling, rather thanenlightening.If you are more comfortable with fairly advancedmathematical notation and concepts than most, especially relative togeometry, you may find this book useful.I found it only marginally useful-- primarilly as a reference to some concepts I had previously beenexposed.Best of luck.

Editorial Review

The third edition of Alan Watt's 3D Computer Graphics, a bible of computer graphics, includes a CD-ROM full of examples and updated information on graphics and rendering algorithms. The book discusses many of the techniques that have evolved in the seven years since the previous edition was published.

3D Computer Graphics is a textbook, and it's designed for serious programmers creating graphics applications (not end users). Over the course of 16 sections, Watt introduces the concepts and implementation of computer imaging, from "Mathematical Fundamentals of Computer Graphics" to "Representation and Rendering" and ending with "Image-Based Rendering and Photo-Modeling." The last section, devoted to computer animation, includes methods for linked structures, collision detection, and particle animation (to name a few).

Although the topics are sometimes hard to grasp, Mr. Watt writes clearly and concisely, making generous use of diagrams to help convey the principles described in the text.

The accompanying CD-ROM includes over a dozen studies of computer graphics techniques and rendering algorithms. Presented in HTML, the exhaustive studies, each with a matrix of thumbnails, demonstrates the varied achievable results. One minor complaint here: although the thumbnails can be clicked to view a much larger image, the larger versions come in .tif format, which few (if any) Web browsers can view. Users will need another application to view them. Having the large image in .jpg format would have enabled the reader to view it in the already-open Web browser.

Reviews (3)

very useful for surface reconstruction
I have used this book for preparing some of my lectureson computer vision. In particular in areas such as stereo and shape-from-shading, it belonged to the textbooks that were most useful for me: The explanations are supplemented with many illustrations, the descriptions are easy tounderstand for students, and eventually the methods arerepresented by concise algorithms enabling straightforward implementations. While this book is not intended to coverall areas in computer vision, it may serve as a very usefulintroduction to those fields where its authors are experts:stereo reconstruction and shape-from-shading. In my opinion, computer vision has not yet matured to ascientific field where it is possible to write five starstextbooks, but this book certainly deserves four stars.

A great practical book
This book gives in a simple and explicit way all of the fine details one needs in order to implement 3D reconstruction methods.

I have been teaching computer vision for a while, and whenever a new student needs to learn about the bits and bytes of a specific algorithm I refer her/him to this book.

It is a great book for beginners and those that set up their own systems.

From a Graduate Student
This book is full of mistypings, spelling errors and grammar errors. It annoys you with all of its sentences. If only the authors didn't use the word "respectively"... The book repeats itself, goes in deep details with the simplest tasks any computer science student should know, and passes the more advanced ones without proper explanations. It leaves you with the impression that the authors do not fully understand what they are speaking about. In some parts, it is as unscientific as a scientific textbook can be. For example, in explaining white balance procedure of a ccd camera the book tells you to turn the camera towards a white object and press the white balance button.

Reviews (7)

A book for beginner: Very Well Done!
A very simple and clearly written book; richly and highly appropriately illustrated. A perfect option to start with the computer graphics math.

Yes, like some of the reviewers below mentioned, there's a whole lot more to computer graphics math than just what's covered in this book, but you gotta start somewhere, and it better not be overwhelming at first. Which is not to be interpreted like this book is cursory or superficial, it's just fine and discusses a lot of relevant topics; after all, to cover everything is impossible, you gotta get comfortable with the basics and them scour the net for papers. Mortensons's book is a very high quality work, thumbs up. And, interestingly, it doesn't cost $... like some other books of the similar kind. Thank you, Mr Author, please give us more of the same.

PS. Again, this is a good refresher or starting book; for someone with a PhD in comp. graphics there'll be nothing new there -- it's not a collection of academic papers on current goings on. But I know of no better book for a moderately math-competent beginner. I love this book, I wish all I read was written like it. Visually it's very good too: readable fonts, big-size sheets, clear and illustrative figures. And the book is not one of those 2000-page lumps of everything the authors thought could be included to make it look respectable -- it's moderately sized and easy to handle, you don't need a truck to take it along when you're going somewhere.

Not bad, but not the best
Though the book covers a broad range of mathematics present in the field of computer graphics, I found it lacking in certain respects.The plentiful diagrams and figures greatly assisted comprehension of stated materials, yet I would like to see written proofs of methods used.In addition, such topics as quaternions are only briefly mentioned in historical references.Although this is an excellant mathematics book, I strongly recommend the purchase of Mathematics for 3D Game Programming & Computer Graphics in addition to this title.

great math book (did i really say that!)
if you want to learn the mathematics behind computer graphics buy this book.

it is well written and the explanations are first rate.i'm studying on my own with the book and hardly have need to ask others for any help with understanding topics.

i'm not sure what else to say, except I first tried Mathematics for Computer Graphics and Game Programming and it was pretty horrible compared to this book.

Reviews (2)

Not that good
During my master thesis I read parts of this book. One thing I can say about it, is that if you don't know projective geometry when beginning to read this book, you will not learn it from here. Yes, Faugeras probably has a very intuitive feel for this field of science but he does not explain his ideas in a pedagogical manner. My advise is, read the book and get the idea, then read some other book to do it. Faugeras will not tell you how.

I got this confirmed from two other sources as well, after discovering it myself.

Reviews (8)

Outstanding Book !
This book is just GREAT.
It covers almost every single ascpect of image and video processing. Everything is in deep and very good explained. A lot of before-and-after example pictures (important ones in color) are provided too. But beware. You need a fairly good understanding of math to read the book. It is not intended to explain how to use Photoshop, but rather how to write your own ;-)
This book is not a read-along book. Sometimes you have to read a section 2 or 3 times to understand it.
I think sometimes a good Snippet of C-Code would help to understand, but this is acceptable.
Again: A outstanding book, which fully covers all my needs.
The price of 100 us$ is ok, because it's a lot of a book...

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Image Processing for the mathematically inclined
This is an encyclopedia of image processing topics.It contains some introductory material to help people understand what images are and how to process them.The majority of the text, however, is for experiencedpeople wanting to look up topics.

This book is big.It is about 8"x11" by 900 pages.It contains material from 100 different professionals on 50 different topics.

The style is academic.The editor is the editor of the IEEE Transactions on Image Processing.The page style is similar to what you would see in an IEEE Transaction.

There is plenty of math.The text explains the mathematics, but not to the depth I would like to see.

The authors illustrate the techniques with many images.If there are no "before and after" images in an image processing book, reject it.Well, this book has plenty of images.That is a strong point.

A week point is there is no source codeillustrating the techniques and algorithms.I find this a major weakness, but one that is not unique to this book.

The authors leave much to the reader.This is not a read from cover to cover book.The reader must go slow, take notes, study, and read again to understand the material.

Reviews (49)

Bets I've seen
This book is by far the best I've seen of its kind.I have read reviews that say the tutorials get lost in the long paragraphs, but those reviewers obviously didn't open the CD, because every single tutorial is presented in a step by step video that is shot from a first person perspective.How much easier could it be?This book is perfect for those new to Maya 4, because once you've finished this book, you can model a character from scratch, apply textures, set camera shots and various other activities and for those who have intermediate experience will find this book useful as a refresher and possibly learn short cuts to their work flow.The best thing about the book is that if the reader chose to, he or she could simply pop in the CD and learn all that this book has to offer.I am actually looking for other books written by these authors, becasue I haven't seen anything close to the way they teach.

tutorials are of little help
I am not certain how many users praising this book my have used an older version of Maya to work through the tutorials.While I do not have any difficulties with any tutorials released by Alias Wave-front, the exercises in this book do not match Maya 4.0.Windows that according to the book are supposed to pop up do not, and if they do, they look entirely different from the images in the book.I suspect that Maya 3 looked like this and the book was released without a thorough update, to match number 4.This does render the book quite useless.

Reviews (8)

Not for the beginner
Book uses a very analytical approach. Concepts are very poorly explained and derviations are not explained. As a text this book is well suited as a review for graduate level students. Using the word introductory in the title is very misleading. Do not recommend this book to those looking for an introduction to the world of computer vision.

The best textbook for computer vision
This is the best textbook for computer vision I've ever met. Compared with Forsyth and Ponce's heavy book titled with "computer vision: a modern approach", this book is very concise, precise, and suitable to be used in classes. Definitions are carefully given. Pseudocode is extremely helpful for practical use. Also some sections about mathematics are appreciated to understand the underlying algorithms. If you want to learn more or do research, then read Forsyth's book after finishing reading this book. Several my collegues think this book is the first choice for new comers in this field.

Editorial Review

Reinventing the wheel is a terrible waste of time, yet legions of computer programmers do exactly that every day. Geometric Tools for Computer Graphics gives the working graphics programmer a vast collection of programming examples, complex code snippets explained and ready to use. Each chapter is filled with more than just code examples--the explanations needed to understand why these examples work the way they do are given by authors with experience both in writing and in the field.

There is nothing here for the casual graphics programmer and everything for the serious 2-D and 3-D programmer. Thirteen chapters, three appendices, and a three-column index that spans over 30 pages cover everything about computer-graphic geometry, from the basics of using matrices and linear systems to intersecting 3-D objects.

The appendices alone are worth the price: "Numerical Methods," "Trigonometry," and "Basic Formulas for Geometric Primitives" are treasures filled with hard-core examples of the kind that can be put to use right out of the box. Less experienced programmers will find these to be invaluable references, but then there's the rest of the book--nearly 1,000 pages loaded with examples and theory, page after page of information written in a clear, concise voice.

Editorial Review

One would think that the title of Tomas Moller's and Eric Haines's book, Real-Time Rendering, would be a contradiction in terms. How can such a computationally intensive process as rendering computer graphics ever hope to be done on the fly, in the blink of an eye, without delay--in short, in real time?

The term rendering, as it applies to computer graphics, refers to the mathematically intensive process of creating a picture or sequence of frames based on geometry. The duration of this process is dependent on the complexity of the scene (a forest with many trees and thousands of leaves will take much longer to render than a scene consisting of a white box over a gray background) and the speed of the hardware doing the calculations.

When Pixar's Toy Story was first released, the computer animation community was all abuzz with how it was done, and someone at Pixar mentioned that over 100 SGI workstations were used for rendering the frames over the course of almost two years. Someone else extrapolated this data and figured out that the same movie could have been rendered on one contemporary PC over the course of about 80 years.

The authors deftly answer the question, not only asserting that it can be done, but since this book is a programmer's guide, they list snippets of programming algorithms that help outline how it can be done.

Because the software and hardware is constantly and rapidly evolving due to the insatiable need for more realistic and complex graphics, the book avoids getting too specific. To quote the authors, "The field is rapidly evolving, and so it is a moving target." This lack of specificity doesn't detract from the usefulness of the book, though. Instead, it works at a higher, more abstract level, describing approaches to rendering techniques using generic algorithms. It is up to the programmer to apply these methods to the specific program or system on which it is to be implemented.

Reviews (25)

Excellent
This was my first book on computer graphics. It is extremely detailed - the chapters on modelling, rendering and ray tracing have a huge wealth of information. It wont teach you OpenGL but will do enough to get you going with the it's API. A lot of math is invloved and you must be prepared to hand solve a lot of equations to understand them. Also your coding has to be top notch to implement the more challenging topics - know your programming and know it very well to get the most out of this book

P.S. There is a mistake in the refraction equation at one place in the ray tracing chapters - drove me absolutely nuts for a while. Otherwise this should be your first book on graphics.

Very Useful Book
There are a few caveats to anyone who is interested in programming in graphics:it's pretty difficult and it's based entirely in mathematics; you need to know a few things about physics, not just computers; and you need to be prepared to spend a lot of time learning.

I have used this book for two courses.It was a required textbook for my introductory graphics course in which I built a ray tracer.To the best of my knowledge, the book's coverage of ray tracing is substantial and excellent.I also found myself using this book as a reference for a geometric modeling course; the coverage on different curves and surfaces is rather short, but what's there is superb.The explanations provided include discussion on the mathematics, which is a great boon for anyone who's actually trying to understand what's going on under the covers.

From what I have read, this is not a great book for OpenGL programming.(I attempted to learn a bit of OpenGL from this book.)It should be noted, however, that the title is "Computer Graphics using OpenGL," not "Learning how to use the OpenGL API."There's a pretty substantial difference.Hill's concentration is definitely on computer graphics, not on OpenGL.

I would highly recommend this book for anyone who is interested in learning about computer graphics from an implementation-oriented perspective.

Thorough but verbose
This was used in my introductory course in 3D graphics for undergrad Computer Science.The author demonstrates his expertise in the subject by his thorough coverage of the material, as well the lucidity of the content within the book itself.What truly amazed me is how well he explained the Linear Algebra concepts (albeit basic) to those who have never taken Linear algebra.After reading a good portion of the book, I hav come to a few conclusions: the book does not focus on the OpenGL API simply because one must first understand the underlying math behind the API, I've noticed that having a good grasp of the mathematics helps w/ the construction of 3D applications regardless of what API you are using (there may be some slight retraining, but nonetheless, the math is the same).

The book merely uses OpenGL to demonstrate the concepts, but it is not meant to serve as an OpenGL tutorial - there are plenty of other tutorials out there, some are free, go read those instead.However, if you want to understand the mathematics behind the 3D components, then this is the book to read.

So now, why 4 stars if the book seems perfect?I would have given it a 5, but the exercises are too long, Chapter 6 contains an inordinate amount of exercises, some take over 20 minutes to finish (for one problem).Because the book doesn't focus too much on OpenGL, you'll find yourself reading another book for OpenGL itself.So if you're doing exercises in Chapter 5, and some later Chapters (7 and up), you'll find yourself hard pressed for an OpenGL reference.