Light is one of the most basic phenomena in the universe. The first words in the Bible are, “Let there be light!” A large part of the human brain is dedicated to translating the light reflected off of objects and onto our eyes to form an image of our surroundings. As discussed in Chapter 2, many human innovations have evolved around capturing and storing that image, mostly because of its use for communication purposes: first were the Stone Age cave painters; then followed the painters and sculptors of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance; then came photography, film, and digital storage of movies and photographs. Most recently, a computer science discipline evolved around computer-based interpretation of images, called computer vision. Recent years have brought rapid progress in the use of photography and movies through the popularity of digital cameras in cell phones. Many people now carry a device for capturing and sharing visual information and use it on a daily basis.

In this chapter, we introduce the basic properties of light and discuss how it is stored and reproduced. We examine basic image processing and introductory computer vision techniques in later chapters.