Graphics in the Complex Plane

Functions of a complex variable

It is often awkward to work in terms of 2-D physical coordinates and physical colour values when constructing Pic values. A more convenient approach is to represent pictures as mappings from the unit square in the complex plane to normalised colour values.

Using the complex plane has several advantages: the standard Haskell module Complex defines a useful collection of functions (including complex extensions of the common functions of analysis) and the Haskell class mechanism can lift real literals to their complex equivalents where necessary.

The CGraphics ('Complex Graphics') module introduces the following types and constants:

    -- Type of normalised colours (R,G,B components in range 0 to 1)
    type ColorF = (Float, Float, Float)

    -- Normalised colour values
    redF, greenF, ...  :: ColorF

    -- Pictures defined on the complex plane
    type CPic = Complex Float -> ColorF

    -- Conversion of CPic pictures to Pic (ie ordinary) pictures
    -- of specified size
    cPicToPic :: Int -> CPic -> Pic

Simple images

An image consisting of a red disc of radius 0.5 on a black background is represented by the function

    redDisc z = if magnitude z < 0.5 then redF else blackF

It can be transformed into an ordinary (ie, Bitmap) picture of size n by n by application of the function cPicToPic n. For example

Colour cube

A plane through the the (R,G,B) colour cube is represented by the function

    spectrum (x :+ y) = ((1+x)/2,  (1+y)/2,  (2 -(x+y))/4)

Here, the constructor ":+" (defined in the Data.Complex library module) is used to extract the real and imaginary components of the complex argument. The RHS of the function definition is a triple of R/G/B colour components, each within the interval 0 to 1. For example: (The function toPic :: CPic -> Pic is used in subsequent examples.)

Checker-board pattern

The function

    mkTiles :: Int -> ColorF -> ColorF -> CPic

generates checker-board patterns. For example: (The checkerboard function tiles is used in subsequent examples.)

Transformations defined on the complex plane

Since pictures in this representation (ie, type CPic) are functions, they may be spatially transformed by post-composing them with mappings defined on the complex plane. For example, composition with the function (* 2) doubles the scale (the cPicToPic function tesselates the original picture as necessary), whilst composition with the function (* exp (0 :+ theta)) rotates a picture by theta radians (courtesy of Euler's identity). For example:

Composition with the cubing function (^ 3)) replicates an image three times around the origin whilst composition with the exponential function, exp, magnifies it along the x axis and rotates it along the y axis:

Conformal transforms

A conformal transformation is one that is angle-preserving. A standard result of analysis is that analytic functions are conformal. The transformations illustrated above are conformal.

Swirling patterns

Swirling patterns (motivated by those illustrated in Conal Elliott's Pan system) are most naturally described in polar coordinates. A swirl transform is one in which the angle of rotation depends upon the radius. Here is such a function

    swirl (r, theta) = (r, r + theta)

Use of the polar function (defined in library module Data.Complex) to convert from Cartesian coordinates to polar ones and its inverse, the cart function (defined in module CGraphics), to convert back again, allows the swirl function to be expressed in Cartesian coordinates. For example: (Note that swirls are not conformal transforms.)

Complex transforms applied to images

The above functions can, of course, be applied to pictures derived from images. The function

    imageToCPic :: Pic -> CPic

(defined in the CGraphics module simply as the composition of two of the earlier functions) converts an image to the normalised picture form.

For example, here is the swirl of a poet:

and here is the cube of a penguin . . .