Illustrative rendering has gone a long way already. While it has been a topic at Eurographics, ACM SIGGRAPH, and other events since the early nineties, it was basically introduced to visualization by Interrante et al. in 1996 [2], and later by Treavett/Chen [3] and by Ebert/Rheingans [1].

At last years IEEE Visualization conference, illustrative rendering for visualization has been identified as one of the items on the agenda of future research items. Furthermore, it has been chosen next to perception and other topics as one of the special topic areas for IEEE Visualization 2005.

Illustrative rendering, often also depicted as non-photorealistic rendering1 or stylized rendering, employs abstraction techniques to convey the relevant information, and de-emphasize less important details. The question remains how this abstraction process is guided and in particular how can we ensure that relevant information is maintained. Consequently, research on illustrative rendering needs to address how the information is perceived by the human observer, next to the investigation of algorithmic aspects.

In this panel, we will discuss various aspects on this topic. Kwan-Liu Ma will discuss how illustrative rendering can be used.