Image processing and computer vision are closely related fields, but they serve different purposes. Image processing involves enhancing or manipulating images to prepare them for analysis, such as resizing, filtering, or noise reduction.
Computer vision goes a step further, interpreting the processed image to extract meaningful information, like recognizing objects, detecting faces, or classifying scenes. For example, preprocessing a medical image to remove noise is image processing, while diagnosing a tumor in the image is computer vision.
Image processing is often a foundational step in computer vision workflows, ensuring the input data is clean and ready for analysis. Together, they enable applications in fields like healthcare, security, and entertainment.