We present some recently developed methods to describe, generate and encode a wide variety of images, in a mathematical formalism which uses terminology of words and of formal languages. It is shown how complex images including those with fractal (self-similar) geometries can be defined as languages, in particular regular languages, over a code alphabet in which symbols denote affine transformations and words are interpreted as compositions as these transformations. The problem of automatic encoding of images by these methods is addressed which leads to the method of recursive subdivisions.