1. A method of displaying a composite image represented by a hierarchically ordered coupling of elements, the elements including a reference to a parent element and references to any child elements, the elements apportioned into classes including image elements and process elements, the image elements including an image raster and at least one transform, the method comprising the steps of: a) designating all the elements at the lowest level of the hierarchically ordered coupling of elements as current working elements; b) for each current working element that is an image element, transforming the image raster using the associated image element transform; c) for each current working element that is a process element, processing the coupled children according to a process associated with the process element; d) designating the parent elements of the working elements as the working elements; e) repeating steps b through d until all of the elements in the image processing tree have been processed; and f) displaying an image defined by the image processing tree on the display screen.