These words refer to things that have visual impact or are dramatically appealing. Graphic may refer as neutral description to work that uses the elements and techniques of visual design: training in all phases of the graphic arts. It also extends metaphorically to anything having the clarity and power of written, printed, diagrammatic or visualized illustration: a graphic lesson in the pitfalls of befriending strangers; photographs that not only illustrate the article but lend it graphic force; giving graphic examples of how the two theories conflict. Vivid is a much more general and less specific word than graphic . Most strictly it suggests forceful visual representation or the use of dramatic graphic elements, especially colour: the vivid colours of the painting; a self-portrait that was a vivid study of the sag and breakdown of flesh in old age. Vivid is, of course, used widely outside the visual arts for anything that has a heightened or concentrated dramatic impact: a speech denouncing his opponent in vivid terms; her vivid portrayal of Lady Macbeth.

Pictorial is often restricted to the neutrally descriptive aspect of graphic , referring to elements of visual design or to the fact that something is represented visually or contains pictures: pictorial magazines; a film director strong in handling the pictorial elements but weak in giving his story line any sense of momentum. It may also refer to something that calls up visual images: a fiction writer with a flair for pictorial description. Picturesque is more closely related to vivid in stressing things having a dramatic visual impact. The special tone of the word often suggests that a scene is thought striking because it is panoramic, quaint, strange or unusual in some other way: Uccello’s picturesque battle tableaux; the picturesque minarets of Istanbul; a picturesque ride in a Venetian gondola.