Image and Document Imaging Development Toolkits

Display images to any display device. The display feature provides an easy to use solution for developers. Application developers now do not have to spend expensive engineering time implementing complicated display routines. Just a few function calls and the Black Ice display routine will do the rest.

From simple BMP files to more complex TIFF, JPEG and PDF file, everything is included. The Black Ice Imaging Toolkits can create standard Group 3 1d, Group 3 2d or Group 4 faxable TIFF files, create JPEG files for web sites, color faxing or photo albums, or use other formats like PDF, PCX, GIF, PNG, etc.. The TIFF and JPEG libraries developed by Black Ice Software are among the first and most extensive TIFF and JPEG file format processing and encoding/decoding libraries available on the market.

Image transformations such as rotations, inversions, etc., are important and one of the most widely used components of any imaging toolkit.  Image transforms produce results quickly without degrading the quality of the image.

The Black Ice Software’s Imaging controls are designed to assist developers in building web-based Internet imaging applications.  You can build a server based or client based image-processing web application with quick integration using the Imaging ActiveX controls.

Supports all of the popular data compression methods used in Imaging.

Scanning support is based on the latest TWAIN 1.9 drivers. With the latest TWAIN drivers, application developers have total control over every aspect of the scanning process. Applications can even turn on and off the use of the document feeder that some newer scanners have in order to perform batch scanning or automated scanning.

The Black Ice Imaging tools provide an easy way to print images in single or multiple print jobs with a wide variety of options. When printing, today’s applications not only want to create a paper copy of an image file but also want to specify the way in which the image will be printed. The image has to be positioned on the paper according to a predefined location, printed with its original size or stretched to a specific size. Some applications even require printing more than one image on the same page so the amount of paper wasted would be minimal.  Black Ice imaging tools provide several powerful options to meet these needs.

Image processing functions are used to make images look better or correct and remove visual artifacts from images. These image processing functions are can be used together with filters and effects to produce better over all result. The Document Imaging SDK implements several image-processing methods that can provide solutions to problems that happen during image acquisition such as faxing, scanning and photography. Some of the most widely used features are automatic de-skew, automatic black border removal, punch hole removal, and despeckle or clean image, all of which are available in the Document Imaging SDK.

One very important area where image processing is commonly used is faxing. During faxing image files are being transferred from one device to another. The format, the size and the resolution of the image file that can be transferred is specified by the fax standard and by the device (i.e. fax board) that will transmit the file.

The Color Space Conversion functions implement features that change the way that colors are represented in images. Today’s devices represent colors in many different ways. Some devices, such as printers accept 1 bit monochrome images, others accept 24 bit full color images. But there is also a difference in the methods used to encode colors. Some devices, like display devices, work with the RGB color space. Others devices, such as printers, may use the CMYK colors space. The Document Imaging SDK/ActiveX has over 60 color space conversion functions, which can be grouped into three sets of functions. There is a group of function to convert a Device Independent Bitmap, a group to convert buffers and a group to convert a single pixel to any of the color spaces. Black Ice imaging tools currently support the following 9 color spaces: RGB, CMY, CMYK, HIS, HSV, L*a*b, XYZ, YIQ, YUV.

The Color Depth Conversion functions implement features that change the way that colors are represented in images. Today’s devices represent colors in many different ways. Some devices, such as printers, accept 1 bit monochrome images, others accept 24 bit full color images. Converting a color image to black and white is called halftoning or clustered-dot ordered dither in computer graphics. 9 sophisticated dithering algorithms are available, some of them only available from Black Ice such as Stevenson Arce dithering.

Black Ice imaging tools include 55 common dialog boxes for developers. The common dialog boxes are optional and were designed to drastically reduce user interface development time. There are 37 common dialogs for filters and in addition, there are common dialogs for image processing features such as Red Eye Removal, Selective Color, Brightness, Contrast, and Gamma Correction.

The Document Imaging SDK/ActiveX allows developers to process images in memory and also provides functionality which allows developers to quickly and easily index their application within a specified ODBC database.  You can use the database features to store images in any of the file formats supported by the Document Imaging SDK/ActiveX and the database support includes a variety of callback routines and features multipage support.

Effects and filters are designed to change the appearance of an image by applying sophisticated mathematical algorithms to the image. The Document Imaging SDK includes almost 50 different filters and effects that provide developers access to image processing tools that could take years to develop.

Black Ice imaging tools include a wide variety of text processing functions that can be very helpful in many different application areas.

A complete set of easy to use tools that enable software engineers to add annotation, drawing, text, graphics, images, signature, stamps and sticky notes to a document in a shorter timeframe.

Enables the conversion from different image formats to the popular PDF (Adobe Portable Document Format) file format.  Any color or monochrome image type supported by the Black Ice imaging toolkits can be converted into Image PDF format.