Image and Document Imaging Development Toolkits

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Black Ice Software provides a variety of Imaging Toolkits designed to meet a range of application requirements.  With support for a range of file formats and compressions, as well as advanced scan and capture technology, fast display zoom rotate, and a range of image processing options, the Black Ice Imaging Toolkits provide an ideal, easy to use interface to harness cutting edge imaging technology within your application.

Imaging Toolkit

Toolkit Summary

TIFF SDK/ActiveX Base Imaging Toolkit for display, printing and manipulation of TIFF images and TIFF Tags
Image SDK/ActiveX Includes all of the functionality of the TIFF SDK/ActiveX plus additional file format support, color space conversion and more
Annotation SDK/ActiveX Add on to either the TIFF or Image SDK/ActiveX, allows the addition of annotations to any supported image type.
Document Imaging SDK/ActiveX Includes all of the features of the above toolkits plus PDF reading/writing, over 60 powerful filters and effects, 300+ advanced printing functions, as well as document imaging functionality such as punchhole removal, despeckling, deskewing, and more.
Image PDF Plugin Read and Write Image PDF files, requires the Image SDK/ActiveX
PDF SDK Professional - Read Read full text PDF files, supports searchable text. Includes the Image PDF Plugin functionality to Read / Write Image based PDF.
Barcode SDK/ActiveX Enables the encoding/decoding of 1D and 2D barcode symbols
Fax Cover Page Generator SDK/ActiveX Add on to either the Image or Document Imaging SDK/ActiveX toolkits, enables the creation of dynamically generated cover pages

For document conversion and image generation, please consider the following:

Black Ice Printer Drivers

Create document images from any windows application which can print, either programmatically or via user intervention. Integrate a Black Ice printer driver into your application for cutting edge document conversion.

For an overview of the Black Ice imaging development toolkits and to determine which product(s) are right for you, please click here.

Summary of Black Ice Imaging Functionality:


Display

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.

File formats (loading, saving and converting images from one format to another)

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.

Transformations

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.

Internet

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.

Compression

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

TWAIN scanner support

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.

Printing

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.

Document Image Processing

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.

Fax Image Processing

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.

Color Space Conversion

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.

Color Depth Conversion

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.

Common Dialogs

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.

Database

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

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.

Text Processing

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

Annotation

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.

Image PDF Read/Write

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.

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Features