LEADTOOLS Imaging Pro SDK

LEADTOOLS Version 18.
This new release is highlighted by new LEADTOOLS Anywhere™ native libraries for WinRT, iOS, OS X, Android and Linux, along with major updates to LEADTOOLS Document, Medical and Multimedia technology for Win32/64, .NET and HTML5.

LEADTOOLS Anywhere™ extends LEAD Technologies' award winning LEADTOOLS Imaging SDKs to every major development platform. This initiative began last year with the release of SDKs for HTML5 and WinRT. The HTML5 SDKs made it possible to develop zero footprint web applications and WinRT laid the necessary foundation for porting LEADTOOLS to other native platforms. With LEADTOOLS 18, LEAD has further expanded the reach of its Imaging SDKs by offering native libraries for iOS, OS X, Android and Linux development. All core LEADTOOLS imaging technology is natively supported in each of these platforms, including viewing, annotation and markup, OCR, OMR, forms processing, 1D and 2D barcode, PDF, DICOM and support for over 150 file formats and 200 image processing functions.

What's New in the LEADTOOLS Imaging and Vector Engines update for 17.5
The Imaging and Vector engines received several updates improving and extending their file format support.

• Load / Convert HTML into a raster image
• Rasterize vector files (DXF, DWG, SVG and more) in the .NET interface
• Additional vector options for rasterizing vector drawings such as background fill, bits per pixel and transformation
• RLE compression for PCL
• Support for gradient fill and EM units in SVG

LEADTOOLS Raster Engine V17.5 adds

• New File Formats
  • JPEG-LS
  • JPEG-XR
  • JPM
  • VFF
• New Digital Camera Formats (DCF)
  • CR2 - Canon
  • NEF & NRW - Nikon
  • DNG - Adobe
  • ORF - Olympus
  • ARW, SR2 & SRF - Sony
  • RAW & RW2 - Panasonic
  • RAF - Fujifilm
• Enhancements to Existing File Formats
  • Support for loading OS/2 BMP 16-bit
  • Support for loading PNG 1+1
• Support for ARGB4 color conversion

LEADTOOLS V17.0 has an extensive offering of new imaging technology and enhancements. A substantial portion of LEADTOOLS functionality including image format load and save, image processing, compression, display, effects and annotation is optimized to support 100% pure Silverlight development and can be used in Silverlight without external dependencies or server calls.  LEAD also now offers a .NET class library solution and x64 bit OS support for all functionality across the Document, Medical, Multimedia, and Raster imaging engines.

What's new in the LEADTOOLS Raster Engine

• Optimized internal core functions to dramatically increase the speed of image handling and processing.
• .NET 4.0 binaries
• New Visual Studio 2010 projects from all .NET and Silverlight sample applications
• Enhanced WPF viewer controls
• WPF Pixel Shaders
• Added multi-monitor support to screen capture
• Load PowerPoint files as an image
• Word Doc files as an image
• Excel XLS files as an image
• Added folder watch feature to the LEADTOOLS Thumbnail Browser so that the Thumbnail Browser can automatically update when files are modified, added or deleted to the folder.

LEAD Releases Major Update to LEADTOOLS v16.5 SDKs
Many new features have been added to LEADTOOLS

General Imaging

• Added region of interest compression level support to JPEG 2000.
• New Fast Magic Wand region selection function.
• New rubberband multi-selection feature in LEADTOOLS WPF Image List control.
• New feature to load images faster.

PACS & Medical Imaging

• New PACS Workstation Framework. The LEADTOOLS PACS Workstation Framework is a set of .NET PACS components to build a complete PACS Workstation system. To speed up development, a medical workstation viewer application with source code is included.
• Create, load and save all IOD classes defined in the 2008 base standard and final 2008 DICOM text supplements.
• New Auto Segment Bitmap function. Segments objects in CT/MRI images by shrinking a defined rectangular region onto the objects.
• New Tissue Equalize Bitmap function. Equalizes between hard and soft tissue in x-ray images resulting in an enhanced image.
• New DICOM HD MPEG-2 support.
• New support for 16 bit grayscale images in WPF.
• New Scroll event in the Medical Image Viewer control.
• New Point to Client method in the Medical Viewer Cell class.
• New DICOMDIR dialog.

OCR and Forms Recognition

• Improved OCR Advantage recognition algorithm to improve accuracy.
• New MICR support in OCR Advantage engine.
• New XML output from OCR.
• New Forms Recognition Only demo.
• Improved Forms Recognition documentation including new topics, best practices and examples.
• New Rake Remove Bitmap function to remove data rakes from form images.

PDF Imaging

• New searchable and editable PDF save features including encryption, fast web viewing, size optimization, document author properties, and PDF profiles.
• New PDF Dynamic Resolution demo.

Document Imaging

• New Document Writers for XPS and DOCX.
• New Empty Pages support for Document Writers.
• New Vertical Text support for Document Writers.
• New support for DPI in Document Writers.
• Improved output for text flow formats such as TXT and DOC.
• New support to rasterize Excel XLS files.
• New C DLL snap to grid functionality for annotations.
• Improved Auto Zone function algorithm.
• New Get Background Color function.
• New Sigma Filter Bitmap function to smooth images while maintaining sharp edges.
• New Object Counter function that counts the number of binary objects in an image.

Barcode

• New .NET assembiles for Barcode.
• Improved QR Code error correction algorithm.

Web Imaging

• New functionality to set text in the LEADTOOLS Web Thumbnail Viewer.
• New functionality to clear the Web Image Viewer.
• New Web Forms demo to call LEADTOOLS OCR WCF web service.
• Updated Silverlight Image controls to Silverlight 3.0.

LEADTOOLS Version 16.5 adds several features to LEADTOOLS that are focused on providing solutions to developers in the ECM, EMR, document and medical imaging communities.

New product additions to the LEADTOOLS Product Line

• LEADTOOLS PACS Imaging SDK
• LEADTOOLS Advantage OCR SDK
• LEADTOOLS Recognition SDK
• LEADTOOLS Document Imaging Enterprise Edition
• LEADTOOLS Virtual Printer Module

Major new features within the existing LEADTOOLS Product Line

• WCF for Imaging and OCR
• Windows WF Activities for Imaging and OCR
• Silverlight Image Viewer Control
• Enhanced Grayscale Image Data Support
• Updated and improved JPEG and JPEG2000 support
• Image Segmentation technology
• Support for TWAIN 2.0
• Data DVD and CD creation
• More image file formats

What's New in V16.0
LEADTOOLS Imaging Pro is packed with new features for .NET, C DLL, and C++ Class Library programming interfaces. It includes WPF support with new transition effects, and introduces a JPIP add-on module. LEADTOOLS Imaging Pro V16 is the core follow-on to LEADTOOLS Raster Imaging Pro v15 for .NET (including WPF, AJAX, and COM Interoperability), C DLL, and C++ Class Library programming interfaces.

• WIA Scanning Support provides a powerful set of functions with in-depth support for image acquisition from a wide variety of hardware devices
• GIF Animation in .NET. Display and animate graphics from any image file format supported by LEADTOOLS
• Help 2.0 for C DLL and C++ Class Library provides full LEADTOOLS help integration with Visual Studio

New Add Ons to Imaging Pro:

• LEADTOOLS JPIP Module includes JPIP Server, Client and Viewer components for viewing large, high-resolution images with minimal network bandwidth requirements. Ideal for sattelite and medical image applications

Get support for color conversion, display, compression (JPEG, JPEG2000, TIFF, CCITT G4 and LEAD's proprietary CMP), image processing, TWAIN scanning, color conversion, display, special effects, (2000+ effects), image format support (150+ image file formats), printing, Internet/intranet imaging, database imaging, imaging common dialogs, screen capture and much more in an SDK which leverages LEAD’s 18 years of imaging development expertise.

Features:

• WPF Standard .NET - Includes controls for everything you need to start adding imaging functions to your Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) applications.
• WPF Pro - Unleash the power of LEADTOOLS in your XAML applications. Using LEAD’s WPF interface, you can add LEADTOOLS OCR, TWAIN scanning, document pre-processing, medical imaging, and much more to any WPF application. Get Expression Blend-compatible and fully styleable controls for complete interoperation support between LEADTOOLS and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) images.
• Image Format Support - Load, save and convert 150+ image file formats and sub-formats using both industry standard and proprietary compressions. Additionally, LEADTOOLS you can add PDF support with the LEADTOOLS Raster PDF Plug-in.
• Imaging Common Dialogs - LEADTOOLS Imaging Common Dialog boxes save hours of tedious programming and provide a consistent look and feel by extending Windows common dialogs to provide imaging specific capabilities. The Common Dialogs provide professional imaging common dialogs for image processing, conversion, effects and more.
• WIA Support - Provides a powerful set of functions spanning the full spectrum of digital imaging, including in-depth support for image acquisition from a wide variety of hardware devices.
• Compression Support - Supports many of the industry standard compression techniques including JPEG, JPEG2000, CCITT, LZW, ZIPLIB, LEAD ABC, NITF, Huffman, Arithmetic, RLE and Packbits.
• Screen Capture - Powerful screen capture functionality that can capture resources from files, menus, windows, clients, areas of screen in different shapes, etc. The screen capture tools are extremely useful, especially for documentation and provide another means of image input.
• TWAIN Scanning Support - TWAIN drivers are included with almost all scanners and other image acquisition hardware. Also, with recent advancements TWAIN is the driver of choice for performance and reliability. LEADTOOLS Imaging Pro supports all functionality included in the TWAIN v1.9 specification.
• Database Support - Provides both high level and low level database support including the ability to bind to a VB data control, an OLEDB interface, an ODBC interface and low level functions to load and save images to memory.
• Image Display/Special Effects - Render images or selected regions to a display device such as a monitor or printer while controlling position/scaling, resample method, brightness, contrast, gamma, palette, dithering, source and destination clipping rectangles, and more. Navigate large images using LEAD's pan-window, browse a group of images using LEAD's thumbnail viewer†, apply 2000+ paint transitions and effects† between viewed images.
• Internet Support - Several different levels of Internet support including ASP.NET (AJAX) and Web Forms, objects that can be packaged into CAB files, objects that can be created on a web server, functions to load images from a URL or memory stream, controls for HTTP and FTP support, control to parse files uploaded to a web server and controls to create powerful client server applications that send remote procedure calls via TCP/IP. Create JPIP client and server applications with the JPIP Module.
• Image Processing - Over 200 image processing functions are divided into four basic categories: filters, transforms, color conversion, and drawing. Most image processing functions in LEADTOOLS support region of interest, allowing only a portion of an image to be processed. To add on even more functionality specific to digital painting, LEAD offers Digital Paint functionality in the Imaging Pro that includes a variety of functions for digital painting including the creation and use of brushes, shapes, textures and more.
• Color Conversion - To ensure that you can convert images from one format to another or render images to any display device, LEADTOOLS includes powerful color conversion functionality. The color conversion functions include support for over 8 different dithering methods, many palette options and the ability to convert image data to any supported bits per pixel to any other support bits per pixel. Supported values are 1-8 bit color or grayscale, 16 bit color, 24 bit color and 32 bit color. If you need 12 or 16 bit grayscale or 48 and 64 bit color support, check out the Medical Imaging product.
• Color Space Conversions - Images can be converted, separated to and reconstructed from individual RGB, CMYK, CMY, HSV, HSL, YUV, YIQ, CIELAB, XYZ, YCCK, Y41P, UYVY, YUY2, YVU9 abd YCC color planes using LEAD's built in conversion functions, ICC color profiles or Emulation Tables.
• Image Optimizer - LEADTOOLS provides functionality to optimize certain image file formats and reduces the size by saving images using the optimal bits per pixel, based on specific optimization options.
• AJAX WebForms - LEADTOOLS AJAX support, implemented in the LEADTOOLS Raster Tile Image Viewer, enables you to add fast, interactive image viewing into your ASP.NET 2.0 web applications. The ImageViewer is used to display any image file format supported by web browsers (JPEG, GIF, PNG and BMP) and can automatically handle zooming and scrolling. Load all or part of a specific image file that uses any image file format supported by LEADTOOLS.
• Printing Support - With LEADTOOLS, printing is just as easy as displaying an image. You control the size and location that the image should be printed. Additionally, Windows GDI functions can be used in conjunction with LEADTOOLS printing providing the flexibility to print text and multiple images on the same page.
• Digital Paint - A must for anyone who wants to add digital painting functionality to their application. With the LEADTOOLS Digital Paint feature, a developer can create an entire image editing or design application.
• ePrint Integration - The functionality of ePrint is available to programmers. Take control of the ePrint features that are available to your users with the API developer version of ePrint.
• Raster PDF Plug-ins - Extend support to include PDF, Postscript, and EPS formats, providing capability for loading, saving, viewing, rasterizing, and encoding PDF, Postscript, and EPS files. The Plug-ins integrate seamlessly with the broad imaging functionality of LEADTOOLS toolkits, such as specialized display, color-conversion, image-processing, scanning, annotations, and document clean-up.
• JPIP Client & Server - Allows storage of very large, compressed JPEG2000 images at the server, plus transmission of image resolution, quality and region of interest (ROI) as specified by a client. This allows client applications to interact with a stored image without transmitting the entire image, or decoding the entire image code-stream. The server and client components include a number of options for controlling this image streaming and decoding.
• Barcode Detection, Recognition and Writing -Support for detecting, recognizing and writing linear (1D), DataMatrix (2D), PDF417 (2D) and QR (2D) barcodes are available to add on to the Imaging Pro SDK. Support for detecting, recognizing and writing linear (1D) barcodes are available to add on to the Mobile Imaging SDK.
• Unicode and ANSI Support
• Programming Interfaces - Included programming interfaces: low level C DLL, C++ class libraries, COM objects, .NET class libraries and WPF XAML controls. LEADTOOLS Imaging Pro, Document and Medical Imaging products ship with sample source code for C, Visual C++ (MFC), VB, VB.NET and C#. Supported OS: 32 and 64 bit versions of Windows.

Sandard Support (Free)
Standard technical support is provided free to all registered LEADTOOLS customers. In addition, LEAD offers free Standard technical support to prospective customers working with evaluation versions of their products. Free Standard technical support includes unlimited email communication and unlimited access to LEAD's online support portal including the community forums and Knowledge base.

Premium Support ($100 per case, $400 - 5 pack of cases )
In addition to free Standard technical support, LEAD offers Premium support on a per "case" basis. Premium support allows customers to contact LEAD's support representatives by telephone. Support representatives may be reached by phone Monday - Friday, 8:30 - 6:00 EST, excluding national holidays.

Annual Maintenance (Annual fee)
By purchasing a LEADTOOLS Annual Maintenance plan, you receive any and all development seat updates, enhancements and new versions released by LEAD during the period of maintenance. In addition to updates and upgrades, as an annual maintenance subscriber, you receive five (5) free Premium Support cases to use during the maintenance period. Finally, a maintenance subscriber is entitled to a 30% discount on additional Premium Support cases over and above the 5 free cases provided with a maintenance subscription.