SoftArtisans ImgWriter - Summary

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Summary

SoftArtisans ImgWriter by SoftArtisans

Give your application sophisticated image processing, creation, management, and caching. SoftArtisans ImgWriter is an ActiveX/DLL that enables you to create thumbnails, write text on an image, generate charts, dynamically create buttons and banners, and achieve higher performance with images. SoftArtisans ImgWriter contains two server-side COM components, SAImageGen and SAImageCollection.

Sophisticated image processing, creation, management and caching.

Features and Benefits

Create thumbnails from existing images

Height-to-width ratio is maintained automatically

Three resize algorithms are supported to optimize speed and image quality

Add watermarks to your images

Generate charts in ASP pages

Write dynamic captions on your images

Adjust image size for faster Web downloads

Turn photo negatives into color positives

Merge two images

Create labels

Increase you Web site's performance by caching frequently served images

Manage images from database blobs

SoftArtisans ImgWriter contains two server-side COM components:

SAImageGen offers image manipulation functionality, such as image resizing, image cropping, and writing text on an image. SAImgGen lets you create thumbnails from larger images or add watermarks to existing images. It exposes low-level methods for precise image manipulation. The component can also be used to construct new images, such as charts, labels, or banners. SAImageGen supports the nine most common image formats, including jpeg, bmp, emf, png, and tiff. It can read and save images to and from a file on disk, and in-memory byte array, or a database blob. It can also write an image to the browser. SAImageGen's more advanced functionality includes writing text on images, cropping images, merging two images, and creating images with gradient background. Some image formats vary in size depending on image quality. The component allows you to modify both quality and size for such formats. Transparency and dithering can also be controlled

SAImageCollection offers an in-memory-cached collection of images for high-speed access. It is intended to run at application scope, so it is thread safe (it supports the "Both" threading model) and supports concurrent read access to images in the collection. The component allows images to be shared across a web application, conserving precious server resources, and accessed very quickly, improving your users' experience. Images can be added to the cache from a file on disk or from an ADO Recordset

New in V1.3.0

New Installer

New in V1.2.2

Issues Addressed:

AddWatermark and MergeWithImage don't return correct result with a PNG file.

New in V1.2

New Features:

New property: ImageGen.AntiAliasFactor smoothes the jagged edges of diagonal lines and curves.

New property: ImageGen.BufferResponse allows you to turn ASP response buffering on and off.

New in V1.1.6

New Features:

'AntiAlias' property

-- support for antialiasing: default is saAntiAlisaNone(0) type is SAAntiAliasFactor

SAAntiAlisaFactor values: saAntiAliasNone = 0, saAntiAliasGood = 2, saAntiAliasBest = 4, saAntiAliasHigh = 6, saAntiAliasHighest = 8

The higher the AntiAliasFactor, the more memory this funciton requires and the slower it will be. 'saAntiAliasBest' is the recommended value.

NOTE: When AntiAliasFactor is used, the dimensions of the text rectangle are determined by the font. When AntiAliasFactor is not used, the text rectangle is calculated based on the top, left, height, and width parameters passed to 'DrawTextOnImage' 'BufferResponse' property

default is 'false'

turns ASP buffering on and off

There is an issue with IE where a refresh of a page will fail if ImgWriter is streaming an image to the browser. It appears that IE cannot handle a refresh of a page that is send to it using 'chunked' transfer encoding. Netscape handles the refresh without problem. The response is sent to the browser using 'chunked' transfer encoding if ASP buffering is turned off. Previously, ImgWriter turned ASP buffering off automatically. This property allows a user to turn buffering on and allow refreshes to succeed as a cost of higher memory utilization on the server.

New in V1.1.5

Issues Addressed:

When saving an image in GIF format, 'White'(0x00ffffff) would sometimes be made transparent when the 'TransparentColor' property was not set. This has been fixed in version 1.1.5.

Some issues with documentation are corrected.

New in V1.1.4

New Features:

ImageGen.ResizeImage() -- When you wish to resize an image and maintain proportions, but at the same time insure that one dimension is set to an exact value, pass in '0' as the parameter for the other dimension.

New in V1.1.3

New Features:

New ImageGen properties - DPIx, DPIy, and DPIunits - allow you to set or return horizontal/vertical dots per inch, centimeter, or meter.

New in V1.1.2

Issues Addressed:

ImageGen's 'DrawTextOnImage' method would incorrectly render text containing certain characters, such as '&'.

New in V1.1.1

Issues Addressed:

ImageGen's 'SaveImage' method would fail under ASP when saving to a file and a variable was used for the 'SaveData' parameter.

New in Version 1.1.0

Loading an image into SoftArtisans.Images from a variant byte array caused and exception. This bug has been fixed in the new version

Give your application sophisticated image processing, creation, management, and caching.

PartNumbers: PC-511939-184810 511939-184810 PC-511939-184814 511939-184814 PC-511939-184815 511939-184815 PC-511939-184811 511939-184811 PC-511939-184812 511939-184812 PC-511939-184813 511939-184813

PurchaseOptions: SoftArtisans ImgWriter V1.3.1 1 Server License, SoftArtisans ImgWriter V1.3.1 1 Server License with Maintenance Plans, SoftArtisans ImgWriter V1.3.1 Annual Maintenance Plan Only, SoftArtisans ImgWriter V1.3.1 - Support Licenses 1 Platinum Support License, SoftArtisans ImgWriter V1.3.1 - Support Licenses 1 Gold Support License, SoftArtisans ImgWriter V1.3.1 - Support Licenses 1 Silver Support License

Resources: Browse the SoftArtisans ImgWriter Readme pages, Read the SoftArtisans ImgWriter DataSheet, Download the SoftArtisans ImgWriter V1.3.2 evaluation on to your computer - Expires 1st December 2009

Operating System for Deployment: Windows 2000, Windows 98, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 95

Architecture of Product: 32Bit

Product Type: Component

Component Type: ActiveX DLL, COM Add-in for Office 2000, DLL

Application Type: ASP

Built Using: ActiveX Template Library (ATL)

General: Internet Enhanced, Includes Digital Signature, Marked as Safe for Scripting, Marked as Safe for Initialization, OCX96 Compatible, Supports Component Categories, Supports Apartment Model Threading, Supports Free Threading, Microsoft Transaction Server Compatible (MTS)

Compatible Containers: Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0, Microsoft Visual Studio 97, Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0, Microsoft Visual Basic 5.0, Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0, Microsoft Visual C++ 5.0, Microsoft Visual J++ 6.0, Microsoft Visual J++ 1.1, Microsoft Visual InterDev 6.0, Microsoft Visual InterDev 1.0, Microsoft Office 2000, Microsoft Office 97, Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5, Microsoft Exchange Server 5.0, Microsoft Site Server, Microsoft Internet Information Server 5.0, Microsoft Internet Information Server 4.0, Microsoft FrontPage, Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5, Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0, Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0, Delphi 6.0, Delphi 5.0

Product Class: User Interface Components

Keywords: image images processing imaging Imaging image images SoftArtisans Software Artisans Soft Professional Partner imagewriter image writer