WIC imaging framework

[johnmcculloch1]

This post is in response to the various treads on the RawFile import/view plug ins topic:

I must add at this time that I am not and never will be a programmer, so if this doesn't sound feasible, or there is already support please let me down quietly.

I downloaded, FastPictureViewer Codec Pack 2.1R2

and copy the following from their website in the hope that someone sees a benefit in supporting WIC imaging framework, as this would appear to be a neat way to import various filetypes into

PDN.....including RAW files.

FastPictureViewer Codec Pack 2.1R2

Developer's corner

From time to time we get inquiries from software developers wanting to use our codecs with their application. Here are the answers to the most common questions: yes, you can develop applications that relies on our codecs for image access, but your end users need to obtain and install the codec pack themselves (meaning that you must refer them to this site). In particular, bundling the codec pack or any part of its content, in any form whatsoever, is expressly forbidden. The codecs are Copyrighted work and we retain all rights relative to the Codec Pack and all its content.

There is no "OCX" or "DLL" that can be used to access the codecs from older development environments (but nothing prevents someone from writing one). On the other hand, any application developer can use the WIC imaging framework, which is part of Windows since 2006 and documented on MSDN, to access images through our codecs or any others. Application using WIC automatically benefits from installed codec(s) and gains instant access to new image formats without any modification or recompilation, once new codecs are installed on the end-user machine. WIC is available to native application developers as well as .NET application developers using the .NET Framework 3.0 or higher.

(Geek Note: WIC is COM based and can be programmed from many languages and development environments able to instantiate COM classes and use COM custom interfaces, moreover, .NET and ASP.NET 3.x, 4.0 (or later) and WPF 3/4 developers using the System.Windows.Media.Imaging namespace for image access automatically benefits from installed codecs, as .NET 3 and WPF secretly uses WIC under the hood (so does GDI+ apps on Windows 7, but for some reason Microsoft did not enable external codec support in this scenario). That means that all existing .NET 3.x and WPF-based applications, as well as WIC-enabled native applications, benefit from the FastPictureViewer Codec Pack and gain the ability to open new image formats: the codecs provide much broader benefits than usual raw-enabled viewers. On a more technical note, all our codecs are free-threaded (which is a requirement for Windows 7) and many of them are also multi-core aware: they provide speed benefits beyond what's offered in most other raw viewing products on the market for full image decoding on modern computers, including competing codec offerings and manufacturer-provided codecs, when they exists.... Finally, unlike most camera manufacturer's codecs, they can also be used from within Windows Services or in server applications as they never, ever pop up modal dialogs (or any UI whatsoever) like some manufacturer's codecs do. The easiest route to raw-enable and EXIF-enable your ASP.NET 3.x or 4.0 server app is by the way of System.Windows.Media.Imaging and our codecs - contact us for server licensing details!).

Yours in anticipation of a favourable outcome.

johnmcculloch1

[Rick Brewster]

One of the work items I have planned for PDN4 is to upgrade all the built-in codecs to use WIC instead of GDI+. (as another note, in Win7 the GDI+ codecs were actually rewritten as a layer on top of WIC!) That would improve things for JPEG, PNG, etc.

As for supporting all the remaining codecs that WIC allows to be plugged in, I am also considering this but have not made a final decision. It will be a matter of scheduling and prioritization.