AccuSoft's (Westboro, MA 508-898-2770) ImageGear ($2,000) is a full-featured developer's toolkit. It has a full complement of DLLs for reading a variety of image formats. DLLs for scanning, printing, image processing and special effects are also included. When I opened the Accusoft package the manual struck me. Really. It fell out of the box and hit my foot. I was in pain for several minutes. The manual is thick and heavy. Most toolkit manuals are Acrobat files on CD-ROM.
While it's cheaper to distribute manuals in electronic format, there's nothing like having a solid book.
After getting past preliminaries like installation, the manual plunges into a short tutorial on bitmapped images. Although the manual is aimed at seasoned programmers, novices can follow the bitmap tutorial.
The manual then gets more technical. It tells you how AccuSoft's functions work. It gives you a complete list of all the functions. The last chapter of the book reviews most major graphic file formats.
There are so many different graphic file formats it's difficult to work out which is best for a particular application. Any good description of available file formats is key to selecting the proper format for an application. This is especially true for software developers.
Developers usually limit their applications to a few formats to keep their applications simple and efficient. The fewer the formats the easier tech support is. It is important to select the formats properly.
ImageGear puts its library of DLLs into 12 function groups with names like loading, displaying, saving, scanning, etc. It is easy to tell from the DLL's name what function it serves. The functions are called by an application as external subroutines. Sample applications written in C source code are furnished. The DLLs should work with any programming language.
The DLL collection is complete. Take an image from scanning through preparation and editing to printing and saving. You will still need toolkits for OCR and forms recognition. Those types of toolkits are more like separate applications than components of another toolkits.
The components are flexible and are tightly integrated. The annotation tools use the same code used to display images. This saves memory, improves speed and ensures that annotations always travel with the document correctly.
Product extensions are another feature. These include the AccuSoft Redlining Toolkit ($1,000), Medical Imaging Extension ($1,000-$5,000) and the Photo Imaging Extension ($1,000-$5,000). The latter extensions add DICOM medical imaging and FlashPix support to ImageGear's tool set.
