ImgSource v5.0 Preview
Features
ImgSource v5.0 retains the basic design and functionality of previous ImgSource releases, but builds on them
in many powerful ways. Here are the highlights:
- ISEffects has been merged into ImgSource. All of the effects and filters and other goodies that used to live in ISEffects are now part of ImgSource itself. This adds over 100 new functions to ImgSource.
- Multithreaded processing has been added for most common image processing functions. This includes:
- All resizing modes in is5_ResizeImage, and many modes of other resizing functions
- Rotations (all non-"quick" methods)
- Polygon warp
- Image overlay (is5_OverlayImage)
- Sobel filter
- Bilateral filter
- Alpha blend
- Image tranformations (a.k.a. ISEffects xform engine)
- Motion, radial and zoom blur
- The core morphological functions: erosion and dilation (1-bit and 8-bit). And since all other morpho functions are derived from these, the speed ups apply to all morpho functions.
- RGB/A => grayscale. This is perhaps the simplest function in all of ImgSource, and we wanted to see if it was even possible for a multi-threaded version to run faster. It does!
- Many ImgSource functions, especially the "effects" functions (formerly of ISEffects), use the functions listed above, internally; so most of those will run faster, too.
In our testing, multi-threaded processing reduces execution time for these functions by anywhere from 30% to 60%. We've tested it on Win32 and x64, Intel and AMD, single and double-core processors, and there are speedups in all cases. We expect even better results from quad-core processors. We will be adding multi-threaded processing to additional functions, in the future.
- The motion blur, radial blur and zoom blur effects have been put into their own functions and completely rewritten, and now give very nice results.
- The "smooth" variation of is5_DrawLineOnImage has been vastly improved. Now it's a high-quality anti-aliased line.
- is5_GetHSVColorMatchMaskFromImage has been given three new modes of operation.
- The perofmrance of the is5_DrawText* functions has been improved, when using Windows' "smoothed" text.
- New functions is5_ShuffleChannels and is5_SetImageChannel have been added.
- Parameter lists have been reworked, in order to improve uniformity across the API.
- And, of course, there were bug fixes...
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Compatibility
Because of the number and depth of the changes that were required to make these features possible, ImgSource v5.0
is not compatible with previous ImgSource versions.
Extension libraries
All extension libraries (SAJ2K, SAFPX, etc) will work with ImgSource 4.0.
Users of the SARAW static library should download the latest version, which removes some dependencies on ImgSource 3.0.
Upgrade
Unlike the minor revision upgrades, this is not a free upgrade.
The cost to upgrade your previous ImgSource license to v5.0 is $30.
Keys
Your previous ImgSource access keys will not work in ImgSource v5.0.
Previous versions
We will continue to support ImgSource v4.0 and make critical bug fixes should the need arise, but, no new features will be added. ImgSource 3.0 (and earlier) will no longer be updated.
Copyright © 2013, Smaller Animals Software, Inc.
