Document Imaging SDK/ActiveX Toolkit
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Display

Document Imaging SDK/ActiveX includes a very powerful feature that makes displaying images to any display device easy. The display feature included in Document Imaging SDK/ActiveX provides an easy-to-use solution for developers. Application developers now do not have to spend expensive engineering time implementing complicated display routines. It only takes a few function calls and the Black Ice display routine will do the rest.

Annotation

A complete set of easy-to-use APIs and UI controls to help software engineers to add annotation and markup objects, such as Editable Textbox, Editable Multiline-Textbox, Signature, Date and Time, Checkbox, Hyperlink, Tooltip, 1D and 2D Barcodes, Line, Arrow, Arrow shape, text, graphics, images, stamps and sticky notes to a document in a shorter timeframe. For more details about Annotation SDK please click here.

File formats (loading, saving, and converting images from one format to another)

Document Imaging SDK/ActiveX supports all the major file formats, from complex editable TIFF and PDF to simple JPEG and BMP files. Document Imaging SDK can help create industry-standard TIFF Group 4, Group 3 1D, Group 3 2D TIFF, and PDF files. The TIFF and JPEG libraries developed by Black Ice Software are one of the first and most extensive TIFF and JPEG file format processing and encoding/decoding libraries available on the market.

PDF File Format Support

The Black Ice PDF library enables the viewing, displaying, printing, saving, and converting of any Editable/Vector PDF document and PDF Forms files. Text extraction and text search for editable PDFs without OCR. Any document type can be converted into PDF format type supported by the Black Ice imaging toolkits.

Compression

Document Imaging SDK/ActiveX control supports all the popular data compression methods used in Document Imaging, such as JPEG, LZW, Pack Bits, CCITT Group 3, and Group 4.

OCR Image Processing

Document Imaging SDK/ActiveX provides the OCR solution to transform scanned documents and images into editable searchable text files. Our OCR is fast and accurate and ensures the document's content remains intact. The ability to instantly search through content is extremely useful, especially in an office setting that has to deal with high volume scanned or fax document inflow.

TWAIN scanner support

Scanning support is based on the latest TWAIN 2.0 and 1.9 drivers. With the latest TWAIN drivers, application developers have total control over almost every aspect of the scanning process. Using the SDK, developers can switch between document feeders to perform batch scanning or automated scanning for newer scanners.

Printing

Black Ice imaging and image processing tools provide an easy way to print images in single or multiple print jobs with a wide variety of options. When printing, today’s applications not only want to create a paper copy of an image file but also want to specify the way in which the image will be printed. The image has to be positioned on the paper according to a predefined location, printed with its original size or stretched to a specific size. Some applications even require printing more than one image on the same page so the amount of paper wasted is minimal. Black Ice imaging tools provide several powerful options to meet these needs.

Document Image Processing

Image processing functions are used to make images look better or correct and remove visual artifacts from images. These image processing functions can be used together with filters and effects to produce a better overall result. Document Imaging SDK implements several image-processing methods that can provide solutions to problems that happen during image acquisition such as faxing, scanning and photography. Some of the most widely used features are available in the Document Imaging SDK:

• automatic de-skew
• automatic black border removal
• punch hole removal
• despeckle or clean image

Fax Image Processing

One very important area where image processing is commonly used is faxing. During faxing image files are transferred from one device to another. The format, the size, and the resolution of the image file that can be transferred is specified by the fax standard and by the device (i.e. fax board) that will transmit the file.

UNICODE filename support

UNICODE filename support ensures the usability of foreign languages and special characters in the filenames when using Black Ice Document Imaging SDKs.

Web Applications

Black Ice Software’s IceViewer combined with the Document Imaging SDK can be used to build a web-server-based application to view, edit, annotate, OCR, download, print, scan, and email PDF, TIFF, or FAX documents from any desktop computer, tablet, or smartphone with a simple web browser. See the IceViewer.

Database

Document Imaging SDK/ActiveX allows developers to process images in memory and also provides functionality to allow developers to quickly and easily index their application within a specified ODBC database. You can use the database features to store images in any of the file formats supported by Document Imaging SDK/ActiveX, and the database support includes a variety of callback routines and features multipage support.

Color Depth Conversion

The Color Depth Conversion functions implement features that change the way that colors are represented in images. Today’s devices represent colors in different ways. Some devices, such as printers, accept 1 bit monochrome images, others accept 24 bit full color images. Converting a color image to black and white is called halftoning or clustered-dot ordered dither in computer graphics. Document Imaging SDK/ActiveX has 9 sophisticated dithering algorithm, some of them only available from Black Ice, such as Stevenson Arce dithering.

Color Space Conversion

The Color Space Conversion functions implement features that change the way that colors are represented in images. Today’s devices represent colors in different ways. Some devices, such as printers, accept 1 bit monochrome images, others accept 24 bit full color images. But there is also a difference in the methods used to encode colors. Some devices, like display devices, work with the RGB color space. Other devices, such as printers, may use the CMYK color space. Document Imaging SDK/ActiveX has over 60 color space conversion functions that can be grouped into three sets of functions. There is a group of functions to convert a Device Independent Bitmap, a group to convert buffers and a group to convert a single pixel to any of the color spaces. Black Ice imaging tools currently support the following 9 color spaces: RGB, CMY, CMYK, HIS, HSV, L*a*b, XYZ, YIQ, YUV.

Transformations

Image transformations are important and are one of the most widely used components of any imaging toolkit. Image transformations produce results quickly without degrading the quality of the image.

Common Dialogs

Black Ice imaging tools include 55 common dialog boxes for developers. The common dialog boxes are optional and are designed to drastically reduce user interface development time. There are 37 common dialogs for filters and in addition, there are common dialogs for image processing features, such as Red Eye Removal, Selective Color, Brightness, Contrast, and Gamma Correction.

Effects and Filters

Effects and filters are designed to change the appearance of an image by applying sophisticated mathematical algorithms to the image. Document Imaging SDK includes almost 50 different filters and effects that provide developers with access to image processing tools that could take years to develop.

Text Processing

Black Ice imaging tools include a wide variety of text processing functions that can be very helpful in many different application areas.

Sample Applications:

Additionally, Document Imaging SDK contains a variety of new sample applications that demonstrate the new document conversion capabilities and features. The product is fully .NET compatible and also provides sample source code written in C++, C#, and VB.NET, to demonstrate the powerful document conversion options in Visual Studio 2022.