ImageWalker Blog

Build 60 is complete and can be downloaded from here. It contains the search bar and tag bar user interface improvements. It also fixes the problem where the web gallery preview does not work; several people have raised this issue with me lately so I know it is important.

It’s coming soon, all those User Interface changes 'YOU' demanded. Address and Search bars back on top with new Tag bar. Here is the screenshot, the new build should be available in a day or 2.

A while ago I watched this video about WPF Imaging and WIC from the Chanel 9 web site. Windows Imaging Component (WIC) is a new Microsoft API that will allow camera manufactures and other vendors to write bitmap codecs for their specific image file formats.

WIC infrastructure is going to be written in unmanaged code. My understanding is that they are not specific to Windows Vista and a small redistributable will soon be available so that applications like ImageWalker could deploy it.

Apparently WIC has an optimized Jpeg decoder, 30% faster than GDI+. I expect GDI+ uses LibJpeg from the Independent JPEG Group like I do. Coincidently I noticed a 30% performance increase when I updated LibJpeg to use the MMX routines previously available on the Intel developer site…I am sure they have done more than that however. Another thing covered in the video is the incredible lengths Microsoft went to remove bugs and buffer overruns in WIC’s primary codecs. This will avoid future embarrassments like the infamous buffer overflow vulnerability in GDI+

All this is really good news for developers like me working on applications that need to load images; it may mean a single image loading interface to work with. Currently I have to write my own codec or use a specific open source library to decode an image file format. Here is a list of the diverse libraries I currently use:

• LibEXIF
• FreeImage (Many misc formats)
• Jasper (for Jpeg 2000)
• LibJPEG
• LibMng
• LibPng
• LibTiff
• DCraw (for RAW file formats)

If you were to ask me what my motivation is for working on ImageWalker, I could answer in a single sentence: I like looking at pictures.

I am always trying to figure out better ways of viewing and sharing my Images, that’s why ImageWalker is always changing. When I started ImageWalker 5 or more years ago the only real option to share images was email or generate your own custom gallery; that is where inspired ImageWalker’s web page generation features.

Now-a-days I rarely create a custom gallery; I simply upload images to sites like Flickr or Zooomr. That’s why ImageWalker is getting more features around interacting with social photo sharing site like those.

Social photo sites have a lot of cool advantages; you can spend hours surfing other peoples images via shared tags. I am never disappointed by the rotating Flickr picture of interest that ImageWalker displays. Pictures of interested are selected based on the number of comments an image receives; this always seems to deliver great results.

Zooomr allows me to surf using geo tags; finding holiday snaps taken in the same place can be really good fun. It will be great when all cameras can store GPS coordinates in your image; maybe you won’t need a camera at all, just a GPS tracker that allows you to download images in the same position and direction ;)