Display an image loaded using Windows Imaging Component
Windows Imaging Component (WIC in short) is the new platform to load, save and convert images between various image formats, including the latest HD Photo format designed and aggressively pushed by Microsoft, to be the JPEG2000 replacement. Unlike JPEG2000 which is plagued by various patents issues, HD Photo standard is a open standard which is free for all to use. HD Photo has a compression rate and picture qualities better than JPEG and JPEG2000. Windows Imaging Component is also a platform for programmers to write their own image codecs for their own image format or RAW images from digital cameras. The standard codecs, which are provided in the Windows Imaging Component, are more secure than those provided by GDI+. WIC only provides ways to load and convert and save images; To display an image loaded by WIC, you either use Device Independent Bitmaps(DIB) or GDI+. The sample code provided by Microsoft uses DIBs which are difficult to use. For this article, we will use GDI+. The advantages of using GDI+ is that you can do drawing or further image processing on the GDI+ image.