Advanced JPEG Technology & Features

Since 1991, Accusoft's team of scientists and engineers has optimized the baseline JPEG code for speed, quality, and feature-rich functionality. Many of these JPEG optimizations are proprietary to Accusoft and available through no other company or free source. Accusoft is the only commercial supplier of JPEG tools using a 100% in-house developed JPEG code base.

Accusoft has conducted a vast amount of research to enhance its JPEG editing, compression, speed, clean up, and artifact removal algorithms. This includes rotate, crop, merge, red eye removal, brighten, contrast, and more. Many of these technologies seem routine at first, but Accusoft is the only company in the world that provides JPEG editing directly on JPEG compressed data thereby avoiding the quality loss of recompression and color conversion normally associated with editing JPEG images. Designed to enhance the color and photo imaging market, Accusoft has also conducted a significant amount of research on lossy JPEG image clean up, including deskew, automatic color leveling, deblocking, sharpening, streak removal, and dust removal. Accusoft has a patent pending on advanced methods for reducing the blockiness of previously encoded images.

Accusoft's implementation using MMX optimizations earned an invitation to the Intel MMX processor launch in 1998. Accusoft continues to enhance this JPEG code base to utilize evolving processor capabilities including P3 and P4, 64-bit and hyperthreading optimization features. Developers using publicly available code bases are unable to provide the level of support and enhancement that Accusoft provides with the internal expertise afforded by our wholly in-house developed code base.

Enhanced Decompression
Compression / Recompression Optimization
Region-of-Interest Compression
Speed Optimization
Region-of-Interest Viewing
Lossless Crop
Manual Red Eye Removal
Lossless Rotate
Contrast / Brightness / Color / Tint Control
Lossless Merge & Insert
Lossless Append
Arithmetic Coding
Password Protection
Color to Grayscale Conversion

Enhanced Decompression
To improve the quality of JPEG images at decompression (viewing), Accusoft performs ongoing research to remove JPEG artifacts (including a 2003 patent on block removal) and to increase DCT compression ratios. All of Accusoft's JPEG decoders (viewers) remove many JPEG artifacts without additional damage or blurring. Accusoft's research goes beyond filtering, to reconstruct the compressed file as close to the original as possible. To observe the results, view an over-compressed JPEG image, like this SAMPLE JPEG (145:1) in both a non-Accusoft viewer such as Internet Explorer and a Accusoft viewer. This technology is available within the following toolkits:

PICTools™ Photo - advanced photo imaging technology
ImagXpress® v10 - speed-optimized document and photo imaging SDK

Compression / Recompression Optimization
This feature uses advanced techniques to completely avoid generational loss caused by recompressing images. Unique technology minimizes JPEG artifacts by performing various image editing operations directly on compressed JPEG data without decompressing and recompressing files. This specific JPEG optimization does not uncompress then recompress to shrink JPEG files, as do all other so-called optimizer schemes. Recompress JPEG images with no additional loss than if you had started with the original image. Simply use the compression and editing features found in The JPEG Wizard to see the results of Accusoft's research into this technology. This technology is available within the following toolkits:

PICTools™ Photo - advanced photo imaging technology

Region-of-Interest Compression
This feature offers selection of multiple regions within an original bitmap or JPEG file and compression of each of those regions to different quality settings. Useful for selecting parts of the image where quality is important, letting the rest of the image degrade, and saving substantial file sizes for transmission or storage. The resulting JPEG file is viewable by any JPEG viewer. Regional compression is demonstrated in the JPEG Wizard application.

This technology is available within the following toolkits:

PICTools™ Photo - advanced photo imaging technology

Speed Optimization
Accusoft is the only commercial supplier of JPEG tools using a 100% in-house developed JPEG code base. Accusoft has devoted significant scientific and development resources to code speed and algorithmic speed enhancements allowing the delivery of the fastest and most optimized JPEG code since 1994. Accusoft's implementation using MMX optimizations earned us an invitation to the Intel MMX processor launch in 1998. Accusoft continues to enhance this JPEG code base to utilize evolving processor capabilities including P3 and P4 and soon 64-bit and hyperthreading optimization features. Other JPEG tool suppliers using publicly available code bases are unable to provide the level of support and enhancement that Accusoft provides with the internal expertise afforded by our wholly in-house developed code base.

Region-of-Interest Viewing
This feature allows you to quickly decode and view a rectangle within a JPEG file without decoding the rest of the image. This is very helpful to view pieces of large JPEG files, can be demonstrated using the crop feature in The JPEG Wizard, and has been integrated into all Accusoft development toolkits, including the following:

PICTools™ Photo - advanced photo imaging technology
ImagXpress® v10 - speed-optimized document and photo imaging SDK

Lossless Crop
This feature allows for rapid decoding of a rectangle within a JPEG file without decoding the rest of the image. This unique technology saves a portion of a JPEG image as a new JPEG image without decompressing and compressing the original image. It is built into Accusoft's development toolkits and can be demonstrated using the crop feature in The JPEG Wizard application. Lossless cropping is available within the following toolkit:

PICTools™ Photo - advanced photo imaging technology

Manual Red Eye Removal
Accusoft's manual red eye removal technology can be demonstrated using the red eye removal feature in The JPEG Wizard application. This feature allows Accusoft red eye removal technology to edit only the eye region without damage to the JPEG image as a whole. This is accomplished by decompressing the eye area, adjusting for glare, darkness, and red face, removing the red eye, recompressing the area, and then replacing the area with the improved image.

Manual Red Eye Removal is available within the following toolkits:

PICTools™ Photo - advanced photo imaging technology
ImagXpress® v10 - speed-optimized document and photo imaging SDK

Lossless Rotate
This feature offers rotation and mirroring of JPEG images without decompressing and recompressing them. Accusoft was one of the first companies to offer this technology, and it has been integrated into its toolkits. This technology is built into Accusoft's toolkits and can be demonstrated using the rotate feature in The JPEG Wizard application. This technology is available within the following toolkits:

PICTools™ Photo - advanced photo imaging technology

Contrast / Brightness / Color / Tint Control
This feature offers the ability to quickly modify view parameters in the luminance and chrominance coefficients within a JPEG file by avoiding recompression damage or loss. These features can be found within Accusoft's toolkits and can be demonstrated using the various contrast, brightness, color leveling and tint control features in The JPEG Wizard application.

This technology is available within the following toolkits:

PICTools™ Photo - advanced photo imaging technology

Lossless Merge & Insert
This feature offers insertion of a JPEG file within another JPEG file with additional control over the amount of luminance and chrominance percentages of each image, which provides a superb watermarking tool. This technology is built into Accusoft's toolkits and is in The JPEG Wizard application. This technology is available within the following toolkits:

PICTools™ Photo - advanced photo imaging technology

Lossless Append
This feature allows you to join JPEG files with other JPEG files of the same height or width without having to uncompress and recompress either image (some restrictions apply). This technology allows for the addition of banners to JPEG files without damage to the image itself. It is demonstrated in The JPEG Wizard application. This technology is available within the following toolkits:

PICTools™ Photo - advanced photo imaging technology

Arithmetic Coding
The ELS-coder and Augmented ELS-coder are fruits of Accusoft's research into basic compression technology. Both are binary entropy-coding algorithms, adaptable for compressing any type of digital data. Both algorithms combine speed with compression performance better than state-of-the-art coders such as the Q-coder and its derivatives. The ELS-coder is described in the article "A Rapid Entropy-Coding Algorithm" (Dr. Dobb's Journal, April 1997) and the Augmented ELS-coder in the article "A Rapid Probability Estimator and Binary Arithmetic Coder" (IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, Vol. 47, No. 4, May 2001). Source code for each is available under terms of the GNU Public License.

Through the use of the proprietary Accusoft ePIC compressor, using the Accusoft ELS arithmetic coder in place of Huffman coding used in standard JPEG, Accusoft delivers 8 to 15 percent additional LOSSLESS compression. This technology is available within the following toolkits:

PICTools™ Photo - advanced photo imaging technology
ImagXpress® v10 - speed-optimized document and photo imaging SDK

Password Protection
All Accusoft products and toolkits support password locking of JPEG image data. This technology can be demonstrated in The JPEG Wizard and is available within the following toolkits:

PICTools™ Photo - advanced photo imaging technology
ImagXpress® v10 - speed-optimized document and photo imaging SDK

Color to Grayscale Conversion
This feature offers the ability to quickly convert color JPEG files to grayscale JPEG files without any damage to the luminance quality. This can be seen demonstrated within The JPEG Wizard application. This technology is available within the following toolkits:

PICTools™ Photo - advanced photo imaging technology