Enhancement: Use Windows Imaging Component (WIC)

[GoogleCodeExporter]

I will quote/paraphrase the original GDI+ issue:

stb-img and GDI+ doesn't handle all file types, and FreeImage requires an 
additional DLL to be distributed with the app.
WIC should solve both of these issues. WIC is already distributed with newer 
versions of Windows (Vista+), so it doesn't need to be redistributed. 
Secondarily, WIC is probably more stable than GDI+, should handle more file 
types/variations, and will crash less.

There is e.g. http://www.fastpictureviewer.com/codecs/ codec pack which plugs 
into WIC that adds immense number of supported image and RAW formats, that 
could be used.
I guess all four major costs are significant for this one.

Some reference:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ee719886(v=vs.85).aspx
http://www.dustyfish.com/blog/reading-photo-metadata-using-windows-imaging-compo
nent
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/25890/Windows-Imaging-Component

Original issue reported on code.google.com by radekli...@gmail.com on 20 Mar 2012 at 8:23

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Support for out-of-the-box WIC codecs seems reasonable on the face of it, but 
if you were going to have to download a non-free codec pack to make it useful, 
you might just as well download FreeImage, since the support's already there.

So the question is whether the image file formats are supported out of the box 
with WIC are significantly larger than those built-in to stb-imv. Your links 
don't offer any info about built-in codecs that I saw. The codecs mentioned in 
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=32 are 
basically covered by stb_image and GDI+.

I'm also not to worried about stability issues with GDI+ since I've never had 
any bugs or complaints about them. (My link does mention that WIC is "more 
secure", though. I'm a little confused about why they wouldn't fix any security 
issues in GDI+.)

So I'm tentatively closing this--feel free to comment and I'll reopen it (I 
actually want to, say, leave it open for two weeks and then close it, but 
google code doesn't offer any automated mechanism for that).

Original comment by nothings...@gmail.com on 22 Mar 2012 at 1:50

• Changed state: WontImplement
• Added labels: Type-Enhancement, Security, Priority-Lowest

[GoogleCodeExporter]

I admit that I'm owner of the paid FastPictureViewer WIC codec pack and a sad 
owner indeed, because my current SW of choice - Picasa Viewer - doesn't support 
WIC codecs. I aim at replacing it with stb-imv probably at some point in time 
because of broader format support. I proposed this feature because WIC 
framework seems more present than FreeImage on average computers.

The same link containing the "more secure" note was opened in my browser when 
creating this issue, thus I did the paraphrase of the original GDI+ issue.

The original WIC implementation ships with support of JPEG, TIFF, GIF, PNG, 
BMP, HD Photo and .ICO formats [1][2]. On a very brief search I also found some 
other free codec packs, one even being provided by Microsoft, these usually add 
RAW format support [3][4]. In [4] there is also said that WIC is present in 
Windows since XP SP3, which I cannot (dis)prove.

The answer to your ultimate question is that there is no significant increase 
in amount of supported codecs from vanilla stb-imv to WIC as of now.

1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Imaging_Component
2: 
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/gg430027(v=vs.85).aspx
3: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/groups/ivm/ice/codecs.htm
4: http://www.photools.com/1167/wic-support-codec-availability/

Original comment by radekli...@gmail.com on 22 Mar 2012 at 4:19