ImageComponent.NET

Another year is coming

Sun, 23 Dec 2007 22:00:00 GMT

It has been a long time without updating anything to ImageComponent.NET except regular technical support. Two reasons I paused here:

First, as all of you guys notice, I indicate my products as "lightweight" solutions. I don't want to over-complicate them, otherwise, they won't be "lightweight" anymore. You can say it's my excuse, whatever. :)

But I do need to find a new product idea, I mentioned I was interested in re-open the Gallery.NET. Yes, I am still having that idea. I always like that idea: setup the program one time, then in the future, just use FTP to upload files to complete an online gallery without extra work. My first version was pretty simple; I notice some people are actually still using that version, that's nice. The only reason I still haven't started that is: it was so easily for me to go complex. Since VS.NET 2008 has been released, I was thinking to build a visual toolkit for Gallery.NET. Then I was thinking to add some WPF features to it, and maybe a little linq too, then blab blab blab. Now you know why.

BTW, it's just my opinion, Microsoft is progressing too fast, I really don't have enough time to study.

Second, I was following a professor in University of Manitoba to do an interesting project, which is a public ambient display system with multi-touching functionalities. Technically speaking, we are all newbies, even the professor. We were not exactly sure how to build a perfect multi-touching device. We are having one now, very baby prototype, which we can do something with it. Multi-touching is really interesting. Personally, I feel it will be very popular in the next few years. I know Microsoft is doing the "Surface" project, and who knows what other interesting products will be invented by that time.

Anyway, it's pretty much of what I have been doing and thinking in the recent months. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone.

Three new books received yesterday

Mon, 2 Apr 2007 22:00:00 GMT

Finally my order arrived yesterday, it actually didn't take too long, but I was still looking forward to them.

I have heard "Norman" a lot, but this is the first book I own from him. In fact, I know this book has a good reputation in this field (UI Design). And I just read the first chapter, basically it repeats the stuffs I know before (something about Norman's Law), but the tone (of the book) is quite casual and the stories are funny. The style is similar to Joel on Software, and I think this book can be a very good reference for anyone, not neccessarily working in design, because you can use it to judge if a product/furniture/house/etc. has a good design or not.

Highly recommended.

The second book is the one I want to read. I am deeply attracted by dynamic system and chaos this year. I haven't really understood all essentials yet, but the topic is really interesting, so I would like to know more about it and learn it. I have borrowed some technical reference from library, and those are very mathematical. This book doesn't use too much math, I guess it might be a good entrance to know about this field from a different depiction.

The third book is....I don't know.

I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but the abstract looks interesting. The reason I added this book was the total amount of above two books didn't qualify free shipping, so I found a random book about new science and added it. See, am I stupid? In order to save a couple bucks shipping fee, I bought an item over 10 bucks. Who knows, a loss may turn out to be a gain. This book could be fun, I will read it next month, I promise.... hmmm, next month I will be busy, maybe next next month... oh no, maybe July... ok, maybe this year, I will read it before the end of this year.

(if by any chance you have read this book, tell me about it, thanks!)

Happy Chinese New Year

Wed, 14 Feb 2007 22:00:00 GMT

This Saturday, Feb 17th, will be Chinese New Year. Long time ago I have realized, holiday is nothing but an excuse to celebrate, meet family, go out for dinner, go to party, or have fun in bar, and so on. Therefore, this weekend, my wife and I will go out for dinner again, even we have done that last week. :)

The discount sale is closed.

I can't find any free time to upgrade any component now and in the next 2 months, but I did experitment couple new filters recently because some clients wrote email to me and ask for it. Those will be added to the next version for sure, but I just don't want to announce them right now.

Next month I will be required to do a short presentation about SOA to a group of business students. I was thinking this would be a piece of cake at the beginning, but after I did the research and then found out it's not. Because the audiences have no any kownledge of programming and traditional software development process. Most of them never hear SOA before, I don't know what they think actually, business students might feel software is easily made like mother makes dinner or breakfast. I guess business students might be more frustrated than business department people. You know, in real life, IT and business "fight" each other a lot. :D

Anyway, I decided to focus on only the business impact of SOA, and describe how it works briefly. I finished my first version of slides this week, hopefully it will make sense. I still have time to work it better since I have time.

Moreover, I found a very interesting website provided by Microsoft, http://www.networkmashups.com/. Unfortunately, I don't have time to join this and have fun, but maybe you can. A very good chance to participate such an intrigued SOA-activity.

Christmas and New Year Sale

Fri, 15 Dec 2006 22:00:00 GMT

First, please allow me to wish everyone a fantastic holiday.

Second, this is the first time that ImageComponent.NET to annouce coupons for the products. From Dec.16, 2006 to Feb.14, 2007, you have the chance to get 50% off on the Unlimited Developers License of both PhotoController and CoolWatermark. It's a HUGE save!

So, for PhotoController Unlimited Developer Licenses:

~~$999.50 USD~~ $499.75 USD

[Buy It Now]

for CoolWatermark Unlimited Developer License:

~~$595.50 USD~~ $297.75 USD

[Buy It Now]

And the sale only in ImageComponent.NET

New Version Coming This Week and Coupons too!

Wed, 13 Dec 2006 22:00:00 GMT

The latest version of PhotoController - v2.1 will be released in this weekend. The documentation has been uploaded already, please take a look at here.

By the time, a new sample solution will be published too. The solution contains one C# custom filter project, one VB.NET custom filter project, and one VB.NET windows form project. All source code will be available.

Moreover, two coupon will be announced. This is the end of a year and a new year is coming. What an exciting moment it is! Both CoolWatermark and Photocontroller version 2.x Unlimited Developers License will be 50% from Dec. 16, 2006 to Feb. 14, 2007! Yes, it's true, not kidding. 50% OFF!

Remember to come back and check.

Thanksgiving Update

Sat, 7 Oct 2006 22:00:00 GMT

Firstly, wish everyone a good thanksgiving!

Secondly, I want to make the announcement that the next upgrade of PhotoController is on the way. That will be a another major upgrade, writing border part will be refactored. Then some new filters will come up for sure. I don't mind leaking some of them, such as a bomb filter, auto color enhancement filter, some new noise and blur filters. Bomb is an interesting one, and it can be used to create some dynamic animation. If I have enough time, I might take care of a simple red eye filter, which was requested by one of client, long time ago. :)-

The new upgrade should be released before Christmas. Um, I still have two months

On the other hand, I am experimenting some new text watermark; however, I don't have a exact time for next upgrade. By the way, if any of you has a good idea on watermark, please don't hesitate to let me know. Thanks!

Userful Image Processing Resources

Tue, 19 Sep 2006 22:00:00 GMT

Lately I am too busy to update my stuffs, so I realiize I really should post something here to keep my site "fresh". The following will be some useful resources in image processing area (mostly in 2D). I am definitely not an expert in this field, the resources listed here just something I feel useful, take a look if you are interested.

Fundamentals

HIPR2
The Hypermedia Image Processing Reference (HIPR) is another great website with many useful reference in image processing operations. Code is in Java.

Image Processing Fundamentals

Bruce Lindbloom's Website
Helpful references of color science

Charles Poynton
Another good site about color science

Math

MIT Open Courseware
Everyboy loves MIT courseware, because it's totally free and professional.

Vision Systems
Describes many math theory for different 2D and 3D image processing areas.

Ask Dr.Math
A quick reference to answer many math questions

Source code

efg's Computer Lab
Firstly, I need to thank borland have hosted this great website for a long time, there are tons of graphics related materials you will find. Most samples are written in Pascal, which is one of my favorite language. Unfortunately, it seems it stopped update long time ago.

GDI+ Sample
I don't go here too often, but indeed you can find some interesting demos in there. This catalog is in C++, but you should be able to find a catalog for C# in that website.

Books and paper

There are many books and research paper you can find online, I can't list all of them. But the following I would like to introduce to you.

Image inpainting
This paper describes an image inpainting technique based on the fast matching method, I am actually planning to implement it or even put that in PhotoController in the future.

Lens Distortion
This filter will be in PhotoController very soon, even you can use the current sphere filter to get the similar result.

This is truely a good book to enter image processing world. The theory explanations and implementation algorithms are clear. Take a little time to read the comments on that page, not only me will recommend this book.

A very classic university textbook on Computer Graphics, frankly, I haven't had the chance to read it, cos I didn't do that course. :) However, I did take a look in the school bookstore, in my opinion, most other books in this topic will be similar, if you want to understand the theorems in this field, reading only a good one will be enough.

Computational Geometry: An Introduction (Monographs in Computer Science)
Another very classic text will be useful, it helps you understand the shaping and modeling with computer.

Version 2.0 of both PhotoController and CoolWatermark are released

Sat, 3 Jun 2006 22:00:00 GMT

It's glad to annouce the version 2.0 of both my components are finally released in the early of June. The last stage, which is mainly dealing with website update, is really costly.

The price of CoolWatermark new version remains unchanged, but I decided to increase the selling price of PhotoController new version. The price of the old version is really low, even after the price increment, I believe it is still the lowest price in the whole market (compared to the similar products). Besides, after refactoring, the new version becomes quite extensible, so I believe you will definitely feel it's worthy.

Also, as you have seen, I changed a host and the domain name. They are fixed cost as well.

The summer is coming, while I am getting more and more busy. I am sorry I told one of my clients I would try to release the new version in May, unfortunately I couldn't do so. There is one thing interesting, two months ago, I sumbitted one idea to MadeInExpress, now their decisions have been made, and I am not the one. Ha, I am relieved actually, because I really have no time in June. But seriously, I do feel my idea is good. :)

Anyway, I guess the new version being out is another milestone of this website. Please allow me to jubilate, yeah~~~~~

Happy Canada Day and GalleryNET 3.0 alpha is out

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 22:00:00 GMT

First of all, happy Canada Day. I am very happy to have one day off. Recently I have been really busy.

Second, I finally finished documenting the new version of GalleryNET 3.0 alpha. I actually started working on this update in May, unfortunately I was moving home the end of May, so the whole process was a little delay. Anyway, I decided to let it out today, even though it's not bug free yet.

There are a few bugs now. After I deployed it, I found a few more and quickly fix those easy ones. Besides the ones listed in the whitepaper, I found the ajax rating submission seems not working properly in FireFox, but it did work fine in IE and FireFox locally. It's really weird. There are many other weird issues too. Since it's an open source project, I hope other people can help.

I will try to upload this to google code repository soon; yesterday when I tried to do that, google prompted the naming of the project has a conflict with the one I set up years ago in SourceForge. They are both named "gallerynet". Ironically, when I searched it in SF, it displays "invalid project", which means SF has abandoned that duplicate project, god knows where google came out such a conclusion.

PhotoController 1.3.0313 Build

Sat, 18 Mar 2006 22:00:00 GMT

The version 1.3.0313 is the latest build of PhotoController.

The main changes are the following:

    1. Fix the bug that the transparency of a GIF will lose after manipulating

    2. Fix the bug that it throws out an exception when crop an image with indexed color pixelformat

    3. Add AllowPartiallyTrustedCallers to the assembly

The following issues are still in the current version; however, they won't cause significant impact, hence they will be fixed in the next version.

    1. Can not close stream before manipulating the image.

     This issue is caused by a user is passing the image as a stream data to PhotoController, but close the stream before calling methods of PhotoController. The issue won't happen in the trial version, since I process the image in the initialization if the component is trial. The current solution is that only close the stream after finish alll manipulation.

     2. Can not create a feather background.

     This issue is caused by using a background whose size is larger than half of the foreground image. The current solution is, hmm, not that friendly, use a smaller size background image.

In here, I would like to thank Dave and Ruben for helping me to improve this assembly.

I will start working on next version for .NET framework 2.0; but before that I have something else to do first. I plan the 2.0 version will be released in the early May. So, if you have any suggestion or opinion towards PhotoController, please feel free to contact me.

New Website, New Domain, New Version

Wed, 15 Mar 2006 22:00:00 GMT

It is exciting to announce that the new website and the new domain are released. There are two reasons convince me to this upgrade:

1. The new domain name is more meaningful for the website content
2. The new domain name makes sense and is easy to remember

I didn't change the website design too much, but everything is upgraded to ASP.NET 2.0 by using MasterPage. Initially, I was pretty passionate about making a professional, search engine friendly, and w3-validated wesbite; however, ASP.NET 2.0 is not available to do so.

See this:

treeview control produces invalid XHTML tag

this is true in my website.

Mozilla and W3C validator receive different page source than IE

this is also true. I have an invalid border="0" for the input type="image", where is only in FireFox.

So, not only me makes mistake. ^^ but anyway, the website is built. I did make some changes, such as this blog, I quickly wrote one for myself, not very beautiful. I also gave up the forum that I wrote, and change to community server, which is offered by my new hosting provider. It's nice, oh, yet, I change a host too.

I will release the 2.0 version of PhotoController very soon, and then I will work on the upgrade of CoolWatermark.

At the end, I would like to thank all of my clients who ordered my components, complained my products, and gave me opinions. Thank you very much!!