Imaging Experts

When Doing It Yourself Isn't the Best Answer

Snowbound Software began by offering high-powered development tools for engineers who wanted to embed imaging technology into their applications. Justifiably these companies had already made the decision that their core competency was their application and not imaging technology. Display and conversion of various image formats such as TIFF, JPEG, MO:DCA, AFP, and PCL was better left to an expert — like Snowbound. When tabulating the cost of in-house development (if they could find the expertise) and comparing that to investing in and partnering with Snowbound, with our 'in the trenches' tested technology, the decision was a no-brainer.

Because we build developer-to-developer relationships, we speak the right language and we understand an engineer's requirements. Many times we’ve added new capabilities at a customer’s request — helping them meet their needs and helping us create a more powerful, more useful product.

So what’s different today? Well, time-to-market and cost concerns seem more pressing. Everyone is in crisis mode. The digital age has arrived! People are truly using ECM, DCM, DAM and other systems because they are cost effective and an absolute requirement for staying competitive. There is more demand for our products, our support and our enhancements – and people can’t wait. (Some people don’t even have time to read the manual.) We have a new department for that — Professional Services. We’ve organized and expanded what we’ve always provided, a professional team assigned to your project from specification to implementation. A group of imaging experts that can distill your requirements (often better than you can yourself), recommend the right product and, if needed, seamlessly integrate it with your system.

If you want to support your system yourself, what then? Simply contract us to create the integration layers for you to own. Then, with the purchase of our imaging tools, you can get a quick start and retain full control of your application.

We can implement our imaging solutions for you, saving you time and money to better focus on your core business. We’ve solved imaging problems for hundreds of companies world-wide — this is what we do, let us be your imaging team.

-Simon

Converting PDF to JPEG

You may decide that you want to convert image files from PDF to JPEG format. Before you convert your files, you may ask yourself: Why convert to the JPEG format? First of all, JPEG images are lossy. That means that digital images saved in the JPEG format can be compressed to save space. This gives you the ability to adjust the size of your image file. By making the file size of your image smaller, you can load and send your image much quicker. Of course, you give up some of the image quality when you save your file at a higher compression rate, but you can adjust the compression rate so that the reduced image quality is barely noticeable.

Another advantage to saving an image in the JPEG format is that JPEG files are now a widely used format. JPEG images are easily accessible. They can be opened by many applications. It’s pretty much a certainty that viewers of your web site will be able to view JPEG files in their web browser. If you need to send your image by email, the person receiving the image most likely will know how to handle a JPEG file. If your user owns a digital camera, he is familiar with the JPEG file format and can most likely take and store JPEG images.

Another possible reason to convert is that PDFs have certain limitations. One disadvantage is that the user often has to wait for Adobe Acrobat to load and open your PDF file before it is displayed. If you have a large file, this can take some time. Although Adobe’s Acrobat Reader is very ubiquitous these days, you still are dependent on your user having the Acrobat Reader installed on his computer to view your PDF file.

Another disadvantage to the PDF format is that your PDF file size may be large. This will make your file cumbersome to work with. It will take some time for the file to load on a web site or to be sent via email. This makes it advantageous to convert your file to the JPEG format.

If you have decided to convert your PDF file to a JPEG, how do you make the conversion? If you have very few files to convert, you can use a printer driver to do your conversion. However, if you have large quantity of files to convert, it will be very time consuming to convert your files individually using this method. A solution to this problem is to use an imaging toolkit, such as Snowbound Software’s imaging SDK, and write a simple application to perform the conversion. Snowbound’s imaging tools give users the ability to convert PDF to JPEG (document to image conversion) directly without using an external application or printer driver. For more information about Snowbound’s imaging applications, go to their web site at http://www.snowbound.com/image_conversion/pdf_to_jpeg.html.

For another point of view, read this article on the advantages of converting from the JPEG to PDF format: http://www.investintech.com/resources/articles/howconvertjpegtopdf/

- Patty