Mark has been working with Java and PDF since 1999 and is a big NetBeans fan. He enjoys speaking at conferences. He has an MA in Medieval History and a passion for reading.

At IDRsolutions, we are now using our own Java Image Library (JDeli) as a replacement for ImageIO and JAI. We had previously been using ImageIO and JAI to handle image data and write out BufferedImages as PNGs, JPEGs or Tiff and for decoding some image data inside PDF files since we started writing our Java PDF library in 1999.

However, this has become an increasingly frustrating and unsatisfactory solution for us 🙁

JAI has long been abandoned by Oracle (we have actually put out several tips and patches for JAI JPEG2000 bugs on our blog) which offers no alternative way to load JPEG2000 files in Java. The JPEG2000 implementation was never completed and is slow, memory intensive, and does not handle lots of JPEG2000 files.

ImageIO has seen little improvement in recent Java releases, despite being the only way to load and save Images in Java. Indeed is it still needed in new JavaFX code to load and save images. It also represents a big black box in our PDF to Image solution which we have no control over. So we have been busy writing our own Java image library (JDeli), and now use this instead of JAI or ImageIO.

Why use JDeli?

JDeli offers a range of advantages over ImageIO and alternatives, including:

prevents heap related JVM crashes

implements unsupported image formats

reduce output file size

improve read/write performance

supports threading

superior image scaling algorithms

So what is your experience of image support in Java. Are you still using JAI and ImageIO or have you tried JDeli?

Did you know...

IDRsolutions offers a whole range of online file converters to convert PDF and Microsoft Excel, Word and Office Documents to HTML5, SVG or image formats?

It is free to use for single file conversions and also includes Developer links if you want to use our commercial software for bulk conversions. Find out more on this page