USING THE IJG JPEG LIBRARY
Copyright (C) 1994-1998, Thomas G. Lane.
This file is part of the Independent JPEG Group's software.
For conditions of distribution and use, see the accompanying README file.
This file describes how to use the IJG JPEG library within an application
program. Read it if you want to write a program that uses the library.
The file example.c provides heavily commented skeleton code for calling the
JPEG library. Also see jpeglib.h (the include file to be used by application
programs) for full details about data structures and function parameter lists.
The library source code, of course, is the ultimate reference.
Note that there have been *major* changes from the application interface
presented by IJG version 4 and earlier versions. The old design had several
inherent limitations, and it had accumulated a lot of cruft as we added
features while trying to minimize application-interface changes. We have
sacrificed backward compatibility in the version 5 rewrite, but we think the
improvements justify this.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
-----------------
Overview:
Functions provided by the library
Outline of typical usage
Basic library usage:
Data formats
Compression details
Decompression details
Mechanics of usage: include files, linking, etc
Advanced features:
Compression parameter selection
Decompression parameter selection
Special color spaces
Error handling
Compressed data handling (source and destination managers)
I/O suspension
Progressive JPEG support
Buffered-image mode
Abbreviated datastreams and multiple images
Special markers
Raw (downsampled) image data
Really raw data: DCT coefficients
Progress monitoring
Memory management
Memory usage
Library compile-time options
Portability considerations
Notes for MS-DOS implementors
You should read at least the overview and basic usage sections before trying
to program with the library. The sections on advanced features can be read
if and when you need them.
OVERVIEW
========
Functions provided by the library
---------------------------------
The IJG JPEG library provides C code to read and write JPEG-compressed image
files. The surrounding application program receives or supplies image data a
scanline at a time, using a straightforward uncompressed image format. All
details of color conversion and other preprocessing/postprocessing can be
handled by the library.
The library includes a substantial amount of code that is not covered by the
JPEG standard but is necessary for typical applications of JPEG. These
functions preprocess the image before JPEG compression or postprocess it after
decompression. They include colorspace conversion, downsampling/upsampling,
and color quantization. The application indirectly selects use of this code
by specifying the format in which it wishes to supply or receive image data.
For example, if colormapped output is requested, then the decompression
library automatically invokes color quantization.
A wide range of quality vs. speed tradeoffs are possible in JPEG processing,
and even more so in decompression postprocessing. The decompression library
provides multiple implementations that cover most of the useful tradeoffs,
ranging from very-high-quality down to fast-preview operation. On the
compression side we have generally not provided low-quality choices, since
compression is normally less time-critical. It should be understood that the
low-quality modes may not meet the JPEG standard's accuracy requirements;
nonetheless, they are useful for viewers.
A word about functions *not* provided by the library. We handle a subset of
the ISO JPEG standard; most baseline, extended-sequential, and progressive
JPEG processes are supported. (Our subset includes all features now in common
use.) Unsupported ISO options include:
* Hierarchical storage
* Lossless JPEG
* Arithmetic entropy coding (unsupported for legal reasons)
* DNL marker
* Nonintegral subsampling ratios
We support both 8- and 12-bit data precision, but this is a compile-time
choice rather than a run-time choice; hence it is difficult to use both
precisions in a single application.
By itself, the library handles only interchange JPEG datastreams --- in
particular the widely used JFIF file format. The library can be used by
surrounding code to process interchange or abbreviated JPEG datastreams that
are embedded in more complex file formats. (For example, this library is
used by the free LIBTIFF library to support JPEG compression in TIFF.)
Outline of typical usage
------------------------
The rough outline of a JPEG compression operation is:
Allocate and initialize a JPEG compression object
Specify the destination for the compressed data (eg, a file)
Set parameters for compression, including image size & colorspace
jpeg_start_compress(...);
while (scan lines remain to be written)
jpeg_write_scanlines(...);
jpeg_finish_compress(...);
Release the JPEG compression object
A JPEG compression object holds parameters and working state for the JPEG
library. We make creation/destruction of the object separate from starting
or finishing compression of an image; the same object can be re-used for a
series of image compression operations. This makes it easy to re-use the
same parameter settings for a sequence of images. Re-use of a JPEG object
also has important implications for processing abbreviated JPEG datastreams,
as discussed later.
The image data to be compressed is supplied to jpeg_write_scanlines() from
in-memory buffers. If the application is doing file-to-file compression,
reading image data from the source file is the application's responsibility.
The library emits compressed data by calling a "data destination manager",
which typically will write the data into a file; but the application can
provide its own destination manager to do something else.
Similarly, the rough outline of a JPEG decompression operation is:
Allocate and initialize a JPEG decompression object
Specify the source of the compressed data (eg, a file)
Call jpeg_read_header() to obtain image info
Set parameters for decompression
jpeg_start_decompress(...);
while (scan lines remain to be read)
jpeg_read_scanlines(...);
jpeg_finish_decompress(...);
Release the JPEG decompression object
This is comparable to the compression outline except that reading the
datastream header is a separate step. This is helpful because information
about the image's size, colorspace, etc is available when the application
selects decompression parameters. For example, the application can choose an
output scaling ratio that will fit the image into the available screen size.
The decompression library obtains compressed data by calling a data source
manager, which typically will read the data from a file; but other behaviors
can be obtained with a custom source manager. Decompressed data is delivered
into in-memory buffers passed to jpeg_read_scanlines().
It is possible to abort an incomplete compression or decompression operation
by calling jpeg_abort(); or, if you do not need to retain the JPEG object,
simply release it by calling jpeg_destroy().
JPEG compression and decompression objects are two separate struct types.
However, they share some common fields, and certain routines such as
jpeg_destroy() can work on either type of object.
The JPEG library has no static variables: all state is in the compression
or decompression object. Therefore it is possible to process multiple
compression and decompression operations concurrently, using multiple JPEG
objects.
Both compression and decompression can be done in an incremental memory-to-
memory fashion, if suitable source/destination managers are used. See the
section on "I/O suspension" for more details.
BASIC LIBRARY USAGE
===================
Data formats
------------
Before diving into procedural details, it is helpful to understand the
image data format that the JPEG library expects or returns.
The standard input image format is a rectangular array of pixels, with each
pixel having the same number of "component" or "sample" values (color
channels). You must specify how many components there are and the colorspace
interpretation of the components. Most applications will use RGB data
(three components per pixel) or grayscale data (one component per pixel).
PLEASE NOTE THAT RGB DATA IS THREE SAMPLES PER PIXEL, GRAYSCALE ONLY ONE.
A remarkable number of people manage to miss this, only to find that their
programs don't work with grayscale JPEG files.
There is no provision for colormapped input. JPEG files are always full-color
or full grayscale (or sometimes another colorspace such as CMYK). You can
feed in a colormapped image by expanding it to full-color format. However
JPEG often doesn't work very well with source data that has been colormapped,
because of dithering noise. This is discussed in more detail in the JPEG FAQ
and the other references mentioned in the README file.
Pixels are stored by scanlines, with each scanline running from left to
right. The component values for each pixel are adjacent in the row; for
example, R,G,B,R,G,B,R,G,B,... for 24-bit RGB color. Each scanline is an
array of data type JSAMPLE --- which is typically "unsigned char", unless
you've changed jmorecfg.h. (You can also change the RGB pixel layout, say
to B,G,R order, by modifying jmorecfg.h. But see the restrictions listed in
that file before doing so.)
A 2-D array of pixels is formed by making a list of pointers to the starts of
scanlines; so the scanlines need not be physically adjacent in memory. Even
if you process just one scanline at a time, you must make a one-element
pointer array to conform to this structure. Pointers to JSAMPLE rows are of
type JSAMPROW, and the pointer to the pointer array is of type JSAMPARRAY.
The library accepts or supplies one or more complete scanlines per call.
It is not possible to process part of a row at a time. Scanlines are always
processed top-to-bottom. You can process an entire image in one call if you
have it all in memory, but usually it's simplest to process one scanline at
a time.
For best results, source data values should have the precision specified by
BITS_IN_JSAMPLE (normally 8 bits). For instance, if you choose to compress
data that's only 6 bits/channel, you should left-justify each value in a
byte before passing it to the compressor. If you need to compress data
that has more than 8 bits/channel, compile with BITS_IN_JSAMPLE = 12.
(See "Library compile-time options", later.)
The data format returned by the decompressor is the same in all details,
except that colormapped output is supported. (Again, a JPEG file is never
colormapped. But you can ask the decompressor to perform on-the-fly color
quantization to deliver colormapped output.) If you request colormapped
output then the returned data array contains a single JSAMPLE per pixel;
its value is an index into a color map. The color map is represented as
a 2-D JSAMPARRAY in which each row holds the values of one color component,
that is, colormap[i][j] is the value of the i'th color component for pixel
value (map index) j. Note that since the colormap indexes are stored in
JSAMPLEs, the maximum number of colors is limited by the size of JSAMPLE
(ie, at most 256 colors for an 8-bit JPEG library).
Compression details
-------------------
Here we revisit the JPEG compression outline given in the overview.
1. Allocate and initialize a JPEG compression object.
A JPEG compression object is a "struct jpeg_compress_struct". (It also has
a bunch of subsidiary structures which are allocated via malloc(), but the
application doesn't control those directly.) This struct can be just a local
variable in the calling routine, if a single routine is going to execute the
whole JPEG compression sequence. Otherwise it can be static or allocated
from malloc().
You will also need a structure representing a JPEG error handler. The part
of this that the library cares about is a "struct jpeg_error_mgr". If you
are providing your own error handler, you'll typically want to embed the
jpeg_error_mgr struct in a larger structure; this is discussed later under
"Error handling". For now we'll assume you are just using the default error
handler. The default error handler will print JPEG error/warning messages
on stderr, and it will call exit() if a fatal error occurs.
You must initialize the error handler structure, store a pointer to it into
the JPEG object's "err" field, and then call jpeg_create_compress() to
initialize the rest of the JPEG object.
Typical code for this step, if you are using the default error handler, is
struct jpeg_compress_struct cinfo;
struct jpeg_error_mgr jerr;
...
cinfo.err = jpeg_std_error(&jerr);
jpeg_create_compress(&cinfo);
jpeg_create_compress allocates a small amount of memory, so it could fail
if you are out of memory. In that case it will exit via the error handler;
that's why the error handler must be initialized first.
2. Specify the destination for the compressed data (eg, a file).
As previously mentioned, the JPEG library delivers compressed data to a
"data destination" module. The library includes one data destination
module which knows how to write to a stdio stream. You can use your own
destination module if you want to do something else, as discussed later.
If you use the standard destination module, you must open the target stdio
stream beforehand. Typical code for this step looks like:
FILE * outfile;
...
if ((outfile = fopen(filename, "wb")) == NULL) {
fprintf(stderr, "can't open %s\n", filename);
exit(1);
}
jpeg_stdio_dest(&cinfo, outfile);
where the last line invokes the standard destination module.
WARNING: it is critical that the binary compressed data be delivered to the
output file unchanged. On non-Unix systems the stdio library may perform
newline translation or otherwise corrupt binary data. To suppress this
behavior, you may need to use a "b" option to fopen (as shown above), or use
setmode() or another routine to put the stdio stream in binary mode. See
cjpeg.c and djpeg.c for code that has been found to work on many systems.
You can select the data destination after setting other parameters (step 3),
if that's more convenient. You may not change the destination between
calling jpeg_start_compress() and jpeg_finish_compress().
3. Set parameters for compression, including image size & colorspace.
You must supply information about the source image by setting the following
fields in the JPEG object (cinfo structure):
