Hello folks,

Although disk storage and internet connection bandwidth are constantly increasing and getting cheaper, worldwide efforts for better file compression are increasing as well.
This is no paradox and there are too many reasons for this to mention but we all know that, for instance, file transfers are never fast enough.

For document imaging domain there is JBIG2 compression scheme.
JBIG2 is an acronym for « Joint Bilevel Imaging Group 2« .
JBIG2 compression results are incredible and perfectly suited for efficient storage and greater speed of transmission: sometime 10x better than TIFF G3, G4, or JBIG (also known as JBIG1).
Technical details are beyond the scope of this article, you can find some in the dedicated Wikipedia article and more from the official website, of course.

Users handling big archives (compared to existing storage space), users applying the good practice of maintaining a document/image archives backup or users who simply prefer faster transfers via email or file sharing apps. might be interested in such a performant compression rate.
Resulting images are black and white (bi-level) but all the information is there and it’s up to ten times smaller. And ten times faster to share.

This is why we have included JBIG2 file format support in all our software products (SDK and end-user products).
We issued this article because we feel that JBIG2 is still relatively unknown to general public.
And it surely deserves better.

Our end-user products:

PaperScan

Free Home PRO
Paperlight

Beta
View JBIG2 files (single and multipage .jb2)
yes yes yes
yes
View PDF files with embedded JBIG2 encoded bitmap
yes yes yes
yes
Save as single page JBIG2 file (.jb2) or PDF with embedded JBIG2 bitmap
yes yes yes
no
Save as multipage JBIG2 file (.jb2) or PDF with embedded JBIG2 bitmap
no yes yes
no

Our GdPicture.NET SDK:

All GdPicture.NET SDK Editions (except for « Document Viewer SDK », the minimal one), allow developers -through the optional JBIG2 Encoder plugin – to quickly and easily add to their apps JBIG2 related features such as read, write, view JBIG2 files or PDF files embedding JBIG2 encoded bitmap.
The GdPicture.NET Ultimate SDK Edition license unlocks all features and plugins, including the JBIG2 Encoder plugin.

Cheers,

Bogdan