LEAD TECHNOLOGIES ANNOUNCES JBIG FILE FORMAT SUPPORT

Charlotte, NC (January 27, 1999) – LEAD Technologies, Inc., a LEADing provider of imaging development toolkits worldwide, announced today that it is providing JBIG (Joint Bilevel Image Group) support as an add-on to it’s LEADTOOLS line of imaging toolkits. JBIG is more effective than other bitonal algorithms with compression ratios between 1.1 and 1.5 times as great as those provided by the CCITT Groups 3 & 4 fax encodings. JBIG includes a progressive coding scheme that transmits a compressed image by first sending the compressed data for a reduced resolution version and then enhancing the data as needed by transmitting compressed data that builds on that already transmitted.

Rich Little, president of LEAD states, "Our JBIG support is in reaction to document imaging developer requests for a level of compression that will allow greater storage capacity for paper based documents. Additionally, LEADTOOLS JBIG support provides our Internet developers the capability of storing and sending multiple representations of images at different resolutions without any extra storage overhead."

Some Benefits of JBIG

Superior loss-less compression of bitonal and grayscale images

Smaller files can be accessed and retrieved faster

Grayscale images can be compressed more efficiently.

OCR recognition is enhanced for better accuracy due to JBIG’s ability to store compressed images at higher resolutions.

Progressive capability – When decoding a progressively coded image, a low resolution version of the original image is made available first with subsequent doublings of resolution as more data is decoded.

Progressive encoding has two distinct benefits

It is possible to design an application with one common database that can efficiently serve output devices with widely different resolution capabilities.

Provides subjectively superior image browsing (on a CRT) for an application using low-rate and medium-rate communication links. A low-resolution rendition is transmitted and displayed rapidly, which is followed by as much resolution enhancement as desired.

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About LEAD Technologies, Inc.
Founded in 1990, LEAD grew out of years of research headed by Moe Daher to find a comprehensive compression standard for digital images. LEAD is now the world-leading supplier of imaging development toolkits, providing technology of the future, today. LEAD brings to the market the most innovative and technically superior products that provide the greatest possible value for its customers. LEAD’s award winning imaging technology is chosen by Microsoft, Hewlett Packard, Intel, Boeing, Xerox and thousands of other companies for use in their high volume applications and internal systems.