LEAD Technologies’ LEADTOOLS Supports New Version 5.0
of the Microsoft Visual Tools

Developers Can Add Imaging Power to Microsoft Visual Tools 5.0

Charlotte, NC (March 19, 1997) – LEAD Technologies, Inc. updates its award-winning imaging toolkit, LEADTOOLS, to enhance the version 5.0 of the Microsoft® Visual Tools products. The combination of Visual Tools 5.0 from Microsoft and LEADTOOLS gives programmers exactly what they need: more time, power and speed. Internet and Web page developers will find enhanced imaging technologies to make their applications stand out among the masses. Internet-enabled features include broadened GIF support (with animation, transparency, interlace and embedded text), progressive JPEG & CMP, import of AVI files, a Feed/Load function to display image data as it is being transmitted and a Bitmap Datapath allowing images to be read from anywhere on the Internet. With Microsoft Visual Tools 5.0 and LEADTOOLS, developers can create powerful Internet applications while leveraging their existing client/server technology investments.

"LEADTOOLS 7 is the result of over 6 years of understanding why programmers purchase a development toolkit: they need to save time, and they need powerful and high speed functionality," said Rich Little, President of LEAD Technologies, Inc. "By offering the widest variety of imaging technology in a single toolkit, LEADTOOLS 7 allows developers to add imaging features into Microsoft Visual Tools 5.0 without the expertise, resources or time investment that it would take to write the code on their own."

"LEAD Technologies, Inc. has been a pioneer in offering comprehensive imaging technology to the developer community for Microsoft Visual Studio™ development tools, and we’re very excited that it is continuing its pioneering efforts by offering ActiveX™ components." said Tom Button director of marketing of development tools at Microsoft.

LEADTOOLS is a family of imaging toolkits that combine black & white, grayscale and full color imaging technology into one development product. There are more than 200 functions that handle all aspects of imaging, from the initial import of the image with TWAIN scanners or digital cameras, to viewing and processing of an image, to the final output via printers. Whether the programmer is overlaying annotations on millions of checks, or zooming in on a high resolution satellite photograph, LEADTOOLS works in conjunction with Visual Tools 5.0 to become the developer’s A to Z solution. LEADTOOLS supports the importing and exporting of more than 40 of the most popular image file formats including TIFF, TGA, BMP, PNG, PCX and GIF. LEAD’s file format support does not just stop with the most popular flavor of a particular format. LEAD has spent the time to ensure that LEADTOOLS supports as many of the known flavors as possible. Developers will feel confident that TIFF support in LEADTOOLS means TIFF is supported! The image compression support in LEADTOOLS is the most comprehensive of any toolkit on the market, with both industry-standard methods such as JPEG (multiple flavors including progressive) and CCITT G3/G4, as well as proprietary alternatives such as the patented LEAD CMP compression process, which will produce image sizes that are smaller, and image quality that is better than the standard compressed formats.

LEADTOOLS contains the richest set of image-processing features available with more than 50 different filters (such as intensity, sharpen, emboss, mosaic and histogram) to create special effects or to provide image cleanup and photo manipulation. Programmers who need more control over image processing can take advantage of powerful "region of interest" capabilities. LEADTOOLS provides flexible paint functions for dithering, zooming, scrolling and special effects. In fact, LEAD’s color reduction and dithering code is considered among the best in the business. The programmer can choose between fixed, optimized, or user-defined palettes with eight (8) different dithering techniques including Floyd-Stein and Burkes.

LEADTOOLS is the imaging toolkit of choice, used by companies like Kodak, AT&T, McDonnell Douglas and thousands more. Whether developers are working with document or medical imaging, creating an imaging database, or adding images to a web page, LEADTOOLS will ensure that the application developed has the highest level of imaging technology available. LEAD Technologies, Inc. is a unique development tool vendor in that LEADTOOLS supports all of the Microsoft version 5.0 Visual Tools and ships with extensive source code examples for Visual Basic®, Visual C++®, Visual J++™, Visual FoxPro™, Microsoft Access, Visual Basic Scripting Edition and Java Script. LEADTOOLS is offered as DLLs (WIN32® & WIN16), an ActiveX (32 & 16 bit) and a VBX. LEAD’s mature code is backed by a 30 day money-back guarantee (US & Canada only) and free technical support via phone, fax, BBS, Internet or CompuServe.

-###-

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.