Windows Imaging Component Download

Microsoft Downloads - Windows Imaging Component

"The Windows Imaging Component (WIC) provides WIC-enabled applications to display and edit any image format for which a WIC-compliant CODEC is installed, and also to read and write metadata in image files

The Windows Imaging Component supports discovery of new and proprietary (e.g., Raw) image formats. Any application that uses WIC can take advantage of new image formats as soon as their CODECs (encoder/decoders) are installed on the computer. WIC includes updated CODECs for JPEG, TIFF, GIF, PNG, & BMP that are more secure than previously released CODECs for these formats, and also supports a new high-performance image format called Windows Media Photo. Additionally, WIC provides metadata readers and writers for common image metadata formats, and enables applications to preserve their own metadata inside image files so they don't need to create "sidecar files".

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From MSDN, Windows Imaging Component Overview

"The Microsoft Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) Imaging Component (WIC) for WPF provides an extensible framework for working with images and image metadata. WIC makes it possible for independent software vendors (ISVs) and independent hardware vendors (IHVs) to develop their own image codecs and get the same platform support as standard image formats (for example, TIFF, JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP, and WMPhoto). A single, consistent set of interfaces is used for all image processing, regardless of image format, so any application using WPF or WIC gets automatic support for new image formats as soon as the codec is installed. The extensible metadata framework makes it possible for applications to read and write their own proprietary metadata directly to image files, so the metadata never gets lost or separated from the image. ..."

Being very involved in images, imaging, etc, I'll be keeping an eye out for more WIC info...