PipelineElement Class

Syntax

public abstract class PipelineElement : IDisposable

Remarks

Pipelines allow reading and writing image files and processing them without the necessity to load a whole bitmap into memory. This essentially means that you can process large images without getting out-of-memory errors, even on an x86 platform. Pipelines offer the following benefites:

• Within a pipeline, an image is processed stripe by stripe - a portion of image data having the same width as the original and height selected by Graphics Mill for optimal processing.
• Temporary bitmap data may be dumped to the hard drive if it is necessary.
• Descriptive image processing sequence, meaning that image data flows through the pipeline from one transformation to another, so each next element receives the result of the previous processing.
• Ability to build branched pipelines. This is an approach whereby the transformation result can be passed to an arbitrary number of receivers and each of them can process the received data in its own way. For example, you can open an image and save it to JPEG and PNG files, or produce multiple thumbnails of different size at one pass. See the Examples section for details.

Examples

This code sample reads an image from JPEG file, crops a square from its center, adjusts brightness, and writes the result to another file.

using (var reader = ImageReader.Create(@"Images\in.jpg"))
{
    var rect = new System.Drawing.Rectangle()
    {
        X = Math.Max((reader.Width - reader.Height) / 2, 0),
        Y = Math.Max((reader.Height - reader.Width) / 2, 0),
        Width = Math.Min(reader.Width, reader.Height),
        Height = Math.Min(reader.Width, reader.Height)
    };

    using (var crop = new Crop(rect))
    using (var brightness = new Brightness())
    using (var writer = ImageWriter.Create(@"Images\Output\out.jpg"))
    {
        Pipeline.Run(reader + crop + brightness + writer);
    }
}

The following code shows how to create two 128x128 and 2048x2048 thumbnails for a single image.

using (var reader = ImageReader.Create(@"Images\in.jpg"))
{
    var resizeBig = new Pipeline()
    { 
        new Resize(2048, 0), 
        ImageWriter.Create(@"Images\Output\out_2048.jpg")
    };
    var resizeSmall = new Pipeline()
    { 
        new Resize(128, 0),
        ImageWriter.Create(@"Images\Output\out_128.jpg")
    };

    reader.Receivers.Add(resizeBig.Build());
    reader.Receivers.Add(resizeSmall.Build());

    Pipeline.Run(reader);

    resizeBig.DisposeAllElements();
    resizeSmall.DisposeAllElements();
}

Inheritance Hierarchy

Thread Safety

See Also

Reference

• PipelineElement Members
• Aurigma.GraphicsMill Namespace
• Aurigma.GraphicsMill.Pipeline

Manual

• Processing Large Images Using Pipelines