3 Reasons Why JDeli Is A Better ImageIO alternative

Java developers looking for ImageIO alternatives know the pain that comes with its problems. Writing image files in certain formats often fails silently (especially JPG/JPEG) without errors being thrown, this is frequently cited by developers in forums and Q&A communities.

On Reddit one user notes:

“ImageIO can only write PNGs, fails for other formats”

ImageIO is build into the JDK and provides basic image support in Java. JDeli is a commercial image library for Java Developers from IDRsolutions. So why do developers use our library?

We get asked this question regularly so here is our reply to this question…

Better support for JPEG and JPEG2000

The original reason we wrote JDeli was our frustration with Java Image support, especially JPEG and JPEG2000 which we use in our JPedal Java PDF library.

The support in ImageIO is incomplete, slow, buggy and uses lots of memory. It uses a patched copy of an old Open Source library called JJ2000.

After trying this solution, we concluded it was time to write a clean, fast, modern Encoder/Decoder for JPEG and JPEG2000.

JDeli adds additional Image Format Support

We did the same for TIFF and PNG image file formats. We properly implemented all the TIFF sub-formats and we added options to compress PNG files.

We are currently the only viable enterprise solution for the reading, writing and converting Apple’s HEIC format.

We’ve also recently added support for AVIF reading, with writing support for the AVIF format coming soon. You can visit JDeli’s support site to view all the image formats supported.

Watch a video on how to Read and Write TIFF files in Java with JDeli

JDeli is Pure Java

A key reason for several enterprise Companies switching to JDeli is because they are using ImageIO on a server shared between multiple clients. Because ImageIO needs native heap, the server would regularly crash even though there was still lots of free Java heap.

As a pure Java solution, JDeli does not bring down the server and all the other users. This is critical for large scale and critical operations for Java workflows.

Any other advantages?

Because we wrote JDeli to replace ImageIO, we added a set of read and write methods which work exactly as they do with ImageIO. So switching over to JDeli becomes a simple search and replace operation.

We also added some nice new versions so you can gain precise control over the conversion when writing new code. There is also a set of image Processing Operations which can be applied at the same time.

The IDRsolutions website has lots of additional information for developers interested in finding out more about replacing ImageIO with JDeli.

// Read an image
BufferedImage bufferedImage = JDeli.read(avifImageFile);

// Read an image
BufferedImage bufferedImage = JDeli.read(dicomImageFile);

// Read an image
BufferedImage bufferedImage = JDeli.read(heicImageFile);

// Write an image
JDeli.write(bufferedImage, "heic", outputStreamOrFile);

// Read an image
BufferedImage bufferedImage = JDeli.read(jpegImageFile);

// Write an image
JDeli.write(bufferedImage, "jpeg", outputStreamOrFile);

// Read an image
BufferedImage bufferedImage = JDeli.read(jpeg2000ImageFile);

// Write an image
JDeli.write(bufferedImage, "jpx", outputStreamOrFile);

// Write an image
JDeli.write(bufferedImage, "pdf", outputStreamOrFile);

// Read an image
BufferedImage bufferedImage = JDeli.read(pngImageFile);

// Write an image
JDeli.write(bufferedImage, "png", outputStreamOrFile);

// Read an image
BufferedImage bufferedImage = JDeli.read(tiffImageFile);

// Write an image
JDeli.write(bufferedImage, "tiff", outputStreamOrFile);

// Read an image
BufferedImage bufferedImage = JDeli.read(webpImageFile);

// Write an image
JDeli.write(bufferedImage, "webp", outputStreamOrFile);