= FreeImage Ruby Bindings

== Overview
The free-image gem provides Ruby language bindings for the
FreeImage[http://freeimage.sourceforge.net/] library.  It is free software,
released under the MIT License.

FreeImage is an light-weight, open source image manipulation library that
supports many popular graphics image {formats}[rdoc-ref:FreeImage.formats]
such as PNG, JPEG, GIF, BMP, and TIFF.

We think FreeImage is a great library for applications that need to read, write,
create and modify images and thumbnails because:

* Its easy to use
* Its supports almost all popular image formats
* Its a light-weight alternative to larger libraries such as ImageMagick,
  supporting basic manipulation functions but not advanced functionality
* Its cross-platform
* The ruby bindings are implemented using FFI, so work across all Ruby
  implementations and do not have to be compiled
* Its much more comprehensive than ImageScience
* Has comprehensive documentation

Note that FreeImage is not the right library for you if you need:
* Advanced image processing operations such as convolution and transforms
* Bitmap drawing
* Vector graphics

== Installation
free-image requires Ruby 1.8.7 or higher.  The easiest way to install
free-image is via Ruby Gems.  To install:

 gem install free-image


== Getting Started
Using free-image is easy.  To get you started,  refer to the
\FreeImage cookbook[rdoc-ref:cookbook.rdoc].


== Implementation Status
The FreeImage API is divided into multiple parts.  As summarized below, the Ruby ffi
bindings currently implement a subset of the available api. Patches are welcome to
extend the coverage.

=== Bitmap functions
* General - FreeImage::Bitmap
* Bitmap management - FreeImage::Bitmap
* Bitmap information - FreeImage::Information, FreeImage::Color::Palette
* Filetype - FreeImage::File, FreeImage::IO, FreeImage::Memory
* Pixel access - FreeImage::Pixel
* Conversion - FreeImage::Conversions
* Tone mapping - Not Implemented
* ICC profile - FreeImage::ICC
* Plugin - Not Implemented
* Multipage - Not Implemented
* Memory I/O streams - FreeImage::MemoryStream
* Compression - Not Implemented
* Helper functions - FreeImage::Helper

=== Metadata Functions
* Introduction - Not Implemented
* Tag creation and destruction - Not Implemented
* Tag accessors - Not Implemented
* Metadata iterator - Not Implemented
* Metadata accessors - Not Implemented
* Metadata helper functions - Not Implemented

=== Toolkit Functions
* Rotation and flipping - FreeImage::Transforms
* Upsampling / downsampling - FreeImage::Modify
* Color manipulation - Not Implemented
* Channel processing - Not Implemented
* Copy / Paste / Composite routines - FreeImage::Modify
* Background filling - FreeImage::Modify
* Miscellaneous algorithms - Not Implemented

== Documentation
Documentation is available via rdoc, and is installed automatically with the
gem.  Note that much of the documentation is directly copied from
the FreeImage API documentation available
here[http://downloads.sourceforge.net/freeimage/FreeImage3151.pdf].

free-image's online documentation is generated using Hanna.  To generate
documentation from source:

  gem install hanna-nouveau
  rake rdoc
  - or -
  rdoc -o doc/rdoc -f hanna -m "README.rdoc" lib/**/*.rb README.rdoc


== Support

If you have any questions about using free-image, please ?

== License
See LICENSE for license information.