Any good C++ library for displaying large bitmaps

Question

I'm currently using MFC/GDI and Stingray to display bitmaps in my application and am looking for a better solution. Specifically;

• Faster drawing speed - My current solution is slow, based on StretchDIBits
• Better rendering quality - StretchDIBits rendering quality is awful when scaling a bitmap
• Support for rotated bitmaps
• Support for loading / saving in all popular formats
• Support for large bitmaps - I'm regularly using aerial photographs that are ~64mb as 12,000x12,000 jpegs. GeoTIFF support would also be useful
• Compatible with MFC document/view, including printing (e.g. must be able render to a CDC)
• Access to source code is good but not necessary
• Easy to use / port existing GDI code

While free is always nice, I don't mind spending a reasonable amount on a decent library, though no run time royalty costs. Googling suggests the following;

• CImg
• Graphics Magick
• Lead Tools imaging SDK

Anyone got experience of these or can recommend an good alternative?

Answer 1

I think it's unlikely you'll find something that performs faster than GDI on windows since it has kernel-level support which is something open source solutions will not have.

You might want to also look into OpenGL or Direct2D/Direct3D since these too have direct access to the frame buffer. With 3D APIs, texture size would probably be an issue since most standards limit to something like 4096x4096.

Answer 2

I have used CxImage in the past which is one to add to your evaluation list.

Answer 3

GDI+ is available on any Windows machine since early XP. It has codecs for all popular image formats, JPEG is included. Very nice filters for high-quality image rescaling. Unrestricted image rotation. Draws to a CDC through the Graphics class. Source code for the C++ wrappers are available in the SDK gdiplusXxx.h header files. Speed is likely to be equivalent however, rendering is software based to ensure compatibility.

You can #include <gdiplus.h> and use the C++ wrappers directly. The SDK docs are here. The CImage class is available in MFC, it doesn't expose all capabilities however.