Windows Imaging Component (WIC) Plugin

[Rene Slijkhuis]

This new plugin adds reading support for all image formats that are supported by the Windows Imaging Component (WIC) codecs on your computer.

On Windows 10 are by default the following formats supported by this plugin:
.ARW, .BMP, .CR2, .CRW, .DIB, .DNG, .ERF, .GIF, .JPG, .KDC, .MRW, .NEF, .NRW, .ORF, .PEF, PNG, .RAF, .RAW, .RW2, .RWL, .SR2, .SRW, .TIF

To improve the DNG support it’s recommended to install the following DNG codec from Adobe:
DNGCodec_2_0_Installer.exe

On Windows 7 you have to install the following codec pack to get support for the same formats:
Microsoft Camera Codec Pack - http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/...x?id=26829

Please note that raw files are automatically converted with the default parameters of the used codec. Use a RAW converter if you want to control the conversion of your images.

Features:

• The list of supported image formats (in the file open dialog) is based on the registered WIC codecs on your computer. It will automatically be updated when you install new codecs.
  
• Some WIC codecs support file formats that can have multiple images in one file. This plugin will open all these images as layers.
  

Requirements:

• Microsoft Windows 7 or later
  
• GIMP 2.x or later
  

Download:
WIC_Plugin.zip

Installation:

• Unzip “WIC_Plugin.zip”
  
• Copy all the files into the GIMP “plug-ins” folder
  (which is typically located at: C:\Users\<username>\.gimp-<version>\plug-ins)
  Note: this folder is created on the first startup of GIMP.
  

[Ofnuts]

Two questions:

1. Is it open source (and if so, where is the source?)
   
2. Since the plugin supports types that are supported natively by Gimp (GIF, JPG, PNG) which plugin is used when you open such files (from the file dialog in Gimp, or using "Open with Gimp" or somesuch in a files explorer)?
   

[Rene Slijkhuis]

(08-14-2017, 04:18 PM)Ofnuts Wrote: Two questions:

1. Is it open source (and if so, where is the source?)
   
2. Since the plugin supports types that are supported natively by Gimp (GIF, JPG, PNG) which plugin is used when you open such files (from the file dialog in Gimp, or using "Open with Gimp" or somesuch in a files explorer)?
   

1. The binaries are now available without restrictions (public domain). I don’t have problems with releasing the source code also as public domain in the future. Before doing that I want to cleanup and document my build environment (since it was quite a challenge to setup a visual studio project that generates a GIMP plugin and uses low-level interfaces from both GIMP and Windows). When ready, I will probably use GitHub (or a similar service) for hosting the code.
   
   
2. You can always specify which plugin should be used, by manually selecting the file type in the “Open Image” dialog.
   
   By default GIMP automatically detects which plugin to use. I’m not familiar with the implementation of this mechanism. On my PC, it prefers the WIC plugin instead of the built-in JPEG plugin for jpg-files. The WIC plugin will use the JPEG codec that is shipped with Microsoft Windows.
   
   I can always change the WIC plugin depending on the feedback. Personally, I prefer to use the installed Windows Imaging codecs when using GIMP on Windows, but I’m eager to learn from other people here.
   

[Rene Slijkhuis]

The source code of this plugin can be found at the following GitHub location:
https://github.com/ReneSlijkhuis/gimp-wic-plugin

This software is available under MIT License.

[Rene Slijkhuis]

I’ve uploaded a new version of this plugin on 08-23-2017.

Functionality wise there is no difference with the previous version. The only change is the replacement of a call to a deprecated procedure (“gimp_image_add_layer”) by a call to a similar but future proof procedure (“gimp_image_insert_layer”). Users of the development branch 2.9.x got a warning message for this issue, which should be gone after installing the latest version of this plugin.

[Rene Slijkhuis]

I’ve uploaded a new version of this plugin on 08-27-2017.

This new version comes with a configuration file (“WIC_Decoder.ini”) which allows you to controls certain aspects of the plug-ins behavior.

The following behavior can be controlled:

• Which extensions (file formats) should be ignored by this plug-in.
  For example; if you exclude the bitmap and jpeg extensions then this plug-in will not be used for these formats.
  
• The name of the file type that this plug-in implements (default: “WIC Supported images”).
  Note: this name is used in the GIMP 'Open Image' dialog.
  

Note: you have to restart GIMP after changing the configuration file of this plug-in.

[Ofnuts]

(08-27-2017, 06:50 AM)Rene Slijkhuis Wrote: Note: you have to restart GIMP after changing the configuration file of this plug-in.

Does this work? Normally your plugin is re-registered only if Gimp detects a date change in the executable, but config files (that are not known to Gimp) are not taken in account. So just changing the config file doesn't change the registration info. Unless the Window implementation re-registers everything on every startup, but I thought that this bug was fixed in recent versions?

[Rene Slijkhuis]

(08-27-2017, 08:21 AM)Ofnuts Wrote:

(08-27-2017, 06:50 AM)Rene Slijkhuis Wrote: Note: you have to restart GIMP after changing the configuration file of this plug-in.

Does this work? Normally your plugin is re-registered only if Gimp detects a date change in the executable, but config files (that are not known to Gimp) are not taken in account. So just changing the config file doesn't change the registration info. Unless the Window implementation re-registers everything on every startup, but I thought that this bug was fixed in recent versions?

Plugin registration is normally done in the ‘query’ method which is indeed only called when the plugin has changed. I’ve verified this behavior with the latest GIMP version (2.8.22) on Windows.

However, you can also do the registration in the ‘init’ method which is called each time The GIMP starts up. The plugin will look in its own directory for the configuration file and does the reading itself without using GIMP config file mechanisms.

You can find the latest source code here:
https://github.com/ReneSlijkhuis/gimp-wic-plugin

[Ofnuts]

(08-27-2017, 08:58 AM)Rene Slijkhuis Wrote:

(08-27-2017, 08:21 AM)Ofnuts Wrote:

(08-27-2017, 06:50 AM)Rene Slijkhuis Wrote: Note: you have to restart GIMP after changing the configuration file of this plug-in.

Does this work? Normally your plugin is re-registered only if Gimp detects a date change in the executable, but config files (that are not known to Gimp) are not taken in account. So just changing the config file doesn't change the registration info. Unless the Window implementation re-registers everything on every startup, but I thought that this bug was fixed in recent versions?

Plugin registration is normally done in the ‘query’ method which is indeed only called when the plugin has changed. I’ve verified this behavior with the latest GIMP version (2.8.22) on Windows.

However, you can also do the registration in the ‘init’ method which is called each time The GIMP starts up. The plugin will look in its own directory for the configuration file and does the reading itself without using GIMP config file mechanisms.

You can find the latest source code here:
https://github.com/ReneSlijkhuis/gimp-wic-plugin

Ah, OK

[Rene Slijkhuis]

(08-14-2017, 11:47 AM)Rene Slijkhuis Wrote: This new plugin adds reading support for all image formats that are supported by the Windows Imaging Component (WIC) codecs on your computer.

On Windows 10 are by default the following formats supported by this plugin:
.ARW, .BMP, .CR2, .CRW, .DIB, .DNG, .ERF, .GIF, .JPG, .KDC, .MRW, .NEF, .NRW, .ORF, .PEF, PNG, .RAF, .RAW, .RW2, .RWL, .SR2, .SRW, .TIF

To improve the DNG support it’s recommended to install the following DNG codec from Adobe:
DNGCodec_2_0_Installer.exe

On Windows 7 you have to install the following codec pack to get support for the same formats:
Microsoft Camera Codec Pack - http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=26829

Please note that raw files are automatically converted with the default parameters of the used codec. Use a RAW converter if you want to control the conversion of your images.

Features:

• The list of supported image formats (in the file open dialog) is based on the registered WIC codecs on your computer. It will automatically be updated when you install new codecs.
  
• Some WIC codecs support file formats that can have multiple images in one file. This plugin will open all these images as layers.
  

Requirements:

• Microsoft Windows 7 or later
  
• GIMP 2.x or later
  

Download:
WIC_Plugin.zip

Installation:

• Unzip “WIC_Plugin.zip”
  
• Copy all the files into the GIMP “plug-ins” folder
  (which is typically located at: C:\Users\<username>\.gimp-<version>\plug-ins)
  Note: this folder is created on the first startup of GIMP.
  

Updated a few URL's in the quoted original message