LOW COST, HIGH PERFORMANCE IMAGE VIEWING & ANNOTATION

LizardTech's DjVu file format offers 'visually lossless' high resolution image compression allow users to scan and store colour images at greatly compacted size, without noticeable degradation in image quality.

The DjVu format was created and pioneered by AT&T Labs before the creation of LizardTech in 1992 to market the DjVu and the (geospatial file) Mr SID formats. LizardTech is now owned by Japanese technology company Celartem Technology Inc.

DjVu is designed to enable users to store colour images at the same size as black and white files. Currently, a full page letter size document scanned at 300 dots per inch in colour (press ready resolution) and stored as a DjVu file generates a .djvu file of approximately 50kb according to LizardTech.

DjVu files can also allow OCR-ing and subsequent text searching within the DjVu file (using an appropriate OCR application) as the DjVu compression engine can recognize borders of high contrast as likely to be text and effectively creates a lower resolution 'background image' layer and a higher resolution layer for the assumed textual content, which makes an OCR process applied to the DjVu file more accurate.

LizardTech claims a superior quality image handling for DjVu over PDF, and substantially smaller files without any deterioration in file quality.

The DjVu file format (represented by the .djvu file extension) is supported in ViewONE Pro through the optional DjVu Module, enabling DjVu users to view and annotate their DjVu files within ViewONE Pro, without the need for a separate DjVu plug-in, or the DjVu thick client viewing application.

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