Image Resizer

WIC Plugins

Windows Imaging Components is an operating system component maintained by Microsoft. WicBuilder is a wrapper around the underlying operating system API. We have deprecated WIC in favor of the FastScaling plugin, which offers superior quality and is under our control.

ImageResizer.Plugins.Wic.dll contains 3 plugins: WicImageDecoder, WicImageEncoder, and WicImageBuilder.

These plugins require Windows 7+ or Windows Server 2008 R2+ for best performance and correct behavior.

Installation

  1. Either run Install-Package ImageResizer.Plugins.Wic in the NuGet package manager, or add ImageResizer.Plugins.Wic.dll to your project
  2. Add <add name="WicDecoder" /> inside the <plugins> section of Web.config.
  3. Add <add name="WicEncoder" /> inside the <plugins> section of Web.config.
  4. Add <add name="WicBuilder" /> inside the <plugins> section of Web.config.

WicDecoder

Supports decoding images through WIC, supporting any image codecs installed on the computer. When combined with a codec pack, can open RAW files.

Activate with &decoder=wic.

  • page=1..?
  • frame=1..?

WicEncoder

Encode jpeg, gif, and png images through WIC for better performance and more control. Adjust jpeg quality, subsampling, gif dithering, and palette size.

Vs. PrettyGifs: 3-8x faster for encoding 8-bit PNG images. 2-5x faster for GIF images.

Activate with &encoder=wic

  • quality = 0..100
  • subsampling=444|422|420
  • dither=false|true (default is true, unlike PrettyGifs)
  • colors=2..256

WicBuilder

Provides a completely alternate pipeline, which supports most basic resize/crop/pad operations.

2-4x faster than the default pipeline. Slightly reduced image quality.

Activate with &builder=wic

Select the resizing filter with w.filter=fant|bicubic|linear|nearest

Supported settings

  • page=1..?
  • frame=1..?
  • width
  • height
  • mode=max|pad|crop
  • scale
  • maxwidth
  • maxheight
  • crop
  • bgcolor
  • margin
  • quality
  • subsampling
  • dither
  • colors

License

This set of plugins is part of the Design bundle, and licensed accordingly.

This plugin (WIC Plugins) is part of the Creative Edition

Where is the plugins section?

The <plugins> section is located in Web.config, and is nested inside the <resizer> element, which is nested inside <configuration>. For examples, see this sample Web.config file.

Where can I find the dll?

We prefer that you install via NuGet, but you can also find the plugin DLL files in the /dlls/release folder of your download.

How do I typically install a plugin via Web.Config?

  1. In Visual Studio, right click on your project and choose "Add reference". Browse to the plugin DLL and click "OK".
  2. In the <plugins> section of Web.config, insert <add name="PluginName" />
  3. Look at the plugin documentation to see what configuration options (if any) are available.

How do I typically install a plugin via code?