Advanced MRC compression with GdPicture.NET Document Imaging SDK
Many of you are already familiar with MRC compression. Our SDK provides this feature since version 11, along with Automatic Color Detection in a dedicated plugin.
Recently, we have implemented our latest research on compression, and the result is a dramatic improvement of the engine regarding speed, compression, and image quality. We thought it was a good opportunity to remind everyone what MRC is all about, and on which context it is the most useful.
What is MRC Compression?
Sharing electronic colored documents is often complicated for many reasons: the file size is usually very big, and when the size becomes acceptable, it’s –most of the time- to the detriment of quality. However, it should be possible to share and view color as well as black and white.
The following technical relations can be associated with the customer requirements:
- efficient exchange of the raster data is directly related to the file size and compression ratios;
- image quality in a scan anywhere – print anywhere environment is directly related to the exchange of device independent data forms and the rendering compromises made by the output engine;
- fast printing with modest resources is related to low complexity of the format (source: ISO 16485-2000)
If we take the standard Wikipedia definition, Mixed Raster Content (MRC) is a method for compressing images that contain both binary-compressible text and continuous-tone components, using image segmentation methods to improve the level of compression and the quality of the rendered image. By separating the image into components with different compressibility characteristics, the most efficient and accurate compression algorithm for each component can be applied.
