This control can be used in Windows programming environments that support ActiveX, such as Visual Basic or Delphi as well as .NET and VBA driven applications such as Access. It can read and write a variety of file formats allowing for conversions to be made between them. Functions allow images to be manipulated, enhanced and edited. Images can be imported from TWAIN compliant scanners and webcams. The online manual provides a full listing of available properties and methods.
There are functions to save the image to file or copy the image to the Windows clipboard. The image can be exported in a binary format (a variant array), which can be used to place the image into a database field or stream the image to a web browser if used in a server-side application. An edited image can be posted to a web server as an HTTP upload, or by FTP.
The image editing functions include simple resize and scale methods for reducing image size or creating thumbnails. Images can be cropped, flipped and rotated. Colour depth can be adjusted, as can brightness, sharpness, contrast and HLS components (hue, lightness and saturation). Lines, shapes and text can be drawn. Images can be merged using optional transparency to create watermarks. Alpha transparency in PNG images is supported.
Note that the trial version writes a line of text on each image produced. This is the main limitation and the trial contains most of the other functions and properties of the full version. See the instructions for full details.