Ease of use

The library has been designed to be extremely simple in use. Our motto is: make difficult things simple instead of simple things difficult.

Not limited to the local PC

The unique FreeImageIO structure makes it possible to load your images from virtually anywhere. Possibilities include standalone files, memory, database and the Internet, all this without recompiling the library!

Plugin driven

The internal engine is made completely modular using a clever plugin system. Easily write new plugins and store them in DLL files or embed the plugins directly into your application!

Color conversion

FreeImage provides many functions to convert a bitmap from one bitdepth to another. The library supports 1-, 4-, 8-, 16, 24- and 32-bit standard images, as well as integer, real and complex images.

Common image manipulations

Provides basic image manipulation routines such as rotation, resizing, flipping or color adjustments, as well as lossless JPEG transformations.

Directly access bitmap bits and palette

Functions are provided which allow you to directly access the bitmap palette (if available) and bitmap bits.

Metadata support

Parse common metadata models attached to your bitmap. FreeImage supports Comments, Exif (including GPS and maker notes), IPTC, Adobe XMP, GeoTIFF and GIF animation metadata models.

Support for High Dynamic Range images

FreeImage supports RGB float images as well a 48-bit HDR images and provides tone mapping operators to convert these images to 24-bit LDR images.

Support for RAW files from digital photo cameras

FreeImage can load RAW files from digital photo cameras (CRW/CR2, NEF, RAF, DNG, MOS, KDC, DCR, etc), virtually all RAW formats are supported.

Full source code is provided.

Written in portable C++, the library should compile on all 32-bit or 64-bit Windows, Linux and Mac OSX systems.
FreeImage also includes comprehensive documentation to help you work with and learn about the code provided.

Open Source Dual-License

You can choose the license that has the most advantages for you: Use the liberal FreeImage Public License to use FreeImage commercially or the GNU General Public License to use FreeImage into your open source project.

Easily integrates into DirectX and OpenGL.

Only a minimum of programming is necessary to store a FreeImage bitmap into a DirectDraw surface or to use FreeImage to load your Direct3D/OpenGL textures.

Provides test programs to "show-off" the library, compilable and startable on Windows 95, 98, NT, 2000 or on Linux.