Summary

We began this chapter by looking at the ImageIO class and how its static methods are used to find appropriate ImageReaders and ImageWriters. This was done through the use of service provider classes (ImageReaderSpi and ImageWriterSpi), which are small classes that describe the functionality of their corresponding ImageReaders and ImageWriters. The process of discovering available ImageReaders and ImageWriters is done at runtime through the use of plug-ins so that additional functionality can be added to the Image I/O package at any time. We then described the IIOParam subclasses, ImageReaderParam and ImageWriterParam, which provide control over the reading and writing process. We next considered the IIOMetadata subclasses, which allows the user to access both the stream's metadata and the image's metadata when reading and to provide this metadata when writing. Last, we described how to write your own ImageReader and ImageWriter plug-ins in order to work with your own image formats.