ABC Compression and Rendering Technology

ABC Compressed no visible distortions	Original Image	JPEG Compressed visible blurring and color-shift

General

• ABC stands for “Adaptable Block Coding”.
• ABC is a powerful image compression and rendering technology.
• ABC is totally unique technology, not an improvement to existing technologies.
• ABC was developed as the result of 12+ years of analyses of different approaches used by major print-controller manufacturers to solve a challenging task of achieving the highest quality rendering at the fastest speed and  the lowest cost.
   

Technology Promise

• Presenting images in ABC format will increase image processing and viewing speed of applications up to 10X, compared to JPEG. This means that if the current speed is slow (e.g. for high-resolution images) it becomes fast. Or if the current speed is already fast (e.g. for low-resolution images) it becomes instantaneous. Here is a list of possible applications:
  
          - Internet browsers.
          - Image viewers.
          - Printers.
          - Handheld devices.
          - Videoconferencing.
          - Security cameras.
  
  
• This will positively affect user’s experience and would make ABC format of choice for image content. Companies that adopt ABC format will significantly outperform others (that use standard or even proprietary formats).
  
• ABC integration with existing printing technologies will result in the creation of the cheapest and the most powerful controller on the market. A $400 PC can become a powerful print-controller achieving 200+ PPM, without requiring specialized hardware, wining against $4,000 print-controllers from major print-controller manufacturers.
  
• ABC integration with existing or new content languages (Adobe PDF, Microsoft Metro, IBM AFP/IPDS, etc.) will result in content streams printed and viewed at 400+ PPM using regular computing power.

Technical Data

• ABC contains a range of settings for adjusting quality/compression ratio.
• ABC is 10X faster than JPEG on the decompression side, achieving maximum theoretical speed of copying from memory to memory.
•  ABC is up to 4X faster than JPEG on the compression side, with a potential to significantly improve it even further.
• ABC produces images with image quality comparable to JPEG and text and graphics that is nearly perfect.
• The color balance and edges are perfectly preserved, making it extremely quality-friendly.
•  Very friendly format that allows extremely efficient analyses and post-processing of compressed data (e.g. 90 degree rotation, some alpha-blending, color correction).

General Applicability

One just needs to ask a question: “What can I do with a friendly compression format that decompresses 10X faster than JPEG?” The opportunities are indeed limitless.

For more details see ABC Presentation.