Nokia Imaging SDK 1.0: Power tools for Windows Phone developers
Today at Slush 2013, one of the top start-up conferences in the world, Nokia announced the latest version of its Imaging SDK (v1.0) to give Windows Phone developers the tools they need to create sophisticated new imaging apps for Nokia Lumia smartphones.
“Based on the core technology that we have in our own imaging apps, such as Nokia Camera and Creative Studio, the Nokia Imaging SDK gives developers access to filters, effects and on-screen rendering options that are unlike any other library on Windows Phone,” says Samuli Hänninen, vice president of software program management for Nokia’s Smart Devices business.
A boatload of new features and functionality
The Imaging SDK is available exclusively for Windows Phone developers. It includes more than 50 built-in filters such as Sepia, Black & White, Mirror, Tones, and Chromakey, which enables “green screen” magic to come to life so a developer can provide a background to render objects in.
Need more filters? With the new SDK release, developers can now create their own custom filters and add previously unseen effects to their apps.
Other effects include arbitrary cropping regions, free rotate, and resizing images to a desired file size (such as for social media sharing).
The new SDK release also adds dynamic filter properties, so you can change filter parameters on the fly without the need to start over, enabling even greater creativity and tempting our curiosity to try different combinations of settings within an app.
The SDK has some clever tricks when it comes to large images and memory management. Specifically, it uses Random Access JPEG (RAJPEG) format, which enables selective decompression and recompression of images, thereby requiring much less CPU and memory for large images stored on the device.
Developing for ‘Wow’ experiences
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“The Nokia Lumia 1020’s ability to effortlessly reframe and freely rotate pictures taken with the 41MP camera is magical. Now developers can build similar ‘Wow’ experiences in their apps with a single API call,” says Sami Niemi, Nokia’s director of Capture & Relive software product management.
Initially launched as a beta this past summer, hundreds of beta participants have already published their apps and provided feedback about the Imaging SDK. Some of the many apps created using this SDK include Smart Resize, Social Scene, TapShoot, Panna Paint, OneShot, as well as Pikura, which was the winning app in the Nokia Create Mini Mission 1 that called for updates to apps using the SDK.
“After a successful beta, we’re confident that this release will be well received. We’ve taken into account a lot of the feedback and have made the SDK even better for developers,” says Sami.
The Nokia Imaging SDK is free to download and available now from Nokia Developer and via NuGet.