This is an archive of the old MediaWiki-based ImageJ wiki. The current website can be found at imagej.net.
Adding new formats
With ImageJ 1.x, a special HandleExtraFileTypes plugin exists that can be modified to support new data formats—but it has some significant disadvantages:
- It only provides limited extensibility: there can only be one
HandleExtraFileTypes
installed into ImageJ at a time, so all desired modifications to the plugin must be somehow combined. This makes it impossible to, for example, ship a differentHandleExtraFileTypes
on two different ImageJ Update Sites and have both additions be available in the same installation. - Data formats added in this manner cannot override or extend ImageJ1's built in support for certain file formats. In particular, ImageJ1 supports only a subset of the TIFF specification, and this issue cannot be circumvented via
HandleExtraFileTypes
modifications.
ImageJ2 provides a comprehensive solution to the issue of data formats in the form of SCIFIO data format plugins. SCIFIO, the SCientific Image Format Input and Output library, is a flexible framework for image format support. To get started writing SCIFIO formats:
- Check out the SCIFIO tutorials.
- Look at simple existing formats for a starting point.