Q+A CENTER

The 10th-anniversary edition of the distinguished machine vision library, HALCON 8.0 from MVTec Software GmbH (Munich, Germany & Cambridge, Mass.) furthers its hardware independence with new interfaces. Version 8.0 handles uEye Gigabit-Ethernet cameras from IDS Imaging Development Systems (Obersulm, Germany & Cambridge, Mass.), microEnable IV CameraLink frame grabbers courtesy of Silicon Software GmbH (Mannheim, Germany) and Baumer Optronic GmbH's (Radeberg, Germany) TXD and TXF series CCD-cameras.

HALCON is a comprehensive software suite with integrated development environment for blob analysis, morphology, pattern matching, measuring, 3-D object recognition and binocular stereo vision. The software contains more than 1,300 operators, is platform-independent and runs under Windows, Linux, and Solaris operating systems.

National Instruments Corp. (Austin, Texas) updates its Vision Development Module, a comprehensive library of image processing and machine vision operators for multiple programming languages. This release highlights improved edge detection with which users can enhance images, locate objects and hard-to-find edges, identify components and make measurements. The edge detector also performs image calibration.

Vision Development Module 8.5 extends bar coding capabilities. Presently, 2D barcodes are a common machine vision requirement in industrial applications. One- and 2D code reading and character recognition/ verification are other utilities that can help identify packaging and assembly errors early in production. Further, Quick Response codes, 2D barcodes containing product information, and Pharmacodes (found in the pharmaceutical industry) are enabled in version 8.5, along with National Instruments' Vision Assistant Express and Vision Acquisition Express Virtual Instruments. The former packages an image processing and prototyping environment into a single Virtual Instrument while the latter acquires images directly from National Instruments' vision hardware, EIA-1394- or GigE Vision-compliant cameras.

Pegasus Imaging Corp. (Tampa, Fla.) announces an HD Photo Plug-in for Adobe Photoshop. Microsoft Corporation contracted with Pegasus to finalize development of the add-in, buttressing HD Photo's image compression format in the CS2 and CS3 versions of Photoshop software on Windows, Mac/Intel and Mac/PowerPC. The HD Photo technology is available within Pegasus Imaging's advanced PICTools Photo SDK on those same platforms.