Facebook officially launches a new open-sourced image compression library called Spectrum to keep the quality of images uploaded online but not taking much of one's data plan.
The online social networking service company first unveiled the new feature in November at Droidcoin SF 2018 conference. Spectrum has been available in a beta version since then.
On Thursday, Spectrum 1.0.0 was officially launched on Github page as Facebook opens it to the developers for Android and iOS.
Cross-Platform Image Transcoding Library
"We are proud to launch Spectrum, a cross-platform image transcoding library that can easily be integrated into an Android or iOS project to efficiently perform common image operations," Facebook wrote on Open Source page.
It is also an Open Source in which the developer can debug it and add support for the new codecs with the use of its plugin architecture. Spectrum, which is developed specifically for cross-platform mobile devices, is written in portable C/C++ so that developer could easily use the tool. Facebook has also released Java and Objective-C Application Program Interface, or API, to make it more user-friendly.
High-Quality Image With Small Data
Facebook has been using Spectrum across a collection of mobile apps. Basically, the library lets users do image editing to lower down file sizes without losing its quality. The tool compresses the image 15 percent smaller than the original size without compromising its quality.
Developers immediately fell in love with Spectrum because unlike other image-manipulation apps, they just need to set the intended results, then the library simply does the job.
Simple To Use
Since Spectrum's API is declarative, the developer could just "define the output characteristics of the image," and it will do all the complicated task. It is helpful to prevent common human errors such as the incomplete handling of EXIF metadata.
This is done by using what is called "recipes," which is bundled with plug-ins being used by the library, and it will be sorted out by Facebook. For instance, the JPEG plug-in will have several recipes that are designed to process JPEG images.
Spectrum is available to download on GitHub page.
