Finally, ColdFusion 8 has incorporated image manipulation directly into the ColdFusion tag and scripting language. No more are we, as developers, chained to third-party products.

These products, while excellent in quality, just mean adding one more level of complexity to any application that requires server-side image manipulation. Now, with CFImage and an abundance of image-related functions, ColdFusion has done to image manipulation what it has done to almost every other aspect of Web applications development - it has made it simple.

Due to the wide array of image functionality in ColdFusion 8, I am going to try and break this tutorial up into several small and manageable parts. The first part will cover basic reading and writing of images using CFImage and the related image manipulation functions. But, before we get into that, let's just quickly touch upon these new features as a whole.

ColdFusion 8 has given us CFImage. CFImage provides us with tag-based access to only a small subset of the image functionality including:

• Retrieving information about an image
• Reading an image into memory
• Resizing an image
• Rotating an image
• Adding a border to an image
• Converting an image from one file format to another
• Creating a CAPTCHA image
• Writing an image to a file
• Writing an image to the browser

  In addition to the CFImage tag, ColdFusion has introduced dozens of new image manipulation functions including:

   

• ImageAddBorder()
• ImageBlur()
• ImageClearRect()
• ImageCopy()
• ImageCrop()
• ImageDrawArc()
• ImageDrawBeveledRect()
• ImageDrawCubicCurve()
• ImageDrawLine()
• ImageDrawLines()
• ImageDrawOval()
• ImageDrawPoint()
• ImageDrawQuadraticCurve()
• ImageDrawRect()
• ImageGetEXIFTag()
• ImageGetHeight()
• ImageGetIPTCTag()
• ImageGetWidth()
• ImageGrayscale()
• ImageInfo()
• ImageNegative()
• ImageNew()
• ImageOverlay()
• ImagePaste()
• ImageRead()
• ImageReadBase64()
• ImageResize()
• ImageRotate()
• ImageRotateDrawingAxis()
• ImageScaleToFit()
• ImageSetAntialiasing()

The ColdFusion 8 CFImage tag and the image-related functions all deal with a new ColdFusion object:

coldfusion.image.Image

Most of you are not going to care about this one all that much, but for those of you who are interested in the underlying Java methods of the coldfusion.image.Image object, I have listed them below (skip past this if you have no idea what I'm talking about). Please note that any underlying methods of the actual Java/ColdFusion objects are found by gathering object metadata and through reflection; none of these methods are documented or officially supported. If you choose to use them, you do so at your own risk and discretion.

• addBorder( int, java.lang.String, java.lang.String ) - returns: void
• blur( int ) - returns: void
• brighten() - returns: void
• clearRect( int, int, int, int ) - returns: void
• copyArea( int, int, int, int ) - returns: coldfusion.image.Image
• copyArea( int, int, int, int, int, int ) - returns: coldfusion.image.Image
• crop( float, float, float, float ) - returns: void
• draw3DRect( int, int, int, int, boolean, boolean ) - returns: void
• drawArc( int, int, int, int, int, int, boolean ) - returns: void
• drawCubicCurve( double, double, double, double, double, double, double, double ) - returns: void
• drawLine( int, int, int, int ) - returns: void
• drawLines( [I, [I, boolean, boolean ) - returns: void
• drawOval( int, int, int, int, boolean ) - returns: void
• drawPoint( int, int ) - returns: void
• drawQuadraticCurve( double, double, double, double, double, double ) - returns: void
• drawRect( int, int, int, int, boolean ) - returns: void
• drawRoundRect( int, int, int, int, int, int, boolean ) - returns: void
• drawString( java.lang.String, int, int, coldfusion.runtime.Struct ) - returns: void
• flip( java.lang.String ) - returns: void
• getBase64String( java.lang.String ) - returns: java.lang.String
• getClass() - returns: java.lang.Class
• getColor( java.lang.String ) - returns: java.awt.Color
• getCurrentGraphics() - returns: java.awt.Graphics2D
• getCurrentImage() - returns: java.awt.image.BufferedImage
• getExifMetadata( javax.servlet.jsp.PageContext )- returns: coldfusion.runtime.Struct
• getExifTag( java.lang.String, javax.servlet.jsp.PageContext ) - returns: java.lang.String
• getHeight() - returns: int
• getImageBytes( java.lang.String ) - returns: [B
• getIptcMetadata( javax.servlet.jsp.PageContext ) - returns: coldfusion.runtime.Struct
• getIptcTag( java.lang.String, javax.servlet.jsp.PageContext ) - returns: java.lang.String
• getSource() - returns: java.lang.String
• getWidth() - returns: int
• grayscale() - returns: void
• info() - returns: coldfusion.runtime.Struct
• initializeMetadata( javax.servlet.jsp.PageContext ) - returns: void
• invert() - returns: void
• overlay( coldfusion.image.Image ) - returns: void
• paste( coldfusion.image.Image, int, int ) - returns: void
• readBase64( java.lang.String ) - returns: void
• resize( java.lang.String, java.lang.String, java.lang.String ) - returns: void
• resize( java.lang.String, java.lang.String, java.lang.String, double ) - returns: void
• rotate( float, float, float, java.lang.String ) - returns: void
• rotateAxis( double ) - returns: void
• rotateAxis( double, double, double ) - returns: void
• scaleToFit( int ) - returns: void
• scaleToFit( java.lang.String, java.lang.String, java.lang.String ) - returns: void
• scaleToFit( java.lang.String, java.lang.String, java.lang.String, double ) - returns: void
• setAntiAliasing( java.lang.String ) - returns: void
• setBackground( java.lang.String ) - returns: void
• setColor( java.lang.String ) - returns: void
• setDrawingStroke( coldfusion.runtime.Struct ) - returns: void
• setDrawingStroke( float, int, int, float, [F, float ) - returns: void
• setRenderingHint( java.awt.RenderingHints$Key, java.lang.Object ) - returns: void
• setTranparency( double ) - returns: void
• setXorMode( java.lang.String ) - returns: void
• sharpen( float ) - returns: void
• sharpenEdge() - returns: void
• shear( float, java.lang.String, java.lang.String ) - returns: void
• shearAxis( double, double ) - returns: void
• translate( int, int, java.lang.String ) - returns: void
• translateAxis( int, int ) - returns: void
• write( java.lang.String, float ) - returns: void
• writeBase64( java.lang.String, java.lang.String, boolean ) - returns: void