ClearImage reads and writes files in the most popular Bitonal, Color and Grayscale formats including TIFF, BMP, PDF, and JPEG, and many others.

TIFF and PDF multi-page image files are supported. Some formats are supported only for reading.

PDF files are imported in ClearImage in one of two ways:

• Image PDF - Images are extracted from the pages.   This is preferred treatment of PDFs created by scanning or faxing software.   The images must be large enough to qualify as scanned pages or should meet specified minimum size parameters.
• Data PDF - The pages are rasterized and rendered  like the Adobe Reader ™ would do it.  This is how PDF documents created by PDF document generation software are read, e.g. documents created in Word.  Color scheme and rasterization resolution are specified through API.

Some formats employ lossy compression that will modify a saved image. In the case of JPEG, the compression ratio is controlled by JpegQuality parameter.

Not all formats support the entire range of CiImage.BitsPerPixel (BPP) values. On output, if such a mismatch occurs, the image is converted to the nearest supported BPP value prior to writing out the file. For example, a Bitonal image will be converted to Grayscale prior to being saved as a JPEG formatted file. The resulting image will show JPEG blocking effects, and will look different than the original Bitonal image.