The Enhanced Compressed Wavelet file format is a raster file format created by the ER Mapper Company.
The ECW format uses wavelet compression, which results in small, high quality image files that can be loaded and saved quickly. This format is support by the ER Viewer and the Plug in for Adobe Photoshop. LEADTOOLS uses the ECW SDK to compress and decompress ECW images. This SDK has the following two restrictions:
The maximum sized image that can be compressed is 500MB. An image must be at least 128 X 128 to be compressed.
LEADTOOLS supports V2.0 of this file format.
The default extension used by this format is: ECW.
File constants associated with this file format are:
| Constant | Read Support | Write Support | Description |
| Ecw | 24 BPP | 24 BPP | ER Mapper Enhanced Compressed Wavelet. |
Required DLL: Leadtools.Codecs.Ecw.Dll. For a listing of the exact DLLs needed, based on the toolkit version, refer to Files To Be Included With Your Application.
NOTE: This format does not support LEAD's redirected IO feature, therefore it cannot be used with the overloads of Load that take an inputstream parameter or FeedLoad.