Introduction: DIBs, DDBs, and the Clipboard

A DIB (device independent bitmap) is a standard Windows representation of a bitmap. It is similar to the LEADTOOLS representation of a bitmap in that it includes palette information. A DDB (device dependent bitmap) is a hardware-specific representation that does not include palette information. Sometimes, you may need to manipulate a bitmap using Windows functions that work with DIBs or DDBs. For example, you may need to interact with an existing application that uses those functions. For that purpose, LEADTOOLS functions let you convert or copy to and from DIBs or DDBs. Of course, when converting to and from a DDB, you must preserve the palette information separately.

The clipboard is a standard Windows object for copying data from one application to another. LEADTOOLS lets you copy images to the clipboard and paste images from the clipboard. When copying to the clipboard, most LEADTOOLS functions clear the existing data from the clipboard, and copy image data to it in the form of a DIB, a DDB, and a palette (if one is needed). If that is not what you want, you can use a LEADTOOLS DLL function to specify exactly which actions to take.