Thread Safety

ImageGear and its associated components are completely thread-safe. The implementation of thread safety in ImageGear maximizes the performance of threaded applications on multi-CPU computers. Every ImageGear API function can be executed within a thread.

Five thread safety APIs are explained in detail in the Core Component API Function Reference.

IG_thread_data_ID_associate() provides thread customized ImageGear settings.
IG_thread_data_ID_get() provides thread customized ImageGear settings.
IG_thread_local_data_cleanup() provides thread customized ImageGear settings.
IG_thread_image_lock() is required in the situation where several threads are accessing the same HIGEAR concurrently AND at least one of these threads performs an operation that modifies/deletes HIGEAR.
IG_thread_image_unlock() is required in the situation where several threads are accessing the same HIGEAR concurrently AND at least one of these threads performs an operation that modifies/deletes HIGEAR.

In most cases, no additional API calls are required to achieve thread safety.

Access to the same PDF document from multiple threads is not permitted, because multiple threads cannot share Adobe PDF Library data types. PDF docs created/opened in the main thread can be only used from the main thread.