AForge.net is wonderful Image Processing and Computer vision framework for the C#.net Language. This framework comes with few power full machine learning tools as well. Because it is built on the dot net version 2.0, so it could work on previous Visual Studio versions as well. Just like we are going to use it with visual studio 2010. Also one more cool thing about this framework is that is purely implemented in C#. So it is easily configurable and you may use it in Mono C# as well. So before we dive into the today’s tutorial, let’s summarize what we are going to do in this tutorial
First of all we will be installing the AForge.Net framework in our Windows 7. After that we will see the minimum required DLL files we need to reference in Visual Studio 2010. Although this package is also available through NuGet package manager for modern Visual Studios, we are manually going to add this and reference AForge.Net after installation.
Installing AForge.Net
The first step, even before we start creating projects in Visual Studio, we need to install the framework from their website. If you go to the Official Website of Aforge.Net and navigate to the download section. There you have multiple Options. Just like you may see in the following snapshot of the Download Page of the Official AForge.Net framework website captured on 3-Feb-2021
Here you can see that you may either have option to download the full installer, or the ZIP file or if you are lazy just like me and do not need the full version and the documentation of the AForge.net (which comes in offline mode with the installer options), You may download the library only version of the AForge.Net.
If you downloaded the installer and installed it into your computer. Then you have to navigate into the installation folder, which in my case is under the Program File(x86) folder and in the AForge folder you need to goto the release folder which will looks like following
Here you may see a bunch of DLL Files. That’s what you are going to use into the C# Project.
Create C# Project for AForge.net
Now we are going to create a new Desktop Application project in Visual Studio. You may follow the same previous steps which you already using throughout your C# development setup. AForge.Net is purely C# based and best for windows based projects. So we need to refer to the DLL files in the Project. Navigate to the Solution explorer and after that we will expand the reference folder. In that, you will notice some already referred components. Right click on that and click on the Add Reference item in the menu. Now you have to goto the browse tab. From that tab all you have to do is to navigate to the AForge.Net Installed directory. In that directory navigate to the Reference Folder. From that folder select following DLL files
- AForge.dll
- AForge.video.dll
- AForge.video.DirectShow.dll
You may also need to add the AForge.controlls.dll file in the control toolbar. Which is in the left panel of the project. Where you normally drag and drop the controls from the panel onto the winform designer tab.
Once you are done adding reference, you are good to start using the amazing AForge.net Image Processing and Computer vision Framework.
