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National Instruments Corporation ix NI-IMAQ User Manual
About This Manual
NI-IMAQ software is a powerful application programming interface (API)
between your image acquisition application and the National Instruments
image acquisition (IMAQ) devices. This manual explains how to use your
NI-IMAQ software.

How to Use the NI-IMAQ Manual Set

To install your software and documentation set, you should begin by
reading the setup and test document included with your hardware and the
NI-IMAQ release notes. These documents contain information about how
to install your software and hardware. Then read Chapter 1, Introduction,
of the your hardware user manual, which contains a flowchart that
illustrates the sequence of steps you should take to learn about and get
started with NI-IMAQ.
When you are familiar with the material in this manual, you can use the
NI-IMAQ Function Reference Manual, which contains detailed
descriptions of the NI-IMAQ functions.

Organization of This Manual

The NI-IMAQ User Manual is organized as follows:
• Chapter1, Introduction to NI-IMAQ, describes the NI-IMAQ software
and lists the application development environments compatible with
NI-IMAQ, describes the fundamentals of creating NI-IMAQ
applications for Windows 95 and Windows NT, describes the files used
to build these applications, and tells you where to find sample
programs.
• Chapter2, Software Overview, describes the classes of NI-IMAQ
functions and briefly describes each function.
• Chapter3, Programming with NI-IMAQ, contains an overview of the
NI-IMAQ library, a description of the programming flow of NI-IMAQ,
and programming examples.
• Appendix A, StillColor, describes the different methods you can use to
acquire a color image using the IMAQ PCI/PXI-1408 and National
Instruments StillColor technology, explains basic color theories, and
describes the different output options supported by StillColor.
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