What are some user friendly image processing libraries?
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I'm an embedded systems programmer, and have done extremely limited Windows development. That said I am firm about sticking to C++ since it's more familiar than C#, and trying to figure out a new language is not an option in the time frame available.

The project I'm working on right now is a simple console application for lab use. The I/O and loops are done, the part I'm having trouble with is the image processing. What I need to do is scan through the image pixel by pixel and compare the colors against some threshold values. The image will be a sample on a green screen, and we'll be looking at the differences in colors of the sample. The comparison logic is easy, but after spending several hours on Google and downloading a couple libraries, I'm convinced there is just too much information on image processing.

Is there an image processing library out there that will allow me to load an image into memory, scan through pixel by pixel, load the color bytes with a single function call, and not make my head explode?