Java Advanced Imaging (JAI) is a Java platform extension API that provides a set of object-oriented interfaces that support a simple, high-level programming model which allows developers to create their own image manipulation routines without the additional cost or licensing restrictions, associated with commercial image processing software.
JAI is provided as a free download directly from Oracle Corporation for the Windows, Solaris, and Linux platforms. Apple Inc. provides a Mac OS X version of the API from their website for Mac OS X v10.3; Mac OS X v10.4 and later ships with it pre installed.
While the API is provided in Java, platform-specific implementations can either use the pure Java implementation or provide an implementation that takes advantage of native technology on the platform to provide better performance.