Petersdon

image processing application..please help..urgent!

i am using the labview software student version ....im not sure whether it has access to ni vision or the vision builder ai.....can't this be done without these.....

if absolutely essential,i can get the vision builder ai for a trial period of 30 days...my project anyway has to be completed within that time

i am developing an image processing application in labview(version 8.2) where i have to compare certain patterns on two different images and compare and check whether the patterns are the same(something like signature recognition)...i am new to labview (started using it only a year ago)...what i would like to know is whether there exists any way to get information about the image in the form of pixels(i would like to convert a color image to gray scale format if possible).right now i trying to do this with jpeg images...i need to get the information in an array so that i can analyze it later...can i do the same withinage formats other than jpeg

thanks in advance.. !!!