[jamessouth]

I'd say somewhere in between. I've started with a very high level fluent API since I see that as the most common use case but have exposed a couple of important properties that will allow more low-level operations (pointers etc).

I have also created a generic image pipeline Image<TColor> that uses all the packed pixel color models used in XNA and Monogame which make it useful in gaming for loading textures.

The dream is that eventually the community will help port a lot of the algorithms over from libraries like Accord, OpenCV and AForge to allow usage in more scientific scenarios. Some of them will fit in the fluent API most will not but the tools should already be within the library to allow porting and usefulness.