Software Needed to manage our image library
This is a menu of the topics on this page (click on any):
- Creating digital images by scanning photographs
- Creating digital images with a digital camera
- Renaming images to avoid future name conflicts
- Source art, web images, and thumbnails
- Creating an image catalogue
- In a subfolder structure (CreateImageIndex)
- Without a subfolder structure
- Annotation of images (earnestly needed) .
The following describes our need to annotate images plus other features not yet implemented.
We earnestly need a facility for managing images.
We have thousands which have virtually no digital or on-line documentation.
The only documentation is in Swim Magazine issues and it
needs to be put in a form whereby it can serve as annotation to our digital images.
The approach described below is inspired by the work of Bill Parke and Mark Osborne
and the availability of several commercial software products (identified below).
Creating digital images by scanning photographs
We need to update and make simpler our criteria for this.
Creating digital images with a digital camera
We need to articulate our desired criteria for this.
Renaming images to avoid future name conflicts
Using a subfolder structure
Parkenet BatchFileRename
is the way we do this now. This is a very good way, but we might be able to integrate this
facility into our Archives management system.
In addition,
our desired parameters must be built in
so the user does not have to make choices if he/she does not want to vary from normal.
Without using a subfolder structure
We avoid name conflicts on images sent to SwimGold by swimmers
by naming images with the SwimmerID or variations of it.
Source art, web images, and thumbnails
Most of our images will be stored at three levels of image quality,
each of which has its own importance and challenge.
An image should have exactly the same name at each of its various quality levels.
We do this by storing them in different folders.
All thumbnails are stored in a folder named "t" under the folder where the web image resides.
All source art is stored on compact disks or in a folder under root called "SourceArt".
Preserving source art
Source art for each image from Swim Magazine photos is 25-75mb in size.
These are stored on compact disks.
Creating web images
The digital images sent to us by swimmers are not of sufficient quality to be called "source art";
most are good enough to be web images, though some require resizing and/or cropping.
Swim Magazine photos do require the creation of web images.
We do this now with Ulead SmartSaver Pro version 3.0,
but it should be more mechanized and built into our Archives management software.
Mark Osborne's software may be the way to do this.
Our desired parameters must be built in so the user does not have to remember them.
Creating thumbnails
We do this now with Ulead SmartSaver Pro version 3.0,
but it should be more mechanized and built into our Archives management software.
Mark Osborne's software may be the way to do this.
Our desired parameters must be built in so the user does not have to remember them.
Creating an image catalogue
In a subfolder structure (CreateImageIndex)
Without a subfolder structure
Annotation of images (earnestly needed)
Annotation of the thousands of images we're collecting must be made easy.
We've got to recruit people to do the annotation, but we've got to make it easy for them
and it must be easy and error proof to collect their work.
There are too many images to put on the web, especially since
we don't have permission to put most Swim Magazine images on the web.
So, I believe our method for getting annotation will be to put
images on a compact disk and provide a means for people add annotation.
Mark Osborne uses an xml file for each image as his means for documentation. If we used his approach, a small xml file could be placed in the same path position on a floppy disk and they will either mail me the floppy disk or we'll figure out a way to zip up the entire directory where they've been putting annotation. The small xml file will have the same name as the image and be in the same directory. Of course this means we mustn't let people change image names unless we ensure the xml file also is renamed. A corresponding directory structure on the floppy is needed to avoid name conflicts. When we get their work, we can copy the xml files they created with their annotation into the appropriate folder of the source computer (protecting against clobbering prior work, of course).
