mw16 iiif: unshackle your images

IIIF: Unshackle Your Images

Andy CumminsHead of Technical Production @[email protected]@qmins

Friday, 8 April 16

IntroductionWho am I and why am I talking?

Friday, 8 April 16

Who am I?

- Andy Cummins, Head of Technical Production @cogapp

- Cogapp have been helping institutions realise their digital ambitions for 30 years

- Have a technical background, developer at heart

- Worked with many, many institutions over the years

Friday, 8 April 16

Why am I talking?

- I’ve built many systems over the years that deal with delivering images over the web

- Recently at Cogapp we’ve been getting involved with a new way of delivering images to our web visitors

- Today I’d like to talk to you about how delivering your images in this new way can be beneficial

- I’m hoping that you will see what can be achieved and get involved in helping promote the use of IIIF

Friday, 8 April 16

The ProblemThe current state of image delivery over the web

Friday, 8 April 16

The Problem

- The current state of image delivery is broken

- We’ve gotten used to working in certain ways

- We follow the same old processes to create and consume images

- We can do better, much better

Friday, 8 April 16

Creation

- We create derivatives

- A large image, a medium sized-one and maybe a thumbnail

- What do we do if we add a new image?

- What do we do if we want a new image size?

- What can go wrong?

- Things can seem more difficult than is worthwhile, can stifle innovation

Friday, 8 April 16

Consumption

- We consume images everyday

- We jump invisible hurdles to get what we need

- We often compromise our choices

- Squashed, stretched, upscaled or just plain teeny

- It doesn’t need to be like this anymore

- IIIF and technology can help

Friday, 8 April 16

A SolutionWhat is IIIF and where did it come from?

Friday, 8 April 16

What is IIIF?

- The International Image Interoperability Framework

- A framework for requesting images and associated metadata

- We can request images with the characteristics we require in a standardised way

Friday, 8 April 16

Where did it come from?

- Proposed in 2011 and came from universities and libraries

- A great example of international collaboration

- Created something of true value for the wider world

- Combination of pragmatism and rigour has led to a focused, easily understood framework

Friday, 8 April 16

The APIsHow is IIIF defined?

Friday, 8 April 16

How is IIIF defined?

- Made up of two ratified APIs

- These APIs define how both images and metadata are delivered

- There are some more specs in the pipeline, come to the MIG after this session to find out more

Friday, 8 April 16

The Image API

- Deals with the actual delivery of binary images in a flexible, convenient manner

- Can request images at certain dimensions, crop, rotation, quality or format

- Use URL parameters to specify the image derivative we require

- No more post-production in Photoshop

- Ask for the image using the IIIF parameters and it should be delivered

Friday, 8 April 16

The Image API...some examples

- Qatar Digital Library is IIIF compliant

- URI template {scheme}://{server}{/prefix}/{identifier}/{region}/{size}/{rotation}/{quality}.{format}

http://images.qdl.qa/iiif/images/81055/vdc_100000001524.0x000395/Mss+Eur+F126_10_0001.jp2/full/!200,200/0/default.jpg

Full image, resized to a maximum side-length of 200 pixels

Friday, 8 April 16








The same image, rotated by 90 degrees

Friday, 8 April 16







http://images.qdl.qa/iiif/images/81055/vdc_100000001524.0x000395/Mss+Eur+F126_10_0001.jp2/700,300,800,600/!200,200/0/default.jpg

The same image, zoomed in, and cropped to a specific region

Friday, 8 April 16





The Image API in Action

- Qatar Digital Library example

- More info on image request parameters http://iiif.io/api/image/2.0/#image-request-parameters

- More specific examples http://www.qdl.qa/en/image-options

Friday, 8 April 16

http://iiif.io/api/image/2.0/#

http://iiif.io/api/image/2.0/#

http://www.qdl.qa/en/image-options

http://www.qdl.qa/en/image-options

Image API How-ToI’ve understand the what, I want the how!

Friday, 8 April 16

Implementing The Image API

- How do we reach this image utopia?

- The IIIF image dream needs 2 things

1. Source images as large as is available in an appropriate format

2. An image server to convert the source images on-the-fly

Friday, 8 April 16

Source Images

- Two options available

1. Pyramidal TIFF (PTIFF) 2. JPEG2000 (JP2)

- Both compressed formats that contain copies of the image at different resolutions- Makes them ideal creating derivatives on-the-fly- Enables conversions to be performant enough for delivery via the web

Friday, 8 April 16

Source Images - Fair Disclosure

- One drawback to using JP2

- JP2 is an open standard but the best software for decoding (and possibly encoding) is proprietary

- It’s called Kakadu and you’ll have to get a quote for a license if you decide to use it

- OpenJPEG codec is an alternative but currently has performance issues which mean it’s not quite up to the on-the-fly nature of image delivery over the web

- If you want a performant, cost-free alternative then using the PTIFF format alongside a high-performance image server will give you the performance needed for a IIIF image server

Friday, 8 April 16

Source Images - Processing

- So you’ve chosen and image format, now you need to create your source images

- We’ve successfully used the open-source ImageMagick library

- Photoshop, GIMP and the LibTIFF codec library can all save out to PTIFFs

Friday, 8 April 16

Image Server

- This is the software that will take IIIF URL parameters and return the images

- If your user has requested a crop at a given size you need an image server to take the source image and create the requested derivative on-the-fly

- Most mature option available is IIPImage Server

- Open source, extremely performant, supports JP2 and PTIFF

Friday, 8 April 16

Installing IIPImage Server

- Relatively straight-forward

- Binaries for download for Windows or Mac

- Available using apt or yum package managers depending on your flavour of Linux

- Alternatively packages available on IIPImage site http://iipimage.sourceforge.net/download/

Friday, 8 April 16

http://iipimage.sourceforge.net/download/

http://iipimage.sourceforge.net/download/

Hosted Options

- Prefer to have your servers managed elsewhere?

- http://www.iiifhosting.com/

- Monthly pricing is based on the storage required for your images

- It ranges from $69 for around 15,000 images, up to $399 for 1,500,000 images

- Major aggregators the DPLA and Europeana are planning IIIF hosting platforms

- Haven’t used any of these before but shows their is a real appetite for IIIF

Friday, 8 April 16

http://www.iiifhosting.com

http://www.iiifhosting.com

The Presentation API

- The Presentation API deals with the metadata associated with the images

- It provides the information needed to understand what the image is and what it represents

- It also gives information about how a particular image relates to other images in a set

Friday, 8 April 16

The Presentation API...some examples

- The Presentation API gives us the metadata needed to understand an image and its potentially context in a set of image

- Here is an example from the Qatar Digital Library: http://www.qdl.qa/en/iiif/81055/vdc_100000007136.0x000001/manifest

Friday, 8 April 16

http://www.qdl.qa/en/iiif/81055/vdc_100000007136.0x000001/manifest




Presentation API How-ToI’ve understand the what, I want the how!

Friday, 8 April 16

Implementing The Presentation API

- How do we deliver this metadata?

- The IIIF presentation dream is more straightforward than the Image API implementation

- Chances are your institution already has the necessary infrastructure

Friday, 8 April 16

Implementing the Presentation API

- Each institution is different and as such there isn’t a single solution

- To deliver the manifest files a custom implementation will be needed although this need not be overly complex

- Take your metadata and present it as JSON that adheres to the IIIF specification, (you may already have a head-start)

- There are endless ways of doing this but keeping it simple means you can make it happen!

- Key thing is that to people/systems consuming this data your tech stack doesn’t matter, they will all get the same clean, structured data

Friday, 8 April 16

Images I get, why bother with manifests?

- The manifests contain all the metadata on a resource and the associated images

- They also help to link images together for a resource in terms of sequence, for example

- Having this information available in a predictable, standardised form allows us to build software to interpret that information and present the images and information

- One area of software being developed that stands out is image viewers. A collection of viewers has been developed to take advantage of IIIF and they each have their strengths and applications

Friday, 8 April 16

Viewers - Mirador

- In my opinion the most powerful of these viewers is Mirador (http://iiif.github.io/mirador/)

- Mirador is an open-source project jointly run by Stanford University and Harvard University in collaboration with many other contributors

- Mirador is an extremely powerful image viewer that allows users, in particular digital scholars, to really get to work on your images

- Deep-zoomable images, side-by-side comparison, annotation creation/viewing, metadata display and bookmarking

- http://labs.cogapp.com

Friday, 8 April 16

http://iiif.github.io/mirador/




http://labs.cogapp.com


Viewers - Mirador

Friday, 8 April 16

Viewers - Universal Viewer

- An alternative to Mirador comes in the form of Universal Viewer (https://github.com/UniversalViewer/universalviewer)

- This viewer is also extremely powerful and the choice between this and Mirador is down to the intended user and their preference

- http://labs.cogapp.com

Friday, 8 April 16

https://github.com/UniversalViewer/universalviewer






Viewers - Universal Viewer

Friday, 8 April 16

Viewers - Internet Archive Book Reader

- You may be familiar with this viewer

- This has the simplest interface of the three I am going to mention here and again its use depends on the target audience

- 9.3 million objects made available via IIIF in October 2015

- http://labs.cogapp.com/iiif/iiif-book-reader.html

Friday, 8 April 16

http://labs.cogapp.com/iiif/iiif-book-reader.html

http://labs.cogapp.com/iiif/iiif-book-reader.html

Viewers - Internet Archive Book Reader

Friday, 8 April 16

How to get these viewers in front of your usersI want all the viewers!

Friday, 8 April 16

Viewers - Getting them to your users

- There are a couple of options here

- The first is the most simple. Just provide a link to your manifest file somewhere online

- A second option is to embed the viewers in your site. This is the more complicated of the two options but is not a complicated process in itself

Friday, 8 April 16

How does implementing IIIF directly benefit my organisation?

Friday, 8 April 16

Future-proofs your image pipeline

- Implementing IIIF results in a flexible and dynamic image delivery platform

- A concrete example of where IIIF would help is the redesign of pages on your website

- The same applies to any development based on, for example, your collection. With IIIF in place you already have a flexible image pipeline in place for any new projects

Friday, 8 April 16

Advanced features for free

- With IIIF you get some advanced features straight out of the box

- High-performance deep-zoom through OpenSeadragon or other libraries

- A choice of viewers including those mentioned earlier

- Interoperability, you can open your images up to being used by others in ways that would not be possible otherwise

Friday, 8 April 16

Streamlining your communications

- Turbo-boost the visuals of your comms channels

- Everyone can use the APIs to create the perfect crop etc

- No more Photoshop hassle

- De-dupe and maintain quality

Friday, 8 April 16

Enabling Innovation

- As mentioned, IIIF gives you a sound basis for extremely performant, flexible delivery of images on the web

- This flexibility opens the door to innovation

- Some examples of how IIIF has been leveraged to create unique online experiences

Friday, 8 April 16

Enabling Innovation - The Digital Mushaf

- Pulls together Mushaf pages that are dispersed across various libraries into a single online resource

http://digitalmushaf.bodleian.ox.ac.uk

Friday, 8 April 16



Enabling Innovation - Cantus Ultimus

- Optical musical recognition. This project allows you to search a musical manuscript for sequences of musical notes to return an image crop of those notes

http://cantus.simssa.ca/manuscript/133/?folio=018v

Friday, 8 April 16



Enabling Innovation - Cogapp betas

- A Cogapp-developed proof of concept for crowd-sourced transcription validation developed to run on an arcade machine in the British Library

http://labs.cogapp.com/transcriptinator/

Friday, 8 April 16



Enabling Innovation - Cogapp betas

- A Cogapp developed proof of concept. A VR interface for exploring trading cards front and back (requires Google Card board or similar)

http://labs.cogapp.com/tc/

Friday, 8 April 16



In Summary

What?- Flexible, convenient image delivery and associated metadata over the web

How?- Image API: Source images and an image server- Presentation API: Output manifests as JSON according to the spec

Why?- Future proofs your image pipeline- Lots of software out there for you to take advantage of e.g. viewers- Opens the door for rapid innovation

Remember- Technology is a means to an end not the end itself- Once you’re good to go with IIIF, make something and put it out there!

Friday, 8 April 16

Andy CumminsHead of Technical Production @[email protected]@qmins

Thanks!

- IIIF Museums Interest Group in Bernard’s room at 12:00 today- IIIF Conf @ MoMA 10th May: http://iiif.io/event/2016/newyork/- IIIF Google Group: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/iiif-discuss- Paper: http://mw2016.museumsandtheweb.com/paper/iiif-unshackle-your-images/

Friday, 8 April 16

http://iiif.io/event/2016/newyork/

http://iiif.io/event/2016/newyork/

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/iiif-discuss

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/iiif-discuss

http://mw2016.museumsandtheweb.com/paper/iiif-unshackle-your-images/

http://mw2016.museumsandtheweb.com/paper/iiif-unshackle-your-images/