Image organizer
As management of images, even images or image database management program called, refers to software with functions for managing, archiving, viewing and naming pictures.
- 7.1 Desktop Applications
- 7.2 Server Applications
Task
The fundamental objective of such software is to enable effective management of digital images and graphics. This includes acquiring images in the dataset whose textual description, assignment to categories, indexing, etc., and the ability to research, recovery of the data and its presentation.
Image databases were originally used primarily by professional users, such as photo agencies who work with large collections of images. Since digital photography has also achieved in individuals their breakthrough, image databases are increasingly being used for private purposes. Digital photography makes it possible to quickly generate large amounts of images, thematic or temporal management and sorting supports management of images.
Often provide a hierarchical representation of image administrations in folders and categories, as well as a preview overview of the images. It will also image data, such as metadata, recording time, camera model and recording values such as aperture and shutter speed, displayed or stored in a database or index structure to allow the user a quick and convenient method of finding images using search. Metadata are stored by modern cameras usually in the Exif standard directly into the image file, allowing them to be used independently by the camera manufacturer by most images management programs.
For manually created by the user additional information in image files, however, the IPTC standard is used. It is based on the standard XMP IPTC Core compared to the old standard IIM asserts itself more and more.
Image databases can be part of the digital asset management of a company or organization, ie the management of all digital assets including other digital media, such as video and audio files and typical office documents.
Development
Whereas previously image management systems, especially the idea of archiving was in the foreground, modern systems are increasingly being extended with functions for processing of frequently used operations to image processing functions.
Conversely contain more image editing programs built-in image viewer software, which some of them have options for image management. For example, Adobe Photoshop contains the image viewer software Adobe Bridge. But programs like Ulead PhotoImpact, Photo Line, Digital Image Suite etc. contain modules for image viewing. Also have laid out as a picture viewer programs increasingly functions for image management and editing.
Still rare and only found in professional systems are enabled for automatic detection of the image content. This should not be confused with the encountered in some systems " similarity search ". This works with an index of similarity between images is derived only on the basis of color and brightness distributions, but does not perform an image recognition motif. This function can therefore be used only useful for small image collections.
Summary of Functions
- Topical or content management of images, usually by assigning key words or categories.
- Titling or commenting on the images.
- Viewing and editing metadata, according to standards such as Exif, IPTC and XMP
- Search functions, among other things for the above listed image features
- Automatic indexing (adding meta- data) by the server system
- Management of copyright / copyright information
- Geolokationsbestimmung - Recognize and manage where an image was created / taken
- Viewing images in different views, for example as a preview or screen -cover.
- Scaling of image sizes
- Format conversion (eg GIF by JPG)
- Renaming Images
- Moving and copying images
- Provision for External
- Softproof a configured monitor
- Color analysis for the Search Support
- Comparing images
Web-based databases
Modern image databases are often web based. The storage of the photographic material and the summary database is implemented on a web server while the user takes control over a surface that is displayed in a browser. This has the advantage that for the end-user programs are no license fees and updates must be run only on the server. A disadvantage is that the images must first be uploaded and a decentralized image management across multiple jobs or locations must be well thought out. In some situations, a rights management must be introduced, show where certain users only parts of the collection or can perform only certain actions such as uploading or deleting images.
In web-based databases images are mostly copied from the web browser of the user in the database and can be either right there, or downloading by a user in a different format to be converted. Professional systems can produce variants with watermark from a current database directly in the query images. Many web-based image database systems offer the possibility to connect an inventory management system and online payment systems.
In addition, an increasing number of image databases video archive and search functions are implemented. This growing market is usually served with high-resolution HD footage in 16:9 format in mp4 format. Another development is the storage of the included in modern professional cameras georeferencing in the appropriate tables of the SQL database cores. Thus, in the near Zukünft mergers of the search functions on radius based maps surfaces will be possible. Good database surfaces provide mostly also in addition to the full-text search on the search capabilities of a thesaurus.
See also: web gallery
Alternatives to image databases
- For professional photo agencies there is no alternative
- For individuals and small teams, there are several alternatives
Whether individuals and small teams want to use alternatives to image database or have to depend on the size of the picture archive, which order prevails in the image archive and whether users are willing to put in the work time spent indexing the image database or not. The alternatives can be combined.
Alternative 1: The users have to deal efficiently with the name of folders and files, ie they need to learn the information that is needed for recovery, in the names of folders and files. You should never keep the names as they are awarded by the digital camera. Under this condition, you can use software to search that searches in the file system of the operating system. This software should additionally be able to work with Boolean operators.
Alternative 2: For JPG files, the use of IPTC fields and search in IPTC fields is readily possible even without using an image database. There are many programs that can edit both IPTC fields as search for IPTC fields. However, the user of this alternative must wait for the result until all images have been scanned for the operations described IPTC keywords. The PC must run its search in each image, the software must open each image file is looking for the IPTC fields and close it again. Often provide relevant search programs very sparse search options. In IrfanView, for example, one can search only text that appears in any IPTC field, and as a Boolean operator is ' OR' possible. Well suited is the program ImageQuery, here the user must formulate SQL queries and thus search a pictures folder. When creating the SQL query wizard helps. For all users who could be convinced until late the benefits of IPTC fields, this alternative is a good way. You can search for and provided by all images with IPTC fields and see to the completion of this project at least the images again, contain the IPTC fields.
Also conceivable is a combination of the use of IPTC fields in JPEG files and their recovery through a free program for desktop search. Almost all programs on the Desktop Search can index image files in a selected image folder ( its sub - folders and ). You will find here the IPTC fields each JPG file, but do not distinguish from which IPTC field a keyword originates. This distinction is lost. When searching in the index, the user can use Boolean operators.
Alternative 3: Use the File Info properties of the Windows operating system. This is reached via the Windows Explorer → Right-click on a JPG file → Properties → go to 'File Info'. This file info is the same as the IPTC fields in the JPG file itself is stored.
Alternative 4 is retrieved and processed only the IPTC metadata of image files. This alternative is independent of the operating system and catalog program used. There are several programs for this purpose, either to build a database from the IPTC metadata of image files automatically or search them sequentially. Examples of such programs are Thumbaplus or Xnview.
Pros and Cons for using an image database
Pro:
- Because not every picture has to be searched individually, the search result is available very quickly.
- The use of Boolean operators for combining keyword is for programs with Database almost always a better solution than the alternatives.
- With alternatives to the Database may not make sense looking at numeric fields you.
Cons:
- Each image must be described by keywords. This is laborious and time-consuming than the use of the file name.
- In a solution without image database software, the procession of the image archive to another computer or another hard drive without any problems. With image database software, the move depends on the software used, the options range from difficulty to rebuild the image database.
Database formats of image databases
- Proprietary database format - With an in-house ( proprietary ) database format, the software maker intervention prevents firms foreign software developers. Secrecy in this case serves the security, on the other hand suffers in this format often the networking capability. Examples are Adobe Bridge, ACDSee. The database is often not referred to as such, but as Catalog, catalog, index
- Public database format - examples are Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, Microsoft Access. If an image database used public database formats, it inherits the network capability of these formats, but users can play around with it. Whether this is useful remains to be seen. Example of Database software with a public database format: Imabas