Digital Image Archive System

There are many sources of digital imagery. Scanners (scanned negatives, slides, prints), digital cameras, digital video cameras, and of course the internet. Photographic processers can also deliver photos in digital form on CD, diskette or via The Internet.

Digital image sources have a number of formats, resolutions and sizes. Some are suitable for printing and enlargements. Others are suitable for publication on web pages or for sending by email. In order to publish a digital image on The Internet it is wise to carry out some pre-processing (with Adobe photoshop or other tools) in order to cut down on the download time. Not all web page authors know how to do this effectively without degrading the image quality noticeably.

One result of all this is that digital images tend to be scattered. A digital photograph can be available in a number of different sizes, information can be lost, and it is not possible to go from a 'web quality' image to a 'print quality' image without getting hold of the original format. Images may be stored on several computers and the owner has trouble retrieving them. Without additional 'album' information it is not possible to search images, determine when they were taken, and so on. Sometimes an author may want to delete several 'web images' because they are no-longer needed but they may want to get them back from the originals in the same format in the future. Precious images and photographs will be lost over time because they are not archived.

Hard-copy photographs do not suffer from exactly the same set of problems. Even if "grandma's" old photos are just thrown into an old biscuit tin, it is still possible to search through, look at notes written on the back, and generally do a visual search of the biscuit tin to find what you are looking for. Digital imagery is more susceptible to loss if not handled early on.

This project will define and build a Digital Image Archive System that will aim to solve a these problems and other related problems. It is likely that the project will require the student to have or to acquire skills in database use, web portal building, html/XML coding and Java programming in order to complete the work. The schematic diagram below gives some initial thoughts on a model for such a system. It will encompass various sources of data and various needs for publication by using an image transformation engine. Some publication image types (for example email attachments) could be created by the transformation engine from high resolution originals and then cleaned from the system (saving space) when not needed. They can be regenerated again when needed by accessing previous transformation histories and making use of the image transformation engine.