pancakes

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Author Topic: visual image browsing  (Read 4121 times)

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« on: June 26, 2015, 05:00 »
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I wanted to let you know about a demo of a visual image browser that we have developed at HTW Berlin. As with Google Maps you can easily explore huge sets of images or search for particular images. Use your mouse to zoom and drag the map. Click an image to enlarge it.

www.picsbuffet.com

Any comments are welcome. Please share picsbuffet if you like it.

This version uses over 1 million images from fotolia. Currently only the Chrome and Opera browser are supported. Future versions will support more and other images and other browsers as well.



« Reply #1 on: June 29, 2015, 11:20 »
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I made a short video showing picsbuffet.com in action:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7JUo_IEDpk

« Last Edit: June 29, 2015, 11:28 by pixo »

« Reply #2 on: June 29, 2015, 12:49 »
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I think the idea is extremely interesting, however I found the site currently very confusing (and I did watch the video first, but that didn't really explain enough, for me anyway, of what was going on).

I did a search for picnic basket and although I did get some picnic baskets in the center area, I had models posing lower left, bottles of milk, nesting russian dolls, grass, statues of elephants and all sorts of seemingly unrelated items.

As best I can figure out, the window on the left lets me seed the display if I click on the thumbs underneath. I don't really understand how the star map larger part of the window helps me navigate - what clues do I have other than getting a thumbnail if I hover what sorts of things are where?

I have no idea what to do with the layered pyramid with the top cut off on lower right - it doesn't let me click on a different layer.

I think if your video had some explanations of what was going on it might be easier to follow - there are many areas to look at and I think that while I'm watching one part of the screen in the video, you're doing something elsewhere that actually I should be looking at instead.

« Reply #3 on: June 29, 2015, 15:02 »
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Thank you for your feedback, I definitely have to make a longer video explaining things better. The basic idea was to try to arrange a huge set of millions of images in such a way that similar images are mapped close to each other in order to allow visual browsing similar to Google maps. The problem however is that the relationships between all images are very complex and cannot be projected perfectly onto a 2D map. Nevertheless, we have tried this. In many areas we achieved to have nice smooth transitions going from one topic to another, however sometimes there are hard borders between unrelated images. We are working on an extended approach to fix this problem by using a graph of images instead of a 2D map.

In the current version the user may navigate through multiple image layers by zooming and dragging. Zooming in (or out) shows more (or less) similar images from lower (or higher) levels. Dragging the view shows related images from the same level. After a keyword search the user is automatically directed to a region with suiting results. Other interesting areas are indicated by highlighted color regions in the heatmap on the upper left. Below the heatmap images from the 5 most suiting regions are shown. Clicking such an image will take the viewport to that area.
For he moment the pyramid on the lower right only shows the position and level of the actual viewport, it cannot be used to navigate.
« Last Edit: June 29, 2015, 15:36 by pixo »

« Reply #4 on: June 30, 2015, 05:11 »
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As idea it is beautiful. But not sure it can be used for real search in volume - many know how your eyes can be tired with normal flat presentation, but this one takes more efforts from eyes.
As a presentational tool, and for entertainment - absolutely ok.


 

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