Message-Id: <mailto:199407021355.IAA07236@library.wustl.edu> Date: Sat, 2 Jul 1994 09:52:24 -0800 From: Francois Schiettecatte <mailto:francois@ANSREMOTE.COM> Subject: Re: List of current imaging projects To: Multiple recipients of list IMAGELIB <mailto:IMAGELIB@ARIZVM1.BITNET>
Robert>
>The University of Tennessee, Knoxville Archives has just completed a major
>scanning project of the personal papers, manuscripts, and photographs
>belonging to Gottfried Galston and Ferrucio Busoni. This archive current
>consist of about 5,000 TIFF images stored on optical disks. We would like
>to make them available over the Net but are still in the process of
>deciding how best to do so. The hardware/software configuration we are
>currently using in-house is rather slow, which makes it less than
>internet-compatible. We have tried converting them to GIFs in the hope
>of storing them on a Sun Workstation and giving access through Mosaic but
>the quality of the resulting GIFs is unacceptably poor.
>
>Any suggestions or ideas how to accomplish this monumental task would be
>most appreciated. I am eagerly looking forward to discussion on this
>list and thank the listowners for making it possible.
>
>Robert Scholten
>University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Libraries
>
Intesting question. I am currently working for a client doing approximately the same thing. They have about 4GB of page images along with corresponding icon stored as tiff images. The tiff images are scanned at 300dpi and we convert them to 72dpi gif images for display in mosaic viewers. There are two basic components to the system. We have a special HTTP server which handles access to the database (the image part of it, we have another HTTP server which handles search and retrieval of bibliographic data). The second component is an image conversion manager which handles conversion of tiff to gif and caches the resulting files for a set amount of time. To get a good image quality we have found that we need to dither the images so that the gif representation looks acceptable, a straight conversion and redunction looks pretty bad. Also we have some special hardware which speeds up parts of the conversion processes. The tools we use to convert the images are proprietary but I suspect that you should be able to use the pbm/ppm public domain package to do the conversions and dithering. We have found that converting an icon takes about 1 second and a page takes about 20 seconds on a sun LX without the special hardware (a chameleon board I believe).
I hope this help.
francois
ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ Francois Schiettecatte FS Consulting Internet: mailto:francois@ansremote.com 435 Highland Avenue Phone : (716) 256-2850 Rochester, NY 14620 Fax : (716) 473-9695 ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ