Message-Id: <mailto:199407151654.LAA00874@library.wustl.edu> Date: Fri, 15 Jul 1994 10:36:00 EST From: "John R. Garrett" <mailto:0004716758@MCIMAIL.COM> Subject: Re: Image Vision To: Multiple recipients of list IMAGELIB <mailto:IMAGELIB@ARIZVM1.BITNET>
Paul, one way to think about ordering and retrieving purely visual images is to look at the experience of the major stock photo agencies, which have been retrieving based on vague descriptions for many years. As I understand it, the photos are organized in files by their main descriptive elements, but often what is sought doesn't correspond. So the system depends primarily on experienced people, who have a powerful visual memory and, when asked for a photo (e.g.) of a ship in a harbor with a cliff in the background, can find it in their visual memory, then link that visual memory to a particular file, although the desired photo may not be stored according to any of the obvious visual clues. It might be worthwhile to try to find out how these folks (who are still at it) actually function, and think about expert systems.In this case, humans mediate verbal and visual information. The other path would be to skip the verbal descriptives entirely, and look for purely visual ways of linking need and works. There are a variety of research projects out there (some of which we sponsor) which look to find correspondences among images. But I don't think (by definition, I suppose) we know how to (or perhaps ever can) even talk about this problem. I am convinced, however, that just layering on more descriptive words (as in the California photo archives, which I greatly admire) just won't scale in the long run, and avoids the real problem.
That said, I have no clear idea how to say what the real problem is.
John Garrett