ImageNet

The Internet provides us with a mountain of digital images from which you can find just about anything you are looking for.  Sometimes, but not always. Why? Because an image can be found on the Internet only if the text entered by a searcher matches the text used to label it.  To help organize this heap of digital confusion, computer scientists at Stanford and Princeton are working on the world’s largest visual database that mimics the human vision system. The database called ImageNet is organized around hierarchical categories called the WordNet. Each category (node) is represented by hundreds or thousands of images — on the average over 500 images per node. ImageNet utilizes Mechanical Turk workers to identify and categorize images. At the moment, ImageNet has over 14,000,000 images indexed into nearly 22,000 categories.
For more on ImageNet, read “Seeking a Better Way to Find Web Images” (New York Times, November 19, 2012)

Rijks Studio launched

In anticipation of its reopening on April 13, 2013, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam launched Rijks Studio, their new online presentation of 125,000 works in its collection.
“Rijks Studio invites members of the public to create their own masterpieces by downloading images of artworks or details of artworks in the collection and using them in a creative way. The ultra high-resolution images of works, both famous and less well-known, can be freely downloaded, zoomed in on, shared, added to personal ‘studios’, or manipulated copyright-free. Users can have prints made of entire works of art or details from them. Other suggestions for the use of images include creating material to upholster furniture or wallpaper, or to decorate a car or an iPad cover for example. To celebrate this digital milestone, the Rijksmuseum is asking leading international artists, designers and architects to become pioneers of Rijks Studio by selecting one work from the collection and using it creatively to create a new artwork. These will be released in the run up to the reopening of the museum.” (Press release)

World Wonders Project

Google has teamed up with UNESCO, CyArk and the World Monuments Fund to introduce an exciting new resource that allows users to virtually explore and navigate world heritage sites through panoramic street-level images. The World Wonders Project uses Google’s Street View, Panoramio and Youtube to make sites like Pompeii, ancient Kyoto and the Palace of Versailles accessible to a global audience. Users can browse by location or by themes.

Photos vulnerable on Apple mobile devices

The New York Times recently reported that applications developed by Apple for their mobile devices can access and copy user photo libraries. This bit of information was revealed shortly after it was reported that some apps were able to take user address books without their knowledge. Apps that utilize location data appear to also allow access to user photos. According to the NYT, it is uncertain if the Apple apps are illicitly copying user photos. To read the full story, go here.

NYPL’s new Stereogranimator

The New York Public Library has just released a new tool — the Stereogranimator — that can transform historical stereographs into shareable 3D web formats. Stereoscopic photography recreates the illusion of depth by presenting two offset images separately to the left and right eye of the viewer. The 2D images are merged in the brain, creating the perception of 3D depth. The Stereogranimator allows users to select a stereoscope from the 40,000+ stereographs from NYPL’s archive and produce an anaglyph or animated gif that combines the two images into one.
For more on the stereographs and how they work, check out the Getty’s simulation.

New additions to ARTstor

China Pavilion

Almost 1,300 new images of contemporary architecture in Shanghai, including the Expo 2010, have been added to ARTstor. ART on FILE photographers were sent to Shanghai by ARTstor to document the architectural highlights of this city, such as Marshall Strabala’s Shanghai Tower (the second tallest tower in the world), the Shanghai Museum (shaped like a Shang Dynasty ding), People’s Square, the Oriental Pearl Tower and the Pudong Riverside Promenade. The Expo 2010 Shanghai China collection includes images of the grounds and pavilions of the largest, most expensive and most visited Expo in the history of World’s Fairs. Among the sites captured by ART on FILE include the Urban Best Practices Area, the Denmark Pavilion (BIG, 2 + 2, and ARUP) and Poland Pavilion (Natalia Paszkowska). To read more about these additions, go here. To learn more about ARTstor’s ART on FILE collection, go here.

Drag and drop with Google images

If you’ve looked at Google images recently, you probably noticed a new feature: Search by Image. Just click on the camera icon in the search bar or drag and drop an image into the search bar and Google images will search for and retrieve visually similar images. I’ve been testing out a number of images but here is one example: Albrecht Dürer’s woodcut “Two Men Plotting Points for a Drawing of a Lute in Foreshortening” (ca. 1525). Google image recognized the print as a Dürer and found visually similar images. It may not be as accurate as your art history professor but its a still pretty cool.

Google Goggles app

Google has created an app called Google Goggles that lets you use pictures taken with your mobile phone to search the web. It is designed to enable searching for things that aren’t easy to describe in words. Typing or speaking your query is not necessary – open the app, snap a picture, and wait for your search results. Google Goggles works well with certain types of images (books, landmarks, logos, artwork, text) and not so well with others (animals, plants, furniture for example). This free app is currently available for Android devices running Android 1.2 or higher and iPhone 3GS and iPhone4 devices.

The Getty Museum is encouraging its visitors to use Google Goggles and has created a special app for their collection. To read more about the Getty’s use of Google Goggles, go here.

From here to then

Wish you could see what your favorite neighborhood in your favorite city looked like at the turn-of-the-century? A new collaborative project called SepiaTown can make that possible. SepiaTown a project that allows registered users to upload historical photographs of their favorite city, index them to Google Maps and show you a “then and now” picture of your favorite city. The makers of SepiaTown think of it as “a time machine. SepiaTown lets you use your computer or mobile device to see what the very spot you’re standing on looked like decades or centuries ago.” Registered SepiaTown users (anyone can register) can upload, map, and share historical images (film and audio coming soon) from any given location and time period with other users around the world. SepiaTown is free and content is completely user generated.

ARTstor tips & tools videos

This summer ARTstor is introducing video tutorials to help users explore newly released tools or navigate established features. Currently available: “Export to PowerPoint,” “Folders and image groups,” and “How to unlock a password protected folder.” Coming soon: “Faceted Search” and step-by-step PDF guides. You can find these new videos on YouTube and ARTstor’s Help Wiki. Also available: the ARTstor blog