Support IIIF Image API for thumbnailing & tiling of images
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	• brion
	Feb 21 2018, 12:04 PM

Description

T105789 (panoramic viewer) and some other uses of deep zoom will benefit from having support for generating tiles from large images. I strongly recommend using the IIIF Image API for exposing such tiles; this would also make it easier to reuse Wikimedia Commons images in IIIF Presentation API manifests which may be of interest.

Some features of IIIF Image API include rotation and bitonal variations which we would probably not support. This can be described in the manifest file for the service, I believe.

See also T173346 for general IIIF+Structured Data on Commons ideas.

Could be implemented as a RESTBase-like service, or an API endpoint or Special page hack, or a "404 handler" hack that integrates with Thumbor etc. Not sure best way to proceed at this time, but I may prototype with a Special: page hack to get something working.

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Status	Assigned	Task
Open	None	T187872 Support IIIF Image API for thumbnailing & tiling of images
Open	None	T187873 Extension for interactive media based on IIIF Presentation API
Resolved	dschwen	T105789 A new panoramic viewer for commons
Resolved	valhallasw	T108210 Please install hugin-tools and pillow
Resolved	• Gilles	T132064 Make Media Viewer pluggable for the 3d extension, videos, …
Resolved	• Gilles	T132713 Media Viewer browser tests fail

Event Timeline

• brion created this task.Feb 21 2018, 12:04 PM

Restricted Application added projects: Commons, Multimedia. · View Herald TranscriptFeb 21 2018, 12:04 PM

Restricted Application added a subscriber: Aklapper. · View Herald Transcript

• brion mentioned this in T187873: Extension for interactive media based on IIIF Presentation API.Feb 21 2018, 12:12 PM

• brion added a subtask: T187873: Extension for interactive media based on IIIF Presentation API.

• brion added a subtask: T105789: A new panoramic viewer for commons.

• Ramsey-WMF moved this task from Untriaged to Desired epics on the Multimedia board.Feb 27 2018, 6:01 PM

(Copied from T173346)
I'd like to note strong interest on two different occasions from two different people in the last month in a top-tier GLAM that I'm working with, about the possibility of being able to use Commons as an IIIF hosting service for high-resolution images, eg for serving tiles of old maps for geo-referencing to platforms that need to be able to access images from an IIIF service.

The GLAM is quite strapped for cash (or, at least, the relevant departments are), and they can get a much more affordable deal from the georeferencing platform if they can arrange their own image hosting, rather than having to copy all their images to the georeferencing company.

If we could offer this, that would significantly strengthen the business case within the GLAM for releasing best-quality high-resolution versions of their images to WikiCommons, rather than lower-resolution degraded versions -- a subject of significant current discussion and dispute within the organisation.

A couple of pre-requisites for this would be (i) the ability to offer a stable and fast IIIF service with strong reliability, and (ii) the ability to offer IIIF access to a particular revision of an image -- because any subsequent cropping or rotation or rescaling by a Commons user, however well-intentioned, would totally throw out the pixel-referenced georeferencing data.

BTW, I note that the current pilot service appears to be down again T206260, and has suffered from recurrent corruption problems T194956. I know that, myself, I have not been able to use zoom-viewer for any of the large old maps that I recently uploaded (example, example2), which doesn't help in showing off what I hope we would be able to offer.