DiRT (Digital Research Tools) has a new home! Please visit Bamboo DiRT to explore this excellent collection of research tools.

Web site: http://tapor.uvic.ca/~mholmes/image_markup/index.php

Date of first review/ name of reviewer: 6/19/08 [Erin Dorris Cassidy]

Additional reviewer(s):

Produced by: Text Analysis Portal for Research (TAPoR), University of Victoria

Cost: Free

Description: The Image Markup Tool allows you to "describe and annotate images, and store the resulting data in TEI XML files," all within a "simple enough interface that it can be used by people with little or no experience in editing XML code."

Platform: Install and run in Windows (2000, XP, or Vista recommended) or under WINE on Linux; may also work through Darwine on OSX

License: Mozilla Public Licence version 1.1

Maturity: v1.7.1.1

Features:

• Supports "a wide variety of image formats"
• Saves markup information in conformant TEI P5 XML files
• Create simple web output to display the annotated image in an interactive format

• Simple, graphical interface lets you see the image and the fields for entering your markup notes
• Annotations are visually represented on the image
• View and hide different pieces of annotation as you work to see overlap or remove visual clutter
• Allows knowledgeable TEI users to add additional TEI markup tags to their annotations
• Allows access and manipulation of standard schema used, as well as creation of additional schema
• FUTURE versions may include the ability to handle multiple images in one file

Advantages:

• Does for images all the wonderful things that XML markup does for text
• Program checks XML for well-formedness and provides some basic assistance in automatically correcting ill-formed XML
• Menu command for creating zip packages (containing image file, XML markup file, and associated schema files) provides an easy solution for moving projects
• This tool also allows you to easily create thumbnails of a whole image or one annotated part of an image--one less task to perform in a separate image editing tool

Disadvantages:

• Editing done to Image Markup's XML files in an external editor may not be preserved: Image Markup Tool "will not guarantee to preserve XML code which is added to one of its files in an external editor (although it will try)" 
• Web output provides only a starting place for web display, and is not a one-stop shop for a finished web product

Tips:

• Although the program documentation states that little or no user experience with XML markup is needed, it would be advisable to have, at the minimum, some familiarity with the basic concepts of markup (an introductory understanding of HTML, for instance).
• If you are interested in manipulating schemas, they are presented as ODD files (rather than schemas) which are then used to generate the schemas

Tutorials:

• Image Markup Tool tutorial

More information:

Developer Resources:

• Code libraries and modules
• Development blog
• Instructions to compile the application yourself
• List of bugs fixed or reported