Fantastic Map Viewer

[cavescom]

Martin Sluka introduced me to this site: http://www.zoomify.com
and we both now have samples up and running. These examples are very large images that the Zoomify program automatically slices into many small pieces at different resoultions. The viewer then loads higher resolution image slices based on the area zoomed in upon....amazingly quick! INCREDIBLE!!

Martin's Example: http://www.cachtice.speleo.sk/mapa/template.html
Mark's Example: http://www.caves.com/zoomify more even high resolution images coming......
Snapshot of Proper Setup Folder: http://www.caves.com/zoomify/zoomifyfolder.jpg

These examples are done with the "free" version. The $129 version allows for hotspots and alot of other features to be added.

Mark Passerby, Caves.com

[cavescom]

Another sample by Martin Sluka:
http://www.cachtice.speleo.sk/mapa_cj/template.html

[Tlaloc]

Actually this looks like a image sharpening filter, not a Map viewer. There are several of these, some free and some expensive. Some are Photoshop plugins. I thought this would be useful so I downloaded the Mac version.

The instructions are this:

1. Drag any image onto Zoomifyer EZ to rapidly convert it.
2. Open Template.htm in any editor and set zoomifyImagePath to your image folder name.
3. Copy your image folder, Template.htm, and zoomifyViewer.swf to your Web server - that's it!

Step 1 appears to do nothing. (Convert it to what? where? What image formats?)
Step 2: If I double click on the Template file it is opened in a web browser and it's an example like the ones that you link to. If I open it in a text editor all that is there is something that looks like an editable text field but no "zoomifyImagePath". Maybe I could type in a path as computer:folder:folder?
Step 3: Copy 3 items to my Web server? So now I need a web server?

The .swf has a real player Icon so I double clicked on it to see what would happen. It opens Real Player but Real Player reports a "General Error". I went to several "all the file extensions in the world" web sites. None of them knows what a .swf is so I guess it's a Single White Female.

My guess is that these instructions were written by some one who was illiterate in some foreign language and then translated into English by someone who is illiterate in English.

Before looking at the NSS Bulletin Board I was building a GUI for a Cocoa application with XCode / Objective C. I'll just go back to doing that. It's easier than trying to understand this complete mess.

If anyone figures it out they could post the answer here.

[Realms]

As mentioned in the thread, this works with flash. (.swf) is a flash extension. Loading the 3 files to your web server simply means placing the items in you web space if you have a website. The software was originally intended to be used as a dynamic viewer on the web. It will however work just fine running it on your local comp (PC/MAC) It is not a sharpening filter as filters are not dynamic. At a distance the resolution is lower to save on view time. It offers higher res only when you zoom in and actually need high res. Personally I have not used this yet but I am downloading it now and it appears it will be a very useful tool in my arsenal.
Hope this clears up some of the confusion.

Realms
http://www.realmsofreality.net/

[Realms]

wow this is cool. Just got my first image set up. Going to be very handy indeed. And I was about to buy the same technology from a different source. Thanks for the info! Will link the results to my site soon.

Realms

http://www.realmsofreality.net/

[Tlaloc]

After looking at their site I see that Zoomifier is a Real Player application that allows one to scale and pan a .jpg. I am surprised that you say that it doesn't sharpen because the zoomed images look so good.

The instructions should read:

Step 1: Drag and drop an image file onto Zoomifier (jpeg ONLY. If you drop some other image format file on zoomifier it will do nothing and it won't report an error.) Zoomifier will create an image folder which will contain the converted image. This folder will have the same name as the image without the .jpg extension and will be located in the same folder as the image. (This also confused me because the default location for a file/folder open/create function in programming is in the same folder as the appplication.) This is the image folder you need to use in steps 2 and 3.

In step 2 the location of the folder is a URL which can specify a location on your machine of a server.

[Realms]

Hmm let me see if I can explain it a little more. Ok say you have an image that is 5000 x 5000 square @72 dpi. When you see the entire pic on your screen, you are not zoomed into the area of max resolution. If you look at the pic at actual size i.e 5000 x 5000, you will not be able to fit the entire image on your screen. The program makes several levels of resolution so when you are zoomed out you are not looking at the full res pic. (there would be no need to) So no there is no sharpening there. If sharpening was involved, it would be called that and you would have control over how much the image was sharpened. No, you are seeing the image just as if you had zoomed into it with your image editor.
As for real player? Are you referring to the Flash player? I can find nothing on their site relating to Real Player.
The program works with other files than jpegs. I just did one with a .bmp and gif. Did you notice the drop down file extension list in the conversion window?
It is cool and pretty easy......really

Realms
http://www.realmsofreality.net/

[cavescom]

The $129 version will give you much much more capabilities and is where I am heading with it for overlaying caves on aerials with hotlinks out to other information. Example: http://www.zoomify.com/demo/housingapp/popup.htm


Mark Passerby, Caves.com

[cavescom]

I just reloaded this page http://www.caves.com/zoomify with a new aerial i.e. a 1:2400 aerial photograph is in the background that originally started as a 200 meg. tif file. I then overlayed the vectors from Illustrator of the topo lines, cave line plots and streams etc. Then flattened it all in Photoshop and created a master .tif file that I dropped on to Zoomify. It loads incredibly quick.

Mark Passerby, Caves.com

[Realms]

Very nice. I think I will also splurge on the package. This is the same technology that is used for the Earth Zooms found on Space.com. Also was used during the 2004 Olympics. Now cavers have found a use. Very Nice!

Realms
http://www.realmsofreality.net/

[cavescom]

Bobcat Blowhole Working Map Example at: http://www.caves.com/zoomify/bobcat.html Original file 250megs.(Working Map drawn by Bob Kirk)

Mark Passerby, Caves.com

[Steven Johnson]

No, this doesn't use Real at all, just Flash (unless they've changed it recently -- but Real doesn't seem like it would be useful for this task) -- I saw a demo of it where I work a couple of years ago.

It's basically a very clever bit of resampling... they take a huge image, downsample it ahead of time into various lower-resolution images, then choose the sub-images that best fit the viewing resolution and size, so that you get good results quickly and with the ability to transfer as few bits as possible over the net.