Well, it is official, KnowledgeLake Imaging 2.0 has been released. Finally I have a few minutes available to give you a brief look into the TIF annotation features. For those of you who do not work frequently with TIF files let me give you a simple explanation of annotations.
Annotations are simply text or images associated with a specific location of a specific image file. A comment in a Word document could be consider an annotation. The TIF image format is designed with extensibility in mind and allows the image to contain “extra” information. One such use of this is annotations. The most commonly used and recognized annotation format is known as Wang annotations. Using Wang annotations allows annotations to be created, modified, deleted and viewed in various Wang-compatible viewers. Figure 1 displays the Annotations menu in the KnowledgeLake Image Viewer .
Figure 1 – KnowledgeLake Image Viewer displaying the Annotation menu (Click here for larger image)
The Annotation menu is broken up into four sections: Annotation Type, Color, Font, and Stamps.
You can select the type of annotation as well as Brush size using the Annotation Type section. Figure 2 is a close up look at the Annotation Type section. You can select from Text, Highlight, Filled Rectangle, Hollow Rectangle, Straight Line, Note and Stamp. Annotations are “embedded” in the tif file so it is possible to not display annotations by checking the Hide Annotations checkbox. The pointer in thise section allows for selecting an existing annotation.
Figure 2 – Annotation Type section
Next is the Color section followed by the Font section shown in Figure 3 and 4. Both sections are pretty obvious, allowing you to select the color for foreground and background and font when using text-based annotations.
Figure 3 – Color section
Figure 4 – Font section
The Stamp section shown in Figure 5 works with the Stamp annotation type as seen in the Annotation Type section. Stamps are a simple way to add frequently used text annotations. Static annotations are defined by the system. Administrators can define new text-based annotations that can be selected using the dropdown box. Users can add text into the Dynamic textbox. This text will the resulting annotation text when the stamp annotation tool is used.
Figure 5 – Stamp section
Creating annotations in a TIF file is simple. To create a annotation that will highlight text in the image select the Highlight tool from the Annotation Type and highlight color. Click on the image and drag the selection rectangle to define the highlighted area. Releasing the mouse button will finish the annotation. Figure 6 displays a tif image with multiple annotations including multiple filled rectangles, highlight and text.
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Figure 6 – TIF image with multiple annotations
(Click here for larger image)
All that is left to do is click the save icon to save the annotations with the TIF file. The file will be saved back to the SharePoint document library. Because the viewer is using Wang annotations you can send a copy of this image to a users who has access to a Wang-compatible viewer to review and modify the annotations.
The KnowledgeLake Image Viewer 2.0 provides a great user experience when annotating tif files. What is absolutely amazing is that this viewer requires no ActiveX components or Java. With this viewer the only tool your users will need is access to Internet Explorer and permissions to a SharePoint document library.