CS 8803-AIA Spring 2008
Project Proposal
Krimy Amichandwala (krimya@gatech.edu)
Nihar Gadkari (nihargadkari@gatech.edu)
Samantha Misra (smisra6@gatech.edu)
Urja Shah (urja.shah@gatech.edu)
Introduction
Napoleon Bonaparte once said that a picture is worth a thousand words. However, back
in the 18th century, the French General definitely did not have the ease of access to high
resolution scanners and digital cameras. With the increasing use and easy accessibility of
high resolution cameras with no restrictions on memory, we introduce SnapWorks - a
novel concept in sharing of a digital image library with your near and dear ones, or for
that matter anyone who cares. SnapWorks introduces several features which will prove to
be very useful to the average user who seeks to share his images with others. In addition
to annotating images with comments, SnapWorks provides for several convenient
features such as Clustering, Geotagging, Photo Bucket, and Photo Crunching.
Motivation & Objectives
The minutia of photo sharing is a tedious and complicated affair. We attempt to ease the
trouble of sharing a vast photo collection providing several useful features along the way
which the ordinary user would find strikingly refreshing.
This document presents a brief outline of the application starting with the related work
that inspired us and led to the conceiving of the concept and then moving onto the nittygritties of the system.
Related Work
There has been a lot of work in this area both in the industry and in academia. Few of the
more well known commercial applications which help sharing of photos are Flickr.com,
Google’s online photo sharing of Picasa web albums, Kodak Gallery, Yahoo Research’s
ZoneTag etc. All of these have the same basic functionality which includes authentication
of users, uploading albums of photos with some different features over and above the
basic example, tagging of pictures, commenting, ordering prints of photos online, being
location-aware etc. Also, there is ongoing research on geotagging and associating a
picture with its location [1][3][4]. Considerable study has taken place in the ways of
clustering photos in a meaningful way so as to provide users with new and improved
ways of surfing their albums [2]. There are new devices which integrate a GPS system and
a digital camera, e.g. the EverMore GT-800BT Bluetooth GPS EverPhoto[8].
Proposed Work
We aim at building a system that allows users to upload photographs, share them with
other users and collaboratively be able to manage and organize the photographs as per
their needs. We plan to provide the following features in our system:
1. Sharing and Commenting: When a user shares his photos with another user, the
other user can comment on the photos. These comments will be visible to the user
who ‘owns’ the photo as well as other users who the owner has invited to view
these photos. This will be a way for the users to interact and enjoy sharing of their
photos. The feature of being able to comment on the photos can also be used in a
professional setting where an architect needs to discuss his design of a building
with an overseas client. A similar feature is implemented by the online social
networking site, Facebook. Additional information about this can be found at [7].
2. Clustering: This feature will enable the user to cluster his photos based on events,
location and person. This will allow the user to create filters on his photos. If a
user wants to know whether his friend was present for the Thanksgiving gathering
in San Francisco, he will be able to do so by first filtering the photos by location.
Doing so will only show him the photos clicked in San Francisco. He will then
filter San Francisco photos by event. This will only show him the photos taken at
the Thanksgiving gathering at San Francisco. Now he will be able to filter
furthermore by specifying the friend’s name to the system who he wants to find.
In order to provide the user with this facility we will incorporate a Face
Recognition algorithm that will present the user with all the photographs within a
set that contains a specified person. For this to be possible, the user will earlier
provide the system with a sample of his friend’s photo in order for the system to
know who it is searching for. We will either provide tagging facility (similar to
Facebook’s tagging) for this or ask the user specifically for a photo of his friend.
Clustering by location and event will be implemented as discussed in [3].
3. Different views of photos: This feature will enable the user to view his
photographs as thumbnails on a page (we refer to this as Bucket View) or
thumbnails of photographs laid out on a map to provide the user with information
of the photo density based on geographical locations. This feature is similar to
geo-tagging implemented by Flickr. Below is a screen-shot from the same.
Courtesy: www.flickr.com
4. Picture Panorama: We view this feature as an optimistic goal. Given a set of
photos of a given location, the system will be able to generate a 360 o view of the
location. This feature will provide a panoramic view of a place where a friend
stays or even familiarizing a user of a location, he plans to visit. If two users have
shared pictures of a monument, the system will stitch these photos together to
give the user a panoramic view of the same. This idea has been implemented in
Microsoft’s PhotoSynth [5].
Plan of Action
Keeping in mind the project deadline, the timeline for the project will span 10 weeks,
starting with this proposal as the first deliverable. The project schedule has been devised
in terms of the five modules that we plan to implement.
The completion of module in terms of milestones for the project is indicated below:
Milestone 1: March 7th
The basic application for ‘Photo-sharing’ will be completed and tested for various
scenarios. The basic features will include the following:
1. Creation of albums
2. Sharing of photos by a user with contacts
3. Options to add comments by user or contacts
Milestone 2: March 21st
The enhancement to ‘Overlay photos on a Map’ will be completed. For this part of the
project, we intend to enhance the existing ‘Carmen Sandiego’ system developed by a
group of students in the Fall 2006 semester. In addition to viewing photos in the ‘Album’
format; the user will have the option of overlaying the picture on to a map based on the
location of the picture.
Milestone 3: April 4th
The ‘Cluster Photos’ enhancement to the basic application will be completed and
integrated as the next step in the project. This enhancement will be tested using
photographs of the Georgia Tech campus. It will allow the user to cluster photos based on
various parameters such as:
1. Locations
2. Tags
3. Persons
Milestone 4: April 11th
The ‘Photo bucket’ option will be completed and integrated with the application. Users
will have the option of selecting from a number of different ways to view their photos.
Milestone 5: April 25th
The final enhancement of ‘photo crunching’ capability will be completed. The user will
have the option to synthesize pictures to create 360o views. In addition, the application
will be tested for any issues before the final submission.
Evaluation and Testing Methods
The application will primarily be useful for people who want to share photos or want to
analyze the photos taking into consideration various factors like time, person or object
involved in the photo or location where the picture was taken. Therefore while evaluating
and testing the application, user friendliness and practical viability must be taken into
consideration as a key feature. The components of the application which would be tested
are:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Photo sharing with comments
Clustering
Photo Bucket
Picture crunching
For photo sharing the users will be asked to login and invite a third party to view a
particular album created by him. An uninvited user of the application will try to view this
particular album in the testing phase. Only the invited users should be able to see the
contents of the album.
The user can also cluster the images in his/her respective albums according to location
where the picture was taken, the time during which the picture was taken and the person
or object who is in the picture. Various pictures which are correlated with respect to the
parameters will be added into the different albums created by the user and the
performance and effectiveness of the clustering algorithms will be evaluated. Also during
the execution of some test cases seemingly disparate pictures will be added into the
albums to check the effect on the clustering. We will also evaluate if any insight or
knowledge is gained by the end user after forming these clusters.
The photo bucket functionality will be tested by providing a virtual bucket (similar to a
shopping basket) in which users can add multiple pictures. The users can then toggle
between the bucket view and the map view where the pictures will be displayed on the
specific point on the map. This functionality will be tested by adding large amount of
photos into the basket and then toggling between views and to check whether these
pictures are overlaid over the map appropriately.
The users will not be given a detailed tutorial before using the application to test the
usability of our application. This in part is because we will evaluate how a naïve user
might cope with the application without having a background about photo sharing and
image clustering. The feedback and the suggestions will be noted and we will try to make
further improvements in the application if the need arises or if we feel it is applicable.
In addition to user testing, testing methods to ensure that the application is robust for
large files and large amounts of images will be implemented.
Bibliography
1. “Geographic Location Tags on Digital Images”, Kentaro Toyama, Ron Logan,
Asta Roseway, P. Anandan, ACM, 2003.
2. “Hybrid spatio-temporal structuring and browsing of an image collection acquired
from a personal camera phone”, A. Pigeau, M. Gelgon, International Symposium
on Image and Video communications over Fixed and Mobile Networks XXII: 5358, 2004.
3. “Automatic organization for digital photographs with geographic coordinates”,
Mor Naaman, Yee Jiun Song, Andreas Paepcke, Hector GarciaMolina, ACM,
2004.
4. “Sharing, Discovering and Browsing Geotagged Pictures on the Web”, Carlo
Torniai, Steve Battle, Steve Cayzer, hpl.hp.com, May 2007.
5. http://labs.live.com/photosynth/whatis/
6. www.flickr.com
7. http://www.facebook.com/help.php?page=7
8. http://www.pocketgpsworld.com/evermore-geotagger.php