Suhit Gupta
07-21-2004, 07:00 PM
<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/photomesa/' target='_blank'>http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/photomesa/</a><br /><br /></div><i>"PhotoMesa is a zoomable image browser. It allows the user to view multiple directories of images in a zoomable environment, and uses a set of simple navigation mechanisms to move through the space of images. It also supports grouping of images by metadata available from the file system. It requires only a set of images on disk, and does not require the user to add any metadata, or manipulate the images at all before browsing, thus making it easy to get started with existing images."</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/photomesa7-medium.jpg" /><br /><br />There are few image management systems that concentrate only on image browsing. Photomesa addresses just that. It lets a user concentrate on the images, without having to manage scrollbars, menus, or pop-up windows. It allows the user to group images by adding tags to the images and is actually built to be useful in informal situations, such as looking at photos together among family members. It is a great piece of research software, and just shows that university research departments can come up with good media software. They also actually make their layout algorithms available on their website.