Sorting Digital Images

A full day of recording rock art will create several hundred images. Organizing the images involves uploading the images from your camera media, rotating those that require rotating, sorting the images by cluster/panel or other category, selecting the images to be used for computer recording, creating backup copies, and mailing or uploading the images to the DigitalRockArt application.

Performing these tasks requires both digital camera and computer expertise as well as the software to do the job. You may have received software with your digital camera, operating system (Windows, Apple OS/X, or Linux), purchased specialized software, or downloaded open source software from the internet.

The task of sorting images is made more difficult because the images were not taken in any particular order, only a few of the images will show the pre-numbered cluster markers, and there are several images for each panel surveyed. But once the sorting and selecting task is complete, the quality of the results will prove the value of taking many photos of each panel.

This page describes the tasks and software that may be used on a Windows based computer. If you are already familiar with alternative software that will do the required job, then by all means use your existing software.

Alternative Software

You may wish to find and download copies of these free software programs. Some of these packages may have both free and commercial versions. In general, the free versions have all the capability that is required.

Irfanview

This program allows you to browse through a folder of images one at a time and rotate those images that need rotating with a JPG lossless rotation function. In addition, the program can display detailed information about the image and the EXIF information added to the image by your camera. It also supports the typical image manipulation features such as resizing, red-eye reduction, grayscale, etc. Note the lossless rotation is a feature of the Irfanview Plugins, so you must download and install both the Irfanview program and the Irfanview Plugins. More information about downloading and installing Irfanview may be found in IrfanviewSetup.

Xplorer2 Lite

This utility is an alternative to MS Windows Explorer. If you are comfortable with using Windows Explorer in the "classic view", this program is similar, but has more capability and is much faster when working with large and deep folder structures (thousands of digital images, for example). This is much better than Windows Explorer for sorting images because you may set the thumbnail size to any dimension, rather than the Windows Explorer fixed size of 64 pixels. Also, Xplorer2 does not leave those annoying thumbnails.db files scattered all over your hard drive. Note this software has both free and commercial versions, the "lite" version is free for individual use. More information about downloading and installing Xplorer2 may be found in Xplorer2Setup.

The Gimp

This is a powerful image manipulation package. It has a reputation for being difficult to install and use, but the latest versions are both easier to use and better documented. This program can do difficult image manipulations such as perspective transformation. There are three large packages to download and install -- GTK (Gimp Tool Kit), The Gimp, and the Gimp Help. You will not be up and running in one minute, read the instructions before you try to install this package.

ImageJ

Another powerful image manipulation package with many tools for image analysis. This software tool requires Java on your PC. If you have Java installed, installing ImageJ is easy. You will not be up and running in one minute. Read the instructions before you choose this package.

Create a Folder Structure

screenshot using Xplorer2

Upload the Camera Media to the PC

screenshot using Xplorer2

Review and Rotate Images

Irfanview

Sort Images by Cluster

Xplorer2, Windows Explorer for comparison

Select and Rename Images

Xplorer2

Copy Renamed Images

Xplorer2

Backup All Images, Erase Camera Media

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Create a CD-ROM for Transmittal or Upload Images to DigitalRockArt

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