Zoomable Image Browser

Photomesa
http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/photomesa/
= interesting, promising
Software Tool (Win)
FREE

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.

PhotoMesa provides immediate access to any group of digital images without requiring the user to first label, organize or add metadata information to the images to browse.

While most of the other image management tools focus on annotating and searching images, PhotoMesa concentrates on browsing.

The interface adopted in PhotoMesa lets you concentrate on the images, without having to manage scrollbars, menus, or pop-up windows. If metadata exists, PhotoMesa lets you group images by available metadata, such as directory location, image creation date, and words in the filename.

PhotoMesa introduces two new layout algorithms - Quantum Treemaps and BubbleMaps that are utilized to layout the images on the screen, in a new effective fashion which allows to use screen space efficiently while displaying the separate groups in which images are stored.

Both the PhotoMesa application and the layout algorithms are available for download.

You can read the PhotoMesa Help File to learn more about what it is and how to use it. Find it at:
http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/photomesa/ help.html

N.B.: In order to run PhotoMesa, you must have at least Java 2 installed on your machine. It is strongly recommended to use Java 2 version 1.4. which is available for free for Windows, Unix, and it is built into Mac OS X at:
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4/

Download PhotoMesa free at:
http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/photomesa/ download (786 KB)