eRez Imaging Server 3.1 – Release Notes

13-may-2005

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Changes in version 3.1

Quality and Performance

Improved image quality by means of a new antialias filter used when down-sampling images and improved algorithms.

Support for selecting ICC rendering intents during colour transformation.

Faster handling of very large images.

Faster indexing.

In-memory Caching of metadata with configurable cache size.

Ease of use

A brand new FSI Viewer based cropping tool with zoom, rotate and the ability to lock the aspect ratio of the selection. No FSI Viewer license required for use.

A new function for directly moving images on the server.

A new function for directly moving folders on the server.

Real-time templates for internal use (such as “fsi”) can now be hidden from the user.

Directories for files and cache use are now automatically created when a new shared folder is created.

The hostname and port number are now dynamically set in case it have not been modified from the Management Console yet.

The Servers Statistics page no longer counts the number of images when loaded. Instead a “count images” link is added to the page.

The selected clipping paths are now displayed in the download manager.

The receiver is now taken to the standard web interface when clicking on hyperlinks in emails.

Compatibility

Improved support for exchanging IPTC metadata with Photoshop for Macintosh and Canto Cumulus.

Support for Version 4 ICC Profiles.

Support for TIFF images larger than 2 Giga pixels.

eRez Anywhere now supports Windows Mobile devices.

Improved support for files and folders with special characters including “+” and “%” in the name.

Name of files in ZIP archives are now limited to 7-bit ASCII.

Tested with Java 1.5 (JRE 5.0).

Support for Apache Tomcat 5.5.

Support for Oracle application Server 10g

Improved support for embedding FSI Viewer hot-spots and other proprietary FSI Viewer data inside custom IPTC fields.

Support for ImageMagick style “Pyramid TIFF”.

Support for non-standard TIFF files created by Helios.

Updated Synkron.web template.

Other

Evaluation version of FSI Viewer 3.2.6 bundled. FSI Viewer 3.2.6 has the following new features:

Optimized load sequence of images in 3D presentations to display the main image earlier (* REQUIRES FREE SKIN UPDATE).
New FSI Viewer Parameter: "UISwitchable" to enable/disable showing/hiding the user interface (* REQUIRES FREE SKIN UPDATE).
New plug-in "SelectFrame" to author FSI hot spots in FSI Viewer.
New FSI Viewer parameter "ZoomLimit" to specify maximum magnification in percent of the source image.
New FSI Viewer parameter "ZoomLimitMin" to specify the min. magnification relative to initial size.
New FSI Viewer Parameter "ExtendedViewport" (default=false). Extends the view port to enable moving the image more freely.
New template options in CustomButton plug-in to create dynamic URLs based on the FSI Viewer state.
New button label "print" in CustomButton plug-in.
New plug-in events for Measure and SelectFrame plug-ins that can be tracked with JSBridge plug-in.

Display of OPI Image ID’s from TIFF files.
Improved support for publishing slideshows and showcases from queries with special characters.
The secret pass phrase used to generate encrypted source strings can now be overridden from the Management Console.
Miscellaneous minor enhancements and bug fixes.
Discontinued support for Internet Explorer for Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X.

Changes in version 3.0.5

An evaluation version of NeptuneLab’s FSI Viewer version 3.1 is now included.

Status and progress information is now displayed while uploading new images.

You can now use “Publish to Web” to publish the results of queries and the contents of shared folders that would normally require the user to log on with a name and password.

The “Hot Folder” mechanism will now place new or modified files in a 30 second quarantine to make sure that the upload or modification is completed.

Improved Microsoft Visual Studio support for the SOAP SDK (WSDL file).

Empty clipping paths no longer leads to error messages.

Fixed a concurrency issue with the underlying Color Management System.

Other minor improvements and updates.

Changes in version 3.0.3

Added support for uploading files with special characters such as the Danish characters ‘æ’, ‘ø’ and ‘å’ from Apple’s Safari browser.

The “Publish to Web” templates for generating Flash Viewer and FSI Showcases now use the path “fsi_path” defined in “erez3\WEB-INF\templates\config\fsi.html” when generating HTML code for external web pages. You must therefore make sure that this path is defined as an absolute URL such as http://erez3.yawah.com/erez3/fsi/ before generating HTML code for external web pages.

Corrected a couple of mistakes in the SOAP documentation.

Fixed a problem that could slow down the server and use large amount of memory when requesting that a very small area (less than one pixel) should be scaled up by several hundred percent.

Improved thread synchronization under extreme load and low memory conditions.

Changes in version 3.0.2

Improved support for special characters on systems using UTF-8 encoding.

When sending email receipts the “from” address from the systems settings is now used instead of an email address defined in the upload template.

The queue used for creating previews via Plug-ins is now stored on disk in case the server is restarted.

Support for resizing Viewer windows when using Internet Explorer 6 under Service Pack 2.

Publish to web no longer displays the FSI viewer and showcase options when the FSI viewer is disabled.

Fixed a problem with the search frame using Internet Explorer under Mac OS X.

Fixed a problem downloading with Safari using the eRez 1.0 style templates.

Added image compression information to the soap/info.xml template.

Updated the template for Synkron.web 3.6.

Experimental: support for selecting rendering intent for download formats.

Experimental: support for reading and writing XMP data via the SOAP SDK.

Changes in version 3.0.1

The following changes and additions were made in version 3.0.1:

The sorting of images and folders are no longer case sensitive.

Hidden previews etc. are no longer included when calculating the number of images on the server.

Added new templates for ImageExpress 3.0.

The correct filename is now used when downloading images from Cumulus Vault.

This remainder of this document describes the new features of eRez 3.0.

New Plug-in architecture

eRez 3.0 includes a Plug-In architecture that will allow experienced Java programmers to extend the functionality of eRez. Functionality can be added in the following areas:

Support for previewing and/or rendering new file formats and extraction of searchable text and metadata.

Responding to “change events” when new files are placed on the server, modified, deleted etc. eRez will (optionally) periodically monitor each shared folder and detect any chance. This is very handy for updating databases, verifying incoming files etc.

Integration with user databases such as LDAP or AD. This way eRez can verify user names and password against an existing database.

Shortly after the release of version 3.0 a Plug-in Software Developer Kit (SDK) with email support will be available to third party developers for an annual fee.

Full text indexing and searching

eRez 3.0 comes with an embedded high-performance, full-featured text search engine inside the server itself.

The search engine supports search capabilities very similar to the popular internet search engines that most people are familiar with and use on a daily basis. The search engine supports many advanced features such as wildcard, fuzzy and proximity searches with Boolean operators and grouping.

The eRez Imaging Server will automatically monitor the shared folders and silently keep the database updated when new files are added, updated and deleted. So you don’t have to do anything at all to keep your documents searchable.

You can optionally index the text from PDF files by installing XPDF which is a freely available open source package.

You have full control of which shared folders are monitored and indexed.

Advanced users can modify the template used to generate the searchable text and in this way customize the fields being indexed. For instance you can leave out whole or part of the EXIF fields.

Search results are displayed in a window exactly like when you’re browsing the shared folders. Documents are sorted by relevance just like the internet search engines and displayed as multiple pages in case the result won’t fit in a single page.

Both indexing and searching is very fast and search results are normally returned in less than a second. For example: indexing 1500 files on our demo server takes less than 2 minutes including indexing of text from about 200 PDF files. The result is an index that takes up less than a mega byte and searches are made in a split-second.

Zoom into PDF, EPS and Illustrator files

As part of the new Plug-In architecture previously described we have added a new Plug-In for optional rendering of PDF, EPS and Illustrator files. The Plug-In automatically renders the 1st page of the file at a configurable resolution like 150 or 300 DPI. This preview is then stored as a compressed image in a hidden folder and used by eRez for preview, zooming etc.

NOTE: This option requires a separate installation of Ghostscript which is a freely available open source package.

Support for thousands of new file formats

A new “Generic” Plug-in makes it possible for eRez to handle all kinds of file types. All it takes to add support for a new file type is the creation of a “preview image” that will be used for displaying thumbnails and previews and a new entry in a configuration file with information about name, extension (such as .doc or .ppt) and the mime type. This plug-In can even extract “IPTC like” information from OLE based files such as Microsoft Office documents.

In addition to the generic Plug-in third party developers can of course use the Plug-in SDK to add full support for new image file formats as necessary.

Batch Downloads

A brand new “Download Manager” makes it easy to collect multiple “jobs” and download them as a single file. Images are converted in the background while the user continues to search for more images, adds more downloads etc.

The files are zip compressed on the fly while they are being downloaded.

New “Publish to Web” function

The well hidden “Make URL” feature of eRez 2 has been replaced with a brand new “Publish to Web” button in a more prominent position.

The “Publish to Web” function completely automates the generation of HTML that can be pasted onto any web site. You can publish either a single image – or a collection of images such as the contents of a folder or the result of a search operation.

Images can be published both as standard HTML viewers and static images (like Make URL in version 2.0) and as FSI Viewers (requires a FSI Viewer License).

The result of a search or the contents of a folder can be published as a Flash Slideshow or as a FSI Showcase (requires a FSI Showcase license).

Publishing of folders or search results is “Live” – meaning that the Slideshow or Showcase on external web pages will always reflect the images currently in that folder or matching the search criteria.

PDA and Smart Phone support – eRez Anywhere

Our slogan “Wherever pictures make a difference” gets a whole new meaning with our new interface for PDA’s and Smart Phones.

Now images taking op gigabytes on the server can be browsed and viewed in detail from anywhere using a mobile phone with a UMTS (3G), GPRS or even a SM internet connection.

The layout is designed for Motorola A920/A925 (UMTS/GPRS) and Sony Ericsson P800/P900 (GPRS) running Opera browsers. But like the rest of eRez, the interface can be fully customized and adjusted for other devices as needed.

Rotate Images quickly

eRez 3.0 can now rotate source TIFF images directly from the “Edit Image” page. This is particularly handy after uploading JPEG images from a digital camera.

Improved performance and support for very large images

As a result of our work with satellite images eRez 3.0 has been improved in several areas in order to speed up access to very large images taking up several gigabytes. These improvements also speed up the access to images of 100 Mb or less considerably.

See http://www.yawah.com/bluemarble.html to see a 2.6 gigabytes image in action.

Synkron.Web

eRez 3.0 is preconfigured and ready to use with the Synkron.web content management system.

Please see http://www.synkron.com/ to learn more about Synkron.web.

Cumulus Vault Support

eRez 3.0 supports access to images stored in Cumulus Vault folders. Cumulus Vault is a version control system for Canto Cumulus.

Please see http://www.canto.com to learn more about Cumulus.

Numerous small enhancements and fixes

In addition to the above mentioned new features eRez 3.0 contains many small improvements and bug fixes.