IIIF Images and other Assets

The most common use of the IIIF Cloud Services platform is registering images. The platform provides IIIF Image API Image Services for any images that you register.

Given any image (most formats are supported), the platform creates an endpoint - a URL that can be used for deep zoom and arbitrary crops and sizes.

The origin

This is really the only thing the platform needs to know when you register an image - “where do I get it from?”

When you register an image, you provide an origin - the URL from which the platform will read your image to generate a IIIF Image Service.

An origin might be a web address - any image hosted on the public internet is a valid origin. But it can also be the URL of a file in an AWS S3 bucket, on an FTP server, in a Google Drive folder, and other locations - even a digital preservation system.

Adding images in the Portal doesn’t usually require you to provide the origin explicitly - it works it out from your selections. But API-driven registrations need this information.

In the Portal

• You can create Spaces (like folders) to organise your images, without needing to create IIIF Manifests.
• You can also create IIIF Manifests and add images to them. All of the following apply whether you are adding images to Spaces, or adding them to Manifests.
• You can drag an image from your desktop straight into the portal.
• You can upload multiple images from your desktop.

Via the API

• You can programmatically create spaces to organise your images, like folders.
• You can programmatically create IIIF Manifests to organise your images, like folders.
• You can programmatically create hierarchies of IIIF Collections to organise child Manifests and Collections.
• You can register thousands or even millions of images by sending batches to the platform API queue.
• You can monitor progress in the Portal, or use the APIs to build your own dashboards, integration and reporting tools.
• You can specify additional metadata fields on the images, for querying them later.

In the Portal (future)

• You can upload zip files of images in bulk.^15p
• You can upload a PDF and turn it into separate IIIF Images, or a Manifest.^{15p composite}
• You can upload a spreadsheet or text file of image information that allows the platform to fetch your images.^9p
• You can connect to Google Drive, OneDrive or DropBox from the Portal and pick images from your own storage.^10p
• You can give the portal a Google Sheet URL to read image locations from.^9p