Apelles

Apelles is a Silverlight application you can directly use online from your PC or Mac. It's a companion application of Cadmus, and is used to add metadata to (typically inscription) images.

Warning: this is an early Beta online version of Apelles desktop application I have published here to allow some testing. Thus you might find bugs when playing with this.

This online application can be used not only for editing, but also for publishing data in an interactive environment, where users can see the inscription with all the metadata we want to add to it, and grab their mouse and take any measurement directly on the photo.

Quick Instructions

Open an image - Taking measurements - Drawing shapes - Mapping text - Adding labels - Adding images overlays - Get XML code

In this demo Apelles is started with an image already provided with metadata: you will find the full inscription text with its mapping, a semitransparent digital drawing overlaid to the base image, and the measurement unit (cm) already defined. You can of course use any other image and create or edit metadata: you can add shapes, map the text on the image, virtually measure any trait of your inscription letters with your mouse, describe any relevant aspect with labels and add image overlays. All these data are coded into a simple XML file.

For some sample images (including the default one used in the demo) click here.

Opening an Image

To open an image click the Open button and select a JPEG image. You can adjust the zoom level using the bottom slider. Once you have created some metadata using this editor you can load the corresponding XML file instead of the JPEG image. In this case, due to the remote sandbox in which this application lives you will be prompted to load also the JPEG image and all the image overlays you have used (their names appear in the bottom status bar).

Taking Measurements

The measures pane contains all the measurements taken with your mouse, including the reference unit measurement and its name ("cm" = centimeters by default). To take a measurement, once you have loaded an image first select the ruler tool (2nd from left, marked with "12"); then click on your image to define the first point of the ruler line, move your mouse until the 2nd point and click to fix it. The line drawn represents the measurement: its value is shown below in the status bar while moving the mouse and once you have taken it it appears in the measurements pane together with the angle (calculated with reference to the baseline; the value marked with "O" in the status bar represents the shading angle (=90 degrees - angle), which is meaningful for letters like O.

To draw a straight ruler line hold shift while moving your mouse.

Assuming that you have a photo with a metric scale, take a first measurement to define your measurement unit size: for instance, measure 1 centimeter in a centimeter scale. Then click the green tick button in the measurements pane to set this as the reference measurement unit. You can type its name (e.g. "cm") in the box to its right side. To the right of this box a calculated value will also show you the estimated error for the measurements taken on that image (which depends on image resolution and unit size).

Once you have set your reference unit all the successive measurements will be calculated according to it. You can change your unit size at any time and all the measurements taken will be updated.

To delete a measurement just select it and click the delete button in the measurements pane; to delete all the measurements click the delete all button in the same pane.

You can annotate each measurement taken by adding it a title and some notes. Just select the measurement and type your title and notes in the provided boxes.

Drawing Shapes

You can draw some shapes onto your image surface to emphasize some important aspects. Use the drawing tools to draw:

• rectangles: click to set its top-left corner, move the mouse and click again to set its bottom-right corner. You can hold shift to draw a square or ctrl-click to cancel drawing. If you don't cancel, a new shape will be added to the shapes pane: you can then enter a title and some notes for it and select its stroke and fill colors and opacity: just select the shape in the list and change these attributes as you like. Typically you will want to draw semi-transparent images; the default opacity is set to 80% but you can change it as you prefer. As for any other object (except measurements) you can use the selector tool (arrow button) to move an object and the delete tool (X button) to delete an object by clicking on it.
• ellipses: you draw an ellipse just like a rectangle (see above).
• polygons: to draw a polygon you set a series of points which are automatically connected by lines. Just click to define a point and keep adding points until you are done. When adding the last point hold shift. To cancel the polygon ctrl-click.

Mapping Text or Other Signs

Shapes are also the base ingredients of text maps. The map allows you to map the inscription text on its photo so that you can synchronize both while navigating with your mouse. To define a map you just enclose in the most suitable shape group of letters (typically "graphical" words) or whatever signs you want to map (e.g. drawings, decorations, etc.): to draw shapes use the same tools illustrated above, but first be sure to enter the map design mode by clicking the map button in the top toolbox (which will change its color). In this mode each shape is added to the map pane rather than to the shapes pane.

Once you have your shapes in place, enter the full inscription text (or whatever text represents your mapped signs), using the same layout found on the stone, line by line and word by word. The program will partition the entered text into "tokens" (graphical words), and assign each a coordinate where Y = line and X = token number. For instance, a text like:

will be partitioned into 1,1 (dis), 1,2 (manibus), 2,1 (Aureliae), 2,2 (quae), etc. To bind each of these tokens to a shape select the token, select the corresponding shape and click the bind button (green tick) in the map panel. You will see that the shape gets a title corresponding to the token coordinates and text.

Once you have mapped all your tokens, you can exit the map design mode and enable map navigation by checking the corresponding option at the top-right of the toolbox. In this mode when you hover your mouse on any mapped region of the image you the corresponding token will be highlighted, and when you hover your mose on the text (in the Text pane) the image will be automatically scrolled to the corresponding region.

Labels

You can also add some text labels to any part of your image. Just select the text tool (T), click on the region where you want to place the text and type. To end typing hit Enter, to cancel typing hit Esc. Once your label has been placed you can change its color and font family and size from the labels pane.

Images

You can add other images as layers on the base image, so that they can work as "overlays" with additional information; typically this is used to overlay the digital drawing to the photo with a certain level of transparency. To place an image select the image pane, click the open image button and load it: the image will appear in the list. You can add a title and some notes to it, define its transparency and offset it on the base image using the arrow buttons and/or typing offsets values in X and Y boxes. The center button is used to center the overlay on the base image. If you add several overlays use the green arrow buttons to move them up or down in the stack.

XML

Finally, you can get the XML code which fully describes all your graphical metadata (measurements, maps and text, shapes, labels, image overlays) by clicking the floppy button next to the Open button: the XML pane will be filled with the XML code (you can select and copy it if you want). You can find an XSDL scheme for this XML code here.