Generating static tiles

As mentioned in the previous chapter, the IIIF Image API defines the following structure:

http://host:port/identifier/region/size/rotation/quality.format

It is possible to generate images that fit this URL structure and conform to the IIIF Image API using a tile generator. This will generate the minimum required amount of files to implement the IIIF Image API. It does have some limitations, the main one being it is not possible to request images of a size that haven't been pre-generated. This type of pre-generated IIIF Image is known as a Level 0 implementation.

To generate these IIIF images we are going to use a IIIF tilling program which is available on Github.

Step 1: Download the IIIF Tiler

• Navigate to the release page: https://github.com/glenrobson/iiif-tiler/releases/tag/0.3
• Click the assets drop down
• Download iiif-tiler.jar
• Store this jar file in your ~/iiif-workshop directory

Step 2: Prepare your image files

• Move the image files you want to work with into your ~/iiif-workshop directory

Step 3: Generate the IIIF Image tiles

Now either:

• Double click on the iiif-tiler.jar file in Finder or Windows.

or

• from the command line run:

cd ~/iiif-workshop
java -jar iiif-tiler.jar

• This will generate the IIIF image tiles in a iiif directory for every image it finds in the same directory as the iiif-tiler.jar.

Step 4: Point the Chrome webserver to your iiif-workshop directory

• Open Chrome
• Click the Apps button on the top left

• Click on the Web Server (if this is not listed ensure you have installed the prerequisites).
• You should see the following:

• Click choose folder and select your iiif-workshop folder
• Where it says Enter port change it to 8887
• Click Show Advanced Settings
• Ensure Set CORS headers has a tick next to it.

Step 5: Serve your IIIF Image through a http server

• Open a browser and navigate to http://127.0.0.1:8887/
• You should see a iiif directory and if you click that you should see your image file.
• Click this directory then click on the info.json.
• If your image was called picture.png the URL should be.

http://127.0.0.1:8887/iiif/image/info.json

• If you see the info.json you are now ready to view your image in a IIIF Image viewer.

Step 6: Show your image in a IIIF Viewer

You can now load your image to a IIIF image viewer. The main image viewer is OpenseaDragon. This takes the URL of the info.json. So if your info.json URL is:

http://127.0.0.1:8887/iiif/image/info.json

Open it with OpenseaDragon:

http://iiif.gdmrdigital.com/openseadragon/index.html?image=http://127.0.0.1:8887/iiif/image/info.json