You will be responsible for digitizing at least ten photographs or images via a digital camera or scanner. You should then store these images in at least two resolutions.
Ideally, use a digital camera for up to 9 of the images, but use a scanner for converting at least one print image to digital form to give yourself that experience as well.
Examples of such images can be seen at Images of Rome
You will have to copy your ten image files (DON'T copy both versions of the same image; just pick the lower resolution one for each) via ftp to a central site so that all the class's imagery can be searched via a commercial image search engine, IBM's Query by Image Content (QBIC). The ftp site is unfortunately no longer available.
You will have to search the combined class image catalog using the IBM QBIC image matching system which will be accessible from a local QBIC page. You can test this local page out now on the catalogs "ibm" (default) and "Mike" -- by Friday Nov. 1 at ~8 a.m. a new collection will be added named "MSEC" which you will use for the rest of this assignment.
Using any other images EXCEPT your own, try to find seven of the images that you had scanned in. What settings, parameters did you use to find the image? In your homework web page, list the query image you used (if any), the target image from your set, and which QBIC parameter settings were used to find the target (specify parameter settings clearly and completely so that search can be repeated by someone else). You get 3 points for each of the 10 images scanned in or digitized well (good choice of cropping, orientation, and scanner/image source free of dirt/lint/etc.) (30 points total), and you will get 10 points for each target found as a first choice in a query (7 queries at 10 points each) for a total of up to 100 points. Target images found as 2nd choice would give 8 points, 3rd choice 6 points, 4th choice 4 points and 5th choice 2 points. You will receive only 1 point if your target image is in the top 10 results but not in the top 5. You can only use "Customized Search" (where you pick colors and/or color layouts) for 4 of your queries; the other 3 must be based on a query image selected from the QBIC image set, where you select Color Percentages, Color Layout, or Texture as the similarity measure and then click on the image located in the first upper left slot to do a similarity search against that image. When you use an image key (search against an image), the answers are then listed in order next to that image key, so of course for such searches you're trying to get your target image to be listed in the second slot next to the image key, which counts as being the first choice for the query.
You must have your images scanned in/digitized and ftp'd over by 6 a.m. October 31. Some time on October 31 the QBIC indices will be built. Your homework web pages must be completed by 11:59 p.m. November 4. NOTE: The QBIC web server (now offline) is limited to 10 simultaneous connections at a time, so you will need to stagger your usage. Cooperate amongst yourselves so that you won't be frustrated with "Cannot access the server...." messages which will happen if more than 10 of you try to download to or access the server at the same time.