An Approach to Image Editing and Filing

Abstract

Among the various aspects of digital image manipulation tasks for business or office applications, image editing and filing can be regarded as one of the most fundamental and important elements at least from software standpoint. At Tokyo Scientific Center/ IBM Japan, a prototype system has been developed to provide a practical solution to this problem, and this paper presents the concepts and functions of this prototype system, which consists of two major components, i.e. Image Editor for interactive image display/editing and Aggregate Data Manager for database management including both image and alphanumeric data. Image Editor (IEDIT) facilitates interactive image display and editing which are commonly required by all image applications. Though one can manipulate both binary and gray-scale images with IEDIT, a novel point here is that it processes binary images in compressed forms throughout and, therefore, achieves very efficient processing, leading to its responsiveness. Aggregate Data Manager (ADM) facilitates unified management of both image data and conventional alphanumeric data. The approach taken by ADM is that, externally, regarding “image” as one of the data-types, each image is treated as a data element like a number or a character string within the framework of a relational model of database, though, internally at physical storage level, they are managed separately due to their different characteristics. This approach makes it possible to utilize a simple and powerful relational data language for storage and retrieval of both image and alphanumeric data in a unified way. Both IEDIT and ADM are operational under Conversational Monitor System (CMS) of IBM Virtual Machine Facility/370 (VM/370).