Omniscope Image Catalogues

Add pictures to your files

Image sets are folders of image files that can be associated with a data set and embedded in Omniscope files at various sizes. Image sets associated with Omniscope files can be:

• displayed from a separate local folder on the local machine,
• embedded into .IOK/.IOM files at adjustable sizes, or
• served over the web for display in real time

Note: DataPlayers only embed thumbnails of associated images in Tile and Table views. You must maintain separate folders of larger images on a web server to display larger, higher-resolution images in the DataPlayer Details windows.

General-purpose Image Sets (free)

Below are a selection of free, general-purpose image sets with image file names matching various international standards, such as ISO codes for countries, etc. These image sets are available both as Omniscope image catalogues and zipped folders. Try downloading both the Omniscope image catalogue and the zipped folder to compare the two methods of delivering image sets. 

The Omniscope image catalogues can be used by anyone with the free Viewer or better and include full instructions on exporting the images you wish to use to a new folder. Download and export (or unzip) the the image folder(s) below on your desktop (if you are adding them to an embedded demo) or save them in a sub-folder underneath the folder holding the .IOK/.IOM file with which you plan to associate the images.

Once you have saved the folder of images, use the Add Images wizard (see tutorial below) to associate the images with your own data sets. 

Flags by country

These image sets contain .GIF images of the official flags of all countries in the world, named according to standard ISO-Alpha2 codes. If you have country names or ISO2 codes in your data sets, you can add flags from these image sets into your own data files quickly and easily (click on image to see larger screenshot).

Small flag images (.GIF images approx. 95x55 pixels) Omniscope image catalogue     (.IOK) 0.3 MB or zipped folder  (.ZIP) 0.4 MB Large flag images (.GIF images approx. 525x300 pixels)   Omniscope image catalogue   (.IOK)  1.3 MB or zipped folder  (.ZIP) 1.6 MB

Image sets for embedded demos

Omniscope installs with a series of embedded demonstration files accessible from Files > Demo files. To avoid increasing the size of the installer files, the high-resolution image sets/folders associated with some of these demo files can be downloaded separately from the links below. These image sets are available both as Omniscope image catalogue files, and as zipped folders. If you download, save and export (Omniscope .IOK catalogue) or unzip (zipped folders) these image sets to a local folder, you can try the demos with these high-resolution images available locally. If you have an activated edition of Omniscope, you can also save and share copies of demo files with these images embedded at any size you choose (see tutorial below).

Note: Some of these folders contain a large number of high-resolution images, making them quite large.

Omniscope embedded demo images:

Below we provide image catalogues and zipped folders containing images associated with certain demos embedded in Omniscope
(click on screenshot for larger image).

Works of Van Gogh Image Set (2,200 hi-res .JPG images)   Omniscope image catalogue (.IOK) 99 MB or zipped folder (.ZIP) 106 MB (about 4-5 minutes on broadband)

(More image sets will be posted soon)

Tutorial: Using the Add Images wizard

This Add Images mini-tutorial provides an opportunity to try adding embeddable image sets back into the demo files and, if you have an activated edition of Omniscope, to experiment with embedding the images at different sizes/resolutions in copies of the demo file you can save and share with others.

Once you have saved the unzipped image set on your desktop, Open Omniscope and click on Files > Demo files and select the demo for which you have downloaded the image set, for example, the Works of Van Gogh. Open the demo file.

The embedded version of the demo file has no embedded images, it retrieves the images over the web. Go to Settings > Images and you will see there are two options for retrieving the images, the automated, online service, and the manual approach. To gain experience using the Add Images wizard, try adding the downloaded image set on your own,. First, select Add more images. Note: If you also leave the online image set enabled, you will see two copies of each image in the Details View of the finished file, one local and one being served over the web. In practise, they could be different images instead of the same.

Selecting Add more images will launch the Add Images Wizard:

1.Select Folder of images. Browse to the folder on your desktop containing the images and click Select folder. 2.Choose field/column in data containing image references In the Van Gogh demo this column is called 'Final Ref'. Select 'Final Ref' and you will see a sample image name displayed...in this case, a picture in the folder named J_30.jpg 3.Choose format of references in dataset. Omniscope detects this automatically for demo files 4.Select file extension to use when not included in the reference. This will show .jpg since all the images in the file already have this extension 5.Give a unique name to this image set. Change the suggestion from Images Set 2 to 'My Downloaded Images' Check example image displayed at bottom right of the Wizard. Click OK to associate the image set.

Viewing Images

To see your image set displayed, go to Add View on the top Omniscope Toolbar and add a Tile View. On the View Toolbar, click on the [?] field (column) selector drop-down and select My Downloaded Images. You will see the images start to appear, but coloured. Go to the Colour selector to the right on the View Toolbar and select 'None' to see his works coloured as van Gogh intended.

Saving/reducing image sets to manage file size

If you have an activated Edition of Omniscope (Professional or Enterprise) you can experiment with saving the file with your downloaded images embedded. At the same time, you can see the trade-offs between file size and image clarity/resolution that results when you reduce the image size to reduce the size of the .IOK file. To save a version of your file click File > Save as. The File Save Wizard will appear...note the options available along the right hand side:

Data: used to select subsets of data to save in new file Embed Images: If you wish your image set to be available inside the .IOK file, you must embed the image set. Select the image set you wish to embed. These hi-res images totalled over 100 MB. Embedding these images without reducing their size would create an .IOK file too big to e-mail to friends! Tick Reduce Image size. Name the new file (with reduced-size embedded images) 'Works of Van Gogh 200x150.iok'. Click Save

The image reduction dialog appears...enabling you to reduce the size of the images to reduce file size, but at some cost in terms of image clarity.

Open the new file and close all the open Views except the Tile View, which should be set to display the embedded image set 'My Downloaded Images'. On the Tile View Toolbar, select the movie camera Slide show icon to the left of the Add to basket icon far right. Click Start slide show and choose full screen sub-option. Look at the image quality on your screen. If it is acceptable for the audience and screen resolutions you intend, consider reducing the images more to reduce the .IOK file size further. If the image quality full screen is not acceptable, you may have to reduce the image less (increasing the file size), or configure the views such that images are never displayed so large. To do this, you repeat the steps above, setting larger maximums in the Reduce image size box shown above.