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Settings
Project Name
Default Path
If all images in your project are saved in a single folder, set the default path to the location of this folder. The VIA application will load images from this folder by default. Note: a default path of "./" indicates that the folder containing via.html application file also contains the images in this project. For example: /datasets/VOC2012/JPEGImages/ or C:\Documents\data\(note the trailing / and \)
Search Path List
If you define multiple paths, all these folders will be searched to find images in this project. We do not recommend this approach as it is computationally expensive to search for images in multiple folders.
Region Label
By default, each region in an image is labelled using the region-id. Here, you can select a more descriptive labelling of regions.
Region Colour
By default, each region is drawn using a single colour. Using this setting, you can assign a unique colour to regions grouped according to a region attribute.
Region Label Font
Font size and font family for showing region labels.
Preload Buffer Size
Images are preloaded in buffer to allow smoother navigation of next/prev images. A large buffer size may slow down the overall browser performance. To disable preloading, set buffer size to 0.
On-image Annotation Editor
When a single region is selected, the on-image annotation editor is gets activated which the user to update annotations of this region. By default, this on-image annotation editor is placed near the selected region.
File Not Found
Filename:
We recommend that you update the default path in project settings to the folder which contains this image.
A temporary fix is to use browser's file selector to manually locate and add this file. We do not recommend this approach because it requires you to repeat this process every time your load this project in the VIA application.
To start annotation, select images (or, add images from URL or absolute path) and draw regions
Use attribute editor to define attributes (e.g. name) and annotation editor to describe each region (e.g. cat) using these attributes.
Remember to save your project before closing this application so that you can load it later to continue annotation.
A more detailed user guide (with screenshots and descriptions) is available here.
Load Images: The first step is to load all the images that you wish to annotate. There are multiple ways to add images to a VIA project. Choose the method that suits your use case.
Method 1: Selecting local files using browser's file selector
Click Project → Add local files
Select desired images and click Open
Method 2: Adding files from URL or absolute path
Click Project → Add files from URL
Enter URL and click OK
Method 3: Adding files from list of url or absolute path stored in text file
Create a text file containing URL and absolute path (one per line)
Click Project → Add url or path from text file
Select the text file and click Open
Draw Regions: Select a region shape (rectangle, circle, ellipse, polygon, point, polyline) from the left sidebar and draw regions as follows:
Rectangle, Circle and Ellipse
Press left mouse button, drag mouse cursor and release mouse button.
To define a point inside an existing region, click inside the region to select it (if not already selected), now press left mouse button, drag and release to draw region inside existing region.
To select, click inside the region. If the click point contains multiple regions, then clicking multiple times at that location shuffles selection through those regions.
Point
Click to define points.
To draw a region inside existing region, click inside the region to select it (if not already selected), now click again to define the point.
To select, click on (or near) the existing point.
Polygon and Polyline
Click to define vertices.
Press [Enter] to finish drawing the region or press [Esc] to cancel.
If the first vertex needs to be defined inside an existing region, click inside the region to select it (if not already selected), now click again to define the vertex.
To select, click inside the region. If the click point contains multiple regions, then clicking multiple times at that location shuffles selection through those regions.
Create Annotations: For a more detailed description of this step, see Creating Annotations : VIA User Guide. Click the View → Toggle attributes editor to show attributes editor panel in left sidebar and add the desired file or region attributes (e.g. name). Now click View → Toggle annotations editor to show the annotation editor panel in the bottom side. Update the annotations for each region.
Export Annotations: To export the annotations in json or csv format, click Annotation → Export annotations in top menubar.
Save Project: To save the project, click Project → Save in top menubar.
VGG Image Annotator (VIA) is an image annotation tool that can be used to define regions in an image and create textual descriptions of those regions. VIA is an open source project developed at the Visual Geometry Group and released under the BSD-2 clause license.
Here is a list of some salient features of VIA:
based solely on HTML, CSS and Javascript (no external javascript libraries)
can be used off-line (full application in a single html file of size < 400KB)
requires nothing more than a modern web browser (tested on Firefox, Chrome and Safari)
supported region shapes: rectangle, circle, ellipse, polygon, point and polyline
import/export of region data in csv and json file format
Copyright (c) 2016-2019, Abhishek Dutta, Visual Geometry Group, Oxford University and VIA Contributors.
All rights reserved.
Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this
list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice,
this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation
and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS"
AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE
LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR
CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF
SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS
INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN
CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE)
ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE
POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.