imgquad 0.1.4

IMaGe QUality Assessment for Digitisation batches

IMaGe QUality Assessment for Digitisation batches

What is imgquad?

Imgquad is a simple tool for automated quality assessment of images in digitisation batches against a user-defined technical profile. It uses Pillow to extract the relevant technical properties.

These properties are serialized to a simple XML structure, which is then evaluated against Schematron rules that define the expected/required technical characteristics.

Installation

Install the software with the pip package manager:

pip install imgquad

Then run imgquad once:

imgquad

Depending on your system, imgquad will create a folder named imgquad in one of the following locations:

• For Linux, it will use the location defined by environment variable $XDG_CONFIG_HOME. If this variable is not set, it will use the .config directory in the user's home folder (e.g. /home/johan/.config/imgquad). Note that the .config directory is hidden by default.
• For Windows, it will use the AppData\Local folder (e.g. C:\Users\johan\AppData\Local\imgquad).

The folder contains two subdirectories named profiles and schemas, which are explained in the "Profiles" and "Schemas" sections below.

Command-line syntax

The general syntax of imgquad is:

usage: imgquad [-h] [--version] {process,list,copyps} ...

Imgquad has three sub-commands:

Command	Description
process	Process a batch.
list	List available profiles and schemas.
copyps	Copy default profiles and schemas to user directory.

process command

Run imgquad with the process command to process a batch. The syntax is:

usage: imgquad process [-h] [--prefixout PREFIXOUT] [--outdir OUTDIR]
                       [--delimiter DELIMITER] [--verbose]
                       profile batchDir

The process command expects the following positional arguments:

Argument	Description
profile	This defines the validation profile. Note that any file paths entered here will be ignored, as Imgquad only accepts profiles from the profiles directory. You can just enter the file name without the path. Use the list command to list all available profiles.
batchDir	This defines the batch directory that will be analyzed.

In addition, the following optional arguments are available:

Argument	Description
--prefixout, -p	This defines a text prefix on which the names of the output files are based (default: "pq").
--outdir, -o	This defines the directory where output is written (default: current working directory from which imgquad is launched).
--delimiter, -d	This defines the delimiter that is used in the output summary file (default: ';')
--verbose, -b	This tells imgquad to report Schematron output in verbose format.

In the simplest case, we can call imgquad with the profile and the batch directory as the only arguments:

imgquad process beeldstudio-retro.xml ./mybatch

Imgquad will now recursively traverse all directories and files inside the "mybatch" directory, and analyse all image files (based on a file extension match).

list command

Run imgquad with the list command to get a list of the available profiles and schemas, as well as their locations. For example:

imgquad list

Results in:

Available profiles (directory /home/johan/.config/imgquad/profiles):
  - mh-2025-tiff.xml
Available schemas (directory /home/johan/.config/imgquad/schemas):
  - mh-2025-tiff-600.sch

copyps command

If you run imgquad with the copyps command, it will copy the default profiles and schemas that are included in the installation over to your user directory.

Warning: any changes you made to the default profiles or schemas will be lost after this operation, so proceed with caution! If you want to keep any of these files, just make a copy and save them under a different name before running the copyps command.

Profiles

A profile is an XML file that defines how a digitisation batch is evaluated. Here's an example:

<?xml version="1.0"?>

<profile>

<!-- Middeleeuwse Handschriften, 2025 specs (TIFF)-->

<!-- File extensions that will be processed (case insensitive) -->
<extension>tif</extension>
<extension>tiff</extension>

<!-- Namespace definitions (used in summaryProperty paths)-->
<ns uri="adobe:ns:meta/" prefix="x"/>
<ns uri="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#" prefix="rdf"/>
<ns uri="http://ns.adobe.com/photoshop/1.0/" prefix="photoshop"/>

<!-- Properties that are written to summary file -->
<summaryProperty>properties/image/format</summaryProperty>
<summaryProperty>properties/image/icc_profile_name</summaryProperty>
<summaryProperty>properties/image/tiff/XResolution</summaryProperty>
<summaryProperty>properties/image/tiff/YResolution</summaryProperty>
<summaryProperty>properties/image/tiff/ResolutionUnit</summaryProperty>
<summaryProperty>properties/image/tiff/ImageWidth</summaryProperty>
<summaryProperty>properties/image/tiff/ImageLength</summaryProperty>
<summaryProperty>properties/image/tiff/BitsPerSample</summaryProperty>
<summaryProperty>properties/image/tiff/Copyright</summaryProperty>
<summaryProperty>properties/image/exif/Compression</summaryProperty>
<summaryProperty>properties/image/exif/Software</summaryProperty>
<summaryProperty>properties/image/exif/DateTimeOriginal</summaryProperty>
<summaryProperty>properties/image/exif/Model</summaryProperty>
<summaryProperty>properties/image/exif/Make</summaryProperty>
<summaryProperty>properties/image/exif/ShutterSpeedValue</summaryProperty>
<summaryProperty>properties/image/exif/ApertureValue</summaryProperty>
<summaryProperty>properties/image/exif/ISOSpeedRatings</summaryProperty>
<!-- Below properties can be encoded as either sub-elements or attibutes of
an rdf:Description element, so they are duplicated here to cover both cases -->
<summaryProperty>properties/image/x:xmpmeta/rdf:RDF/rdf:Description/photoshop:Headline</summaryProperty>
<summaryProperty>properties/image/x:xmpmeta/rdf:RDF/rdf:Description/photoshop:Credit</summaryProperty>
<summaryProperty>properties/image/x:xmpmeta/rdf:RDF/rdf:Description/@photoshop:Headline</summaryProperty>
<summaryProperty>properties/image/x:xmpmeta/rdf:RDF/rdf:Description/@photoshop:Credit</summaryProperty>

<!-- Schematron schema definitions -->

<schema>mh-2025-tiff-600.sch</schema>

</profile>

The profile is made up of the following components:

1. One or more extension elements, which tell imgquad what file extensions to look for. Imgquad handles file extensions in a case-insensitive way, so tif covers both "rubbish.tif" and "rubbish.TIF".
2. Zero or more ns elements, each of which maps a namespace prefix to its corresponding uri.
3. One or more summaryProperty elements, which define the properties that are written to the summary file. Each summary property is expressed as an xpath expression.
4. One or more schema elements, that each link a file or directory naming pattern to a Schematron file (explained in the next section).

In the example, there's only one schema element, which is used for all processed images. Optionally, each schema element may contain type, match and pattern attributes, which define how a schema is linked to file or directory names inside the batch:

• If type is "fileName", the matching is based on the naming of an image. In case of "parentDirName" the matching uses the naming of the direct parent directory of an image.
• The match attribute defines whether the matching pattern with the file or directory name is exact ("is") or partial ("startswith", "endswith", "contains".)
• The pattern attribute defines a text string that is used for the match.

See the pdfquad documentation for an example of how these attributes are used.

Available profiles

Currently the following profiles are included:

Profile	Description
mh-2025-tiff.xml	Profile for digitised medieval manuscripts.

Schemas

Schemas contain the Schematron rules on which the quality assessment is based. Some background information about this type of rule-based validation can be found in this blog post. Currently the following schemas are included:

mh-2025-tiff-600.sch

This is a schema for digitised medieval manuscripts. It includes the following checks:

Check	Value
Image format	TIFF
ICC profile name	eciRGB v2
XResolution TIFF tag	tag exists
YResolution TIFF tag	tag exists
XResolution	600 (+/- 1)
YResolution	600 (+/- 1)
ResolutionUnit TIFF tag	tag exists
ResolutionUnit	2 (inches)
ImageWidth TIFF tag	tag exists
ImageLength TIFF tag	tag exists
BitsPerSample TIFF tag	tag exists
BitsPerSample	'8 8 8'
ICCProfile TIFF tag	tag exists
Copyright TIFF tag	tag exists
NewSubfileType TIFF tag	at most 1 instance of this tag
SubIFDs TIFF tag	tag does not exist
Compression EXIF tag	tag exists
Compression	1 (Uncompressed)
Software EXIF tag	tag exists
DateTimeOriginal EXIF tag	tag exists
Model EXIF tag	tag exists
Make EXIF tag	tag exists
ShutterSpeedValue EXIF tag	tag exists
ApertureValue EXIF tag	tag exists
ISOSpeedRatings EXIF tag	tag exists
photoshop:Headline	defined in XMP metadata as either element rdf:RDF/rdf:Description/photoshop:Headline, or attribute rdf:RDF/rdf:Description/@photoshop:Headline
photoshop:Credit	defined in XMP metadata as either element rdf:RDF/rdf:Description/photoshop:Credit, or attribute rdf:RDF/rdf:Description/@photoshop:Credit

The schema also includes an additional check on any exceptions that occurred while parsing the image, as this may indicate a corrupted file.

Output

Imgquad reports the following output:

Comprehensive output file (XML)

For each batch, Imgquad generates one comprehensive output file in XML format. This file contains, for each image, all extracted properties, as well as the Schematron report and the assessment status.

Summary file (CSV)

This is a comma-delimited text file that summarises the analysis. At the minimum, Imgquad reports the following columns for each image:

Column	Description
file	Full path to the image file.
validationSuccess	Flag with value True if Schematron validation was succesful, and False if not. A value False indicates that the file could not be validated (e.g. because no matching schema was found, or the validation resulted in an unexpected exception)
validationOutcome	The outcome of the Schematron validation/assessment. Value is Pass if file passed all tests, and Fail otherwise. Note that it is automatically set to Fail if the Schematron validation was unsuccessful (i.e. "validationSuccess" is False)
validationErrors	List of validation errors (separated by "|" characters).

In addition, the summary file contains additional columns with the properties that are defined by the summaryProperty elements in the profile.

Licensing

Imgquad is released under the Apache License, Version 2.0.

Useful links

• Schematron