FABRIC (Fashion and Apparel Browsing for Inspirational Content) is a collaborative project developing innovative technology to improve browsing, retrieval, and management of digital images throughout the textile and clothing industry, cultural heritage, and other sectors that access digital image collections.
Novel elements include use of manifold learning to enable images to be identified from within contributing databases and presented to designers and other users in a format that accommodates their individual styles of browsing. Objectives include real-time browsing on desktop and mobile platforms, provision of pre-market software prototypes, in-depth performance evaluation, a browsing engine, and an intuitive user interface for visualisation and navigation of image manifolds.
Visual browsing of images means easier access, more design efficiency, and greater potential for increasing revenue.
Image access through adaptive user interfaces provides designers the flexibility to spark and fuel their creativity. Mobile phone and converged communications will support interaction of designers with archived material.
Funded by the UK Technology Strategy Board.