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Annotator Overview

What you’ll learn

Section titled “What you’ll learn”
  • Where the annotator opens from and what it shows
  • The four sidebar tabs and what each is for
  • Keyboard and mouse controls
  • Which permissions gate which controls

What the annotator is

Section titled “What the annotator is”

The annotator is a workspace overlay for reviewing the photos in an encounter and the annotations on them. Each annotation is a labelled bounding box that links a feature on a photo (typically a dorsal fin) to an individual in the population catalog.

It opens inside a parent page rather than as a route of its own. From any of these surfaces you can launch the annotator on a specific photo:

  • Encounter detail — encounters/{encounterId}/annotate/{fileItemId}
  • Review task — review-tasks/{populationId}/{taskId}/annotate/{fileItemId}
  • Confirmation queue (Workbench) — opens annotated reviews inside the queue’s workspace outlet

In all three cases the parent page stays mounted behind the workspace; closing the annotator (Esc or the close button) drops you back where you started.

Layout

Section titled “Layout”

Two regions side-by-side:

Canvas (left) — a Konva stage shows the photo with annotation boxes overlaid. The image fits to the available space and you can pan and zoom independently of the page.

Sidebar (right) — a Material tab group with four tabs:

TabWhat’s there
AnnotateThe label-box panel for the current selection plus the annotation list grouped by individual
Image InfoImage-info panel — IPTC metadata, eyepatch presence, per-individual side flags
HealthHealth-concern records tied to individuals or annotations
Image MetaRaw image metadata (EXIF / IPTC / XMP) for the current photo

A toolbar above the canvas exposes Previous / Next photo buttons, a box visibility toggle, image adjustment controls, and a save-state indicator.

Keyboard and mouse model

Section titled “Keyboard and mouse model”

Photo navigation

Section titled “Photo navigation”
  • ← / → move to the previous / next photo in the encounter
  • Esc closes the annotator (or, if you’re in the middle of labelling a fresh box, cancels just that pending label)

Canvas

Section titled “Canvas”
  • Mouse wheel — zoom centred on the cursor. Scale clamps to [0.25, 6], with a factor of 1.07 per wheel tick
  • Click-drag on empty canvas — pan the stage
  • Click a box — select that annotation; its label panel populates the right side

Selection actions

Section titled “Selection actions”
  • Delete or Backspace — remove the currently selected annotation
  • V — toggle box visibility on the canvas (without changing any data)
  • Ctrl/Cmd+Z — undo. If a label is in progress, undo cancels the in-flight label first
  • Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+Z or Ctrl/Cmd+Y — redo

Permissions

Section titled “Permissions”

Five permission flags from the workspace state determine what the annotator allows. The UI hides or disables controls according to these:

FlagWhat it gates
canAnnotateDrawing, dragging, resizing, deleting boxes; creating or editing annotations
canEditImageInfoEdits in the Image Info tab
canManageHealthConcernsEdits in the Health tab
canSuggestNewAnimalsSuggesting a new individual when labelling a box rather than picking an existing one
canDownloadOriginalImageAccess to the original full-resolution image (defaults to admin-only via PermissionSettings on the backend)

When canAnnotate is off, the canvas becomes read-only — boxes don’t drag, the transformer doesn’t attach, and the toolbar’s draw entry is disabled. You can still pan, zoom, switch photos, and inspect metadata.

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