Datalake - Tiling

1. Use-case

Some Computer Vision use cases (satellite or aerial imagery, high-resolution industrial inspection, whole-slide microscopy...) produce very large images, often above 20MB, that are impractical to load and navigate as a single file: fetching, decoding, and rendering the full image every time you pan or zoom on it would be slow and bandwidth-heavy.

This is where Tiling is useful: it's the same technique used by map viewers like Google Earth, where the image is pre-cut into small tiles, and only the tiles covering the area you're currently looking at are loaded, at the resolution matching your current zoom level.

2. How it works

Once Tiling is enabled for a Data, navigating it in the Details view only loads the portion of the image visible in your viewport, at the appropriate resolution for your zoom level. As you pan or zoom in, Picsellia fetches the additional tiles needed on the fly, instead of loading the entire image at once.

This keeps navigation smooth and fast regardless of the total size of the original image, whether you're looking at the full picture or zoomed in on a small detail.

3. Activating Tiling

Tiling is not self-serve: it is activated on demand by the Picsellia team for the Data that need it, typically images above 20MB.