Image Annotation in the Hypothesis LMS App

Who is this article for?

This article is for users of the Hypothesis LMS app who want to learn more about image annotation. If you are looking for information about Image Annotation for the Hypothesis web app, click here.

What is Image Annotation?

Image annotation lets Hypothesis users create area selections over documents and images when creating annotations. Image annotations allow users to create rectangular areas, or to create a pin, as a way of indicating the part of the document their annotation references. A thumbnail of the selection area (or the area around a pin) will appear on the annotation Card in the same place where the selected text for a text annotation typically appears.

Like text annotations, users can reply and link to image annotations.

Note: The initial release of the image annotation feature is limited to PDF documents only. Support for other document types will be added soon.

How to create an image annotation

1. Open your Hypothesis assignment.
2. In the Hypothesis sidebar, click the Rectangle or Pin buttons to activate image annotation.
   
   
   • The rectangle selection – allows a user to choose a rectangular area in the document to annotate.
     
   • The pin selection– allows a user to annotate a particular point in the document.
      
3. Select an area or a point in the document that you would like to annotate. This will open the text editor in the annotation card where you can write your annotation. You may also add a thumbnail description which will serve as alt text. For additional guidance on writing alt text, see our related article here.
   
   
   
   Note: If the selected area includes any selectable text, that text will be used as the alt-text for the image thumbnail in the annotation card if no thumbnail description was added.

   

    

4. Once you’ve added text to your annotation, click Post.

   

    

Viewing Image Annotations

Once your image annotation is posted, it will display your comment along with a preview of the annotated image area.

Image Annotation Created from the Rectangle Selection Tool

When you use the rectangle tool, the annotation card will show the selected area along with your annotation.

Image Annotation Created from the Pin Annotation Tool

When you use the pin tool, the annotation card will show a pin and a preview of the area around it, along with your annotation.

Image annotations are shown in the sidebar alongside text annotations. If the sidebar is set to sort annotations by location, the image and text annotations will be sorted following these rules:

• Annotations are grouped by the page they appear on.
• On each page:
  • Text annotations appear first.
  • Image annotations follow text annotations.
  • Multiple image annotations are ordered based on their position from top to bottom on the page (the highest appears first).

How can I use this feature?

Documents with little to no text

For assignments where you would like students to analyze the form and content of…

…consider having students identify and analyze…

Paintings and photographs

Areas and points describing interesting historical artifacts, composition techniques, or evidence of bias in art.

Architectural drawings

Design elements, such as symmetry, proportion, and texture, and analyzing their impact on the overall structure’s functionality and aesthetic appeal.

Musical scores

Identify patterns and structures, music theory elements, conducting and educational techniques, and discussing the composition’s mood or emotional resonance.

Maps

Cartographic representations of space, geographical features, and considering how these reflect cultural biases or historical context.

Graphs and other data visualizations

Patterns, trends, and relationships within the data, and evaluating how these are represented visually to convey meaning.

Documents with text

For assignments where you would like students to analyze the form and content of…

…consider having students identify and analyze…

Poetry and other artistic text

The placement of text and its impact on the reader, font choices, and other spatial and artistic decisions separate from the content of the text itself, and alongside text annotations of that content.

Handwritten and other historical documents

Handwriting styles, letterforms, and paper quality to understand their cultural context and significance. Create transcriptions of documents that can’t be OCRed and contribute to debate over that text and analysis of its contents.

Graphic novels, cartoons, and comics

Visual storytelling techniques (e.g., panel layout, character design), narrative structures, and pair this with annotations over text to discuss how text and image work together to convey meaning.

Posters, advertisements and infographics

Design elements (e.g., color scheme, typography) for their effectiveness in conveying information or persuading the viewer; or examining how these factors contribute to a particular message’s impact or memorability, while continuing to comment over the messaging the text in these images also conveys.

PDFs lacking digital text

The text present in these documents that is not ordinarily selectable (due to issues with the image, incompatibility with OCR software, etc.