HyperImage continues as Yenda
From a pioneering image-oriented research environment to a modern platform for connected visual scholarship
HyperImage was developed from 2006 onward as an open-source virtual research environment for image-oriented scholarship. Its central idea was to make images themselves part of scholarly argumentation: researchers could identify complex regions within images, annotate them, connect them to other regions, images, texts and research objects, organise these relationships across a corpus and publish the resulting research.
HyperImage originated in the German e-Science programme and was subsequently used and developed in cooperation with universities, research institutions and cultural-heritage projects. Its research model was applied in digital art history, transcultural studies, natural-history research, multimodal communication and teaching.
As the technical foundations of the Java-based HyperImage environment aged, maintaining and deploying the software became increasingly difficult. Development of the HyperImage 3 branch therefore ended. The historical software, documentation, source releases and project record remain preserved on this website.
Yenda
The research model did not end with HyperImage.
Yenda is the browser-native, backwards-compatible successor to HyperImage. It preserves the established HyperImage concepts and existing research data while rebuilding the environment on a contemporary technical foundation.
Existing HyperImage projects remain authoritative and can continue in Yenda without migration-only preprocessing or a fresh start. The modern platform adds current browser workflows, improved search and navigation, modern account and collaboration infrastructure and ongoing work on interoperability with IIIF, W3C Web Annotation, FAIR-oriented research-data practices and authority data.
An earlier Yenda concept was already presented together with HyperImage in the context of the Hachiman Digital Handscrolls project in 2014/2015. The present Yenda implementation completes the transition to the modern successor platform.
Yenda is currently in beta. The public open-source release is planned for the end of 2026.
→ Visit yenda.eu
→ Current Yenda features and roadmap
→ Historical HyperImage projects
→ HyperImage publications and presentations