uv-scripts/iiif-tiles

IIIF Static Tiles from HF Storage Buckets

Generate IIIF Image API 3.0 Level 0 static tiles from images and serve them via Hugging Face Storage Buckets — no image server required.

Drop images into a bucket, run one command, and get deep-zoom viewing in any IIIF viewer (Mirador, Universal Viewer, OpenSeadragon).

Demo

View in Mirador — 6 pages from the Wellcome Collection, served entirely from an HF Storage Bucket.

How it works

Source images (bucket or local)
  → tile_iiif.py (pyvips generates tile pyramid)
    → Output bucket (static files served via HF CDN)
      → Any IIIF viewer (deep zoom, pan, browse)

The script generates a complete IIIF Level 0 tile set: a directory tree of pre-rendered JPEG tiles at multiple zoom levels, plus info.json descriptors and a IIIF Presentation v3 manifest.json. Since everything is static files, any CDN or file server works — no dynamic image server needed.

In bucket-to-bucket mode, images are streamed through in small batches (download → tile → upload → cleanup) so local storage stays minimal regardless of collection size.

Quick start

# Bucket to bucket (recommended for large collections)
uv run tile_iiif.py \
    --source-bucket myorg/source-images \
    --output-bucket myorg/iiif-tiles

# From a local directory → HF Bucket
uv run tile_iiif.py \
    --source-dir ./my-scans \
    --output-bucket myorg/iiif-tiles \
    --collection-name "My Collection"

# Local only (for testing)
uv run tile_iiif.py \
    --source-dir ./my-scans \
    --output-dir ./tiles
# Then: cd tiles && python -m http.server

No system dependencies — pyvips[binary] bundles libvips in the pip wheel.

Run on HF Jobs

Process large collections without tying up your machine:

hf jobs uv run tile_iiif.py \
    --source-bucket myorg/source-images \
    --output-bucket myorg/iiif-tiles \
    --collection-name "Historic Manuscripts"

View the results

Once tiles are in a bucket, open the manifest in any IIIF viewer:

• Mirador: https://projectmirador.org/embed/?iiif-content=https://huggingface.co/buckets/myorg/iiif-tiles/resolve/manifest.json
• Universal Viewer: https://uv-v4.netlify.app/#?manifest=https://huggingface.co/buckets/myorg/iiif-tiles/resolve/manifest.json

Options

Flag	Default	Description
--source-bucket	—	HF bucket with source images (e.g., org/source)
--source-dir	—	Local directory with source images
--output-bucket	—	HF bucket for tiles (e.g., org/tiles)
--output-dir	—	Local directory for tiles
--tile-size	512	Tile size in pixels
--base-url	auto	Base URL for IIIF ids
--collection-name	"IIIF Collection"	Label for the manifest
--workers	3	Concurrent workers for bucket-to-bucket mode

Supported image formats: JPEG, TIFF, PNG, WebP.

Performance

Bucket-to-bucket with 6 images (2411x3372 each), generating 54 tiles per image:

Workers	Time	Local storage
1	14.3s	~10MB (1 image + tiles)
3	6.7s	~30MB (3 images + tiles)

Per image: ~0.6s download, ~0.2s tile, ~1.4s upload. The bottleneck is upload I/O, so concurrent workers overlap network time effectively.

What is IIIF Level 0?

IIIF (International Image Interoperability Framework) is a set of APIs for serving and annotating images, widely used by libraries, archives, and museums. Level 0 means all tiles are pre-generated static files — no dynamic image server needed. Viewers request tiles that already exist on disk (or in a bucket).

This covers the primary use case: deep-zoom viewing of high-resolution scans. What you don't get (vs. a full IIIF server) is arbitrary cropping, rotation, or format conversion on the fly — but for browsing collections, Level 0 is all you need.

Why HF Storage Buckets?

• Free hosting for public buckets
• Global CDN with signed URLs
• CORS support for browser-based IIIF viewers
• No infrastructure to maintain — just static files
• Streaming processing — handles large collections without landing everything locally