Getting started with MobileEngine

Get started immediately with MobileEngine by following these steps:

1. Sign up for a MobileEngine subscription to get your API credentials, or use the free sandbox API credentials (note that with the sandbox, you won’t be able to add your own images to the reference database).
2. Add images to your reference collection using POST /rest/add. While you are adding images to your collection, you can organize them into folders, and associate additional metadata. You will still need to store the reference images in your own database, as MobileEngine will return the filepath of the match results, not the images themselves.
   1. To get the best performance from MobileEngine, your images must follow these requirements. Essentially, you need images that are:
      1. At least 600 pixels in their smallest dimension.
      2. Cropped tight to the comic that you want to identify, without padding or any background clutter. 
      3. Taken straight on with minimal skew.
      4. Taken with even lighting.  
3. Next, set up your user-facing interface, since MobileEngine does not come with one. Developers often ask for advice on creating the best user experience, so we have created these guidelines. 
4. You are ready to start searching with POST /rest/search. When you submit a query image, the match results will be ranked by their score. You should show the image with the highest score to your user; “low” scores do not mean that the image is a bad match, since many factors can affect the score. Using the image filepath, find the corresponding image file from your database, as well as any additional data you would like to display, and show it to your user as the match result.