Full-cycle Testing of Two Image Processing Applications for a Global Digital Imaging Leader

Customer

The Customer is a European company with offices across the globe (the USA, Korea and Japan) that chose ScienceSoft as a long-term partner. The Customer offers products and expert solutions to enhance user experience in all aspects of digital imaging including processing, compression, storage, printing and display of digital images.

Challenge

Seeking to extend their product portfolio, the Customer was developing two innovative cross-platform (Windows and OS X) applications for image processing that were to offer advanced features and integrate seamlessly with third-party tools.

The first one had to work as both a standalone application and a plugin to be integrated with Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Aperture. The application had to offer visual tools for making optical corrections, resolving complex perspective problems and correcting volume deformation.

The other product was designed as a standalone application for preview and one-click import of photos and videos from the Customer’s branded compact camera to desktop. It was to be paired with other applications (Adobe Lightroom) and devices (the brand’s proprietary camera) as a plugin.

Ambitious integration tasks were not the only challenge the Customer faced. They also planned to introduce a User Forum to provide a comprehensive user support and resolve emerging issues in a timely manner.

Integration with other applications and comprehensive user support required thorough testing. The Customer turned to ScienceSoft to strengthen the project team with experienced testing specialists able to perform full-cycle testing and turn test cases into a comprehensive support solution.

Solution

Working within the Scrum framework with short iterations (2 weeks), the ScienceSoft testing specialists performed functional, localization and regression testing after each new feature was delivered. This included designing and running automated tests for functional and regression testing. The team developed about 100 test cases to be run in Scripting Qt, which accelerated finding bugs affecting the critical functions of the applications.

To ensure seamless integration with other image processing applications, the testing team ran the application plugins in Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Aperture subsequently. The plugins had to provide additional features, such as one-click adaptation of the perspective, and enable users to edit and save the changes without disrupting the work of the application. Any bugs discovered were reported to the developers and addressed in no time.

ScienceSoft’s testing team worked out an updatable collection of tests (50+) and checklists covering all the existing features of the applications. They also closely cooperated with the developers, so they could work out the checklists before any new feature was to be implemented.

The testing team linked all the bugs to test cases, the Customer’s requirements and tasks, which made it easier to identify an issue and explore interconnection between the introduced application features.

User Forum maintained by ScienceSoft’s testing team also served as a valuable source of ideas for testing. Testing team developed test cases on the basis of troubles reported by users and proposed improvements and change requests regarding the application functionality, which helped deliver adequate solutions swiftly.

Results

The project posed two major challenges: ensuring seamless integration between the Customer’s cross-platform desktop applications and third-party tools, and maintaining a User Forum serving as a valuable source for creating test cases based on user experience. Working with ScienceSoft’s testing professionals, the Customer was able to meet these challenges and to enrich its portfolio with two innovative products: a multilingual desktop application for the Customer’s branded portable camera and a multifunctional application for image processing. The project added up to a long history of extensive fruitful collaboration between ScienceSoft and the Customer.

Technologies and Tools

Microsoft Windows 7, Microsoft Windows 8, Microsoft Windows 10, OS X, Atlassian JIRA, Bamboo, Scripting Qt, SQLiteStudio, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom, Adobe Aperture.