Do you ever have to assemble a number of images together to create derived images just so the derived images can be used to create more derived images, and then run out of disk space and patience? Tired of providing numeric control points to georeference an image to an elevation map, or having to run batch programs to warp images to a different projection?
Then the Agile Image Editor is for you. The image below displays the Main Window (upper right corner) and the Image Window (both other windows) of the Image Editor.
The Agile Image Editor
The Image Editor allows you to assemble, inspect, enhance, crop, scale, project, and register images quickly and efficiently. You can then save either the resulting image or a small description file of the processing needed to recreate the image. Using the Image Editor, you can edit this file, modify parameters, and add or remove operators. All the ImageVision® operators are available.
This description file is a compact representation of the final result and can be used wherever an ImageVision® image is required - as an input to ImageVision® tools and ImageVision® capable applications. Hence there is no need to store large intermediate files. The image represented by the description file may be enormous, but only the original inputs occupy significant file space, and only the portions that are required to recreate the needed portion of your image are processed.
Whenever possible, the Image Editor computes cpu-expensive information, such as image statistics, just once, and uses the results when the image is needed. For example, a histogram equalization computes the histogram once, then saves the resulting color lookup table for use when the processed image is needed.
Some images have attached information that references the image to its geographical location, like GeoTiff files or Digital Elevation Maps (DEM) from the USGS. Using visual control points, you can interactively register other images to ones with geographical information; for example, you may want to place a satellite photograph on top of an image of a topographical map or a DEM. When registering the satellite image to a DEM, you can view a 3D neighborhood about the current tie point as you drag the tie point. Once geographical references for images are known, the images can be assembled into a collage, or mapped in a variety of projections.
Hence you can take DEM's from the USGS, combine them into a single DEM, and project that into a Universal Transverse Mercator projection, merge three Landsat bands, enhance the result, and then create a texture mapped 3D representation for use by Open Inventor® or Performer® applications. If the terrain construction is done from ImageVision® images by the target application, no files other than the original source images and the small description files produced by the Image Editor are needed.
The description files can be used as images on any supported system since the support for making them appear as ImageVision® files is freely available. The Image Editor is not required.
