The Field Guide

Hexagon merges ERDAS into Intergraph

2012-01-23T10:27:00.002-05:00

There seems to be a little confusion in the market-place concerning Intergraph and ERDAS. At the end of July 2011, Hexagon merged ERDAS into Intergraph. All ERDAS employees, products and services are now Intergraph Employees developing new products based on ERDAS products, as well as supporting ERDAS customers using those products.

Customers of ERDAS products will continue to communicate with ERDAS employees and use erdas.com. The transition should be transparent to customers, as legal and back-office changes have formed the majority of the changes.

You will still find Brad Skelton, Ian Anderson, Jeff Dooley, Mladen Stojic, myself, and many more Erdasians in the Norcross (metro Atlanta) office. You will find Laura Ramage, Michelle and Joe Mostowy, Andy Garratt, Dean McCormick, Mike Lane, and many other Erdasians scattered around the globe. As well, some of the old-time ER Mapper employees are still around, such as Mark Sheridan, Chris Ribble, and more. You will find Ionic employees such as Niko Vanraes, Dimitri Monie, and others still hard at work as well.

In my opinion, the change can be considered somewhat like Coca-Cola purchasing Dr. Pepper... there was no change in the wildly successful Dr. Pepper formula.

Where will this fusion take us, while I cannot say exactly what is happening on my blog, I can say that my earlier post of "Hexagon 2011; the razing of the wall" and what we started with in ERDAS IMAGINE 2011, V11.0.4 should be strong clues.

ERDAS Desktop 2011, Version 11.0.4 Released

2012-01-03T12:02:00.000-05:00

Intergraph has released ERDAS Desktop 2011, Version 11.0.4. The new version is available for download from the ERDAS IMAGINE, ERDAS ER Mapper and LPS product download webpages.

This is more than a maintenance release. There are enhancements, as well as Intergraph has added new capabilities to strengthen the ties between the GeoMedia and ERDAS Desktop products. Expect more announcements by Intergraph later this year (2012) of tighter integration between the GeoMedia and ERDAS Desktop product lines.

The ERDAS Desktop 11.0.4 Version Description is located here: http://www.erdas.com/service/support/fixes_enhancements/ERDASIMAGINE2011.aspx

Until more announcements are made, please refer to Field Guide posts: http://field-guide.blogspot.com/2011/05/erdas-imagine-and-geomedia-where-are.html http://field-guide.blogspot.com/2011/06/hexagon-2011-razing-of-wall.html

ERDAS 2011 ECW Plug-in for ArcGIS Desktop, Version 11.1 Released

2011-12-12T11:09:00.004-05:00

The latest product based on the ERDAS ECW/JP2 SDK has been released. It can be found on the ECW Plug-in Download page, http://erdas.com/products/ecw/ECWPlugins/Downloads.aspx.

The free plug-in enables high performance display and opacity support for ECW data within ArcGIS Desktop. This version of the plug-in adds supports discovery, access and visualization of data via WMS or ECWP from ERDAS APOLLO Essentials – Image Web Server or ERDAS APOLLO Advantage within ArcGIS Desktop.

Algorithm support allows the user to perform image processing while streaming from the ERDAS APOLLO suite into ArcGIS Desktop.

LightSquared and GPS still in the news

2011-10-06T13:32:00.009-04:00

Sanjiv Ahuja talked to C-SPAN on September 29, 2011 about LightSquared's work to build a $14 billion high-speed wireless network across the US, interfering with precision GPS use. It will be satellite based and will improve networking capacity across the USA, yet the network will interfere with some of the spectrum used by global positioning system (GPS) equipment.

LightSquared obtained the spectrum from their predecessor companies purchases, who purchased the spectrum decades ago. American Mobile Satellite Corporation, Mobile Satellite Ventures, and Skyterra preceded LightSquared.

I believe you can skip the first 5:29 to hear Sanjiv talk about the GPS conflict. Mr Ahuja has been well coached in presenting his case and staying on message. (I do not use the term 'coached' in a negative way. I believe all CEOs of large companies should be coached.)

Sanjiv is selling how LightSquared will help people, how LightSquared is the underdog, how LightSquared will bring new jobs, how LightSquared will save people money, how LightSquared will help the students. He even discusses how LightSquared will help the video gaming industry. Sounds like a political campaign strategy, get as many people to connect with your piont of view as possible. :)

Cecilia Kang (Washington Post, Technology Policy Reporter) starts QA at 13:30. She does a pretty good job. She asks him to discuss claims of competitors linking up with political powers to stop LightSquared starting at 47:00.

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/301812-1/
http://www.saveourgps.org/
Additional Field Guide Post:
http://field-guide.blogspot.com/2011/04/potential-gps-signal-reception-problems.html

ECW for ArcGIS Server, Version 11.0.2, released

2011-09-28T15:28:00.004-04:00

Here is the latest from marketing on one product I manage:

ERDAS Releases ECW for ArcGIS Server, Version 11.0.2
September 28, 2011

Norcross, GA, USA — ERDAS proudly announces the release of ECW for ArcGIS Server, version 11.0.2. This product provides a means for ArcGIS Server to deliver data in the ERDAS-patented Enhanced Compression Wavelet (ECW) format to clients via OGC-compliant Web Coverage Service (WCS) and Web Map Service (WMS).

Based on technology originally provided in ERDAS ECW/JP2 SDK version 4.2, ECW for ArcGIS Server enables ArcGIS Server to support ECW imagery, providing the fastest decompression available. Using minimal memory, ECW can quickly decompress and open massive files, in many cases faster than uncompressed imagery can be opened. Additionally, multi-resolution level of detail is built into the file, eliminating the need to generate or distribute pyramids or overviews. The ECW technique does not require the creation and storage of intermediate tiles (RRDs), as they are an inherent part of the ECW format. ECW also supports opacity channels, allowing images to overlay other imagery cleanly without showing compression artifacts around the edges.

Initially introduced in April 2011, ECW for ArcGIS Server was greeted enthusiastically by the market, prompting this new release which extends the original capabilities. A key enhancement in ECW for ArcGIS Server version 11.0.2 is backward compatibility with ArcGIS Server 9.3 and 9.3.1 in addition to the previously supported ArcGIS Server 10. ECW for ArcGIS Server version 11.0.2 also supports the use of European Petroleum Survey Group (EPSG) codes in ECWP.

ECW for ArcGIS Server expands the industry-wide level of support for the ECW format. ECW is already supported in traditional desktop GIS, CAD and remote sensing packages, including ERDAS’ portfolio of products, as well as Intergraph’s GeoMedia®. In addition, ECW is also supported in ArcGIS® for Desktop, AutoCAD®, Blue Marble Desktop®, ENVI®, Geomatica®, LizardTech®, GeoExpress®, FalconView™, Global Mapper, MapInfo®, Manifold® System, MicroStation®, and Smallworld™.

“ERDAS created ECW for ArcGIS Server in response to overwhelming user demand. For any geospatial organization requiring an accelerated workflow and reduction of hardware costs, ECW is the compression format of choice,” said Paul Beaty, Technical Product Manager, ERDAS. “Its popularity stems from the fact that it doesn’t merely compress files; it simplifies their handling by making them faster to decompress and transfer. ERDAS is committed to providing rapid geospatial data delivery for organizations using any software platform."

ECW Page
ECW for ARcGIS Server Page
ECW for ArcGIS Server Movie

ECW for ArcGIS Server soon to add support for 9.3 and 9.3.1

2011-09-08T12:40:00.001-04:00

Within the next few weeks, ERDAS will release an update to ECW for ArcGIS Server. The new version will add support for ArcGIS Server 9.3, and 9.3.1 to the present support for ArcGIS Server 10. The initial product offering has been very well received and customer demand for support of 9.3 and 9.3.1 will soon be addressed. Keep a watchful eye for the official announcement.

The True Storage Cost of Uncompressed Imagery

2011-08-11T17:26:00.006-04:00

In the past, we have used 0-level (full resolution) image data and compared its file size to compressed files to determine disk space savings. This approach works when comparing uncompressed data to JPEG, LZW and other non-wavelet compressed images. This approach does not work when comparing 0-level image data to wavelet compression (e.g. ECW) formats.

To get display performance from your large images, reduced resolution datasets (i.e. RRDs, OVR, subsample images, pyramid layers) must be pre-calculated and stored with the 0-level data. There are several RRD storage methods, but the most popular is a progressive 4x reduction from the 0-level data down through each RRD layer. The 4x reduction scheme will deliver RRDs adding 33% to the overall disk storage requirement.

Wavelet based formats natively contain a full suite of internal RRDs within its file structure. The correct way to compare disk space savings between non-wavelet image formats and wavelet formats is to compare the non-wavelet image plus its required RRDs to the wavelet data.

Take 750GB of imagery and add 33% for its needed RRDs (assuming using a 4x scheme). The disk space needed for performance and daily use is 998GB. That’s a lot of space.

If I achieve a 25:1 ECW compression, my ECW file is 4% of the size of the 0-level data, and 3% of the total disk space needed (0-level image plus RRDs). Thus, the 750GB of image data occupying 998GB of disk space shrank down to 30GB.

If I achieve a 15:1 ECW compression, my ECW file is 6.7% of the size of the 0-level data, and 5% of the total disk space needed.

That's a lot of disk space recovered.

ERDAS ECW/JP2 SDK for Linux

2011-07-26T17:20:00.003-04:00

The long awaited port of ERDAS ECW/JP2 SDK to Linux is well underway. Indeed, we expect the Perth, Western Australia development team to reach the performance tuning stage of the port in the next few months. The Linux ECW SDK port must be tuned-up to match the Ferrari-like performance our customers expect and have on the Windows platforms. If we did not tune it up, it would not be an ECW SDK.

ERDAS will use the Linux ECW SDK internally in ERDAS 2012 server products. Once the ERDAS 2012 Linux products are ready to release, commercialization work (preparing for public release) on the Linux ECW SDK will begin. I cannot provide the time-frame for availability at this time.

Please expect more information on the Linux version of ERDAS ECW/JP2 SDK before the northern hemisphere winter solstice.

Which image file formats do you use in your geospatial work?

2011-07-11T14:24:00.006-04:00

Over a year ago I put out a poll on this blog to measure what image file format people who frequent this blog use. At that time, I put the following in the poll: GeoTIFF, IMG, ECW, MrSID, JPEG, NITF, TIFF World and JPEG2000. These are the order in which the poll defined their popularity.

For this poll I combined TIFF World and GeoTIFF together and added PNG. I have noticed a dramatic down-tick in NITF votes. I believe this is likely to defense people not frequenting my blog as much as others more than what are really in the marketplace. Or, it could be the defense people voting against NITF as it is cumbersome and they want issues in the format addressed. Or... something else?

PNG is use in mobile devices and has a very solid showing.

JPEG2000 popularity has improved. You might think that JPEG2000 would hurt the ECW and MrSID formats, but the image format hurt appears to be IMG.

I did not post the final percentages from the last poll, but have posted the 2011 poll here.

ERDAS Desktop 2011 Version 11.0.3 is Available

2011-07-06T16:56:00.011-04:00

ERDAS has released ERDAS Desktop 2011 Version 11.0.3. This version is available to customers with current desktop software maintenance (SWM) and contains all issues from 11.0.1 and 11.0.2. There are quite a few customer requested enhancements as well as customer reported bugs addressed in this version.

A very brief list of what ERDAS IMAGINE customers can now expect:
Use Spectral Angle Mapper and Spectral Correlation Mapper classifiers in Supervised Classification
Distribute MosaicPro image tile creation to internal Cores or to external CPUs on their network
Rescale data from 16-bit down to 8-bit in MosaicPro and in LPS ortho processes
Expect higher performance from the Mosaicpro Preview
Improved performance on MosaicPro histogram matching
And more…

There are LPS and ERDAS ER Mapper issues addressed in Version 11.0.3 as well.

This version does not include any server enhancements and fixes. (Hence the use of the word Desktop).

See for yourself at http://www.erdas.com/service/support/fixes_enhancements/ERDASIMAGINE2011.aspx

After looking at what is in Version 11.0.3, if you want the version, you must log-in with your current SWM account to download the version. If you have current SWM, go here and log-in:

http://www.erdas.com/service/support/fixes_enhancements/details/ERDAS_Desktop_2011_Version_11_0_3.aspx

ECW Plugin for ArcGIS Desktop Available

2011-06-28T16:22:00.007-04:00

The latest release of the free ECW Plugin for ArcGIS Desktop is now available on the ECW Plugin Download site, http://www.erdas.com/products/ECWPlugins/Downloads.aspx.

The ECW Plugin for ArcGIS Desktop 2011 is built with the ERDAS ECW/JP2 Desktop SDK version 4.2 and offers many advantages over the previous versions of ECW Plugin for ArcGIS that were built with the ERDAS ECW/JP2 SDK 3.x. These advantages are increased performance, additional capabilities and numerous fixes.

ECW Plugin for ArcGIS Desktop 2011:

Is compatible with ArcGIS Desktop 9.3, and 9.3.1 SP1 or higher, and ArcGIS Desktop 10 SP1 or higher
Decodes local ECW and JP2 data faster and more efficiently
Has a wider projection system support for ECW and JP2 than earlier plugin versions and native ArcGIS ECW support
Supports GML in JP2 data
Streams ECW and JP2 data via ECWP from ERDAS APOLLO Essentials IWS or ERDAS APOLLO Advantage
Uses dynamic progressive rendering of ECWP layers
Provides opacity channel support, not available in native ArcGIS ECW support
Provides a configurable persistent local disk cache of ECWP blocks
Provides an ECWP selection capability for discovery of ECWP streams on an ERDAS APOLLO Essentials IWS 2010 and 2011
Is compatible with foreign language versions of Windows (GUI not localized)
Re-projects ECWP streams on-the-fly
Supports multi-band ECWP streams
Supports 16-bit ECWP streams using min-max calculation
Improved printing support for large scale ECWP plots (tested up to A0)

ECW for ArcGIS Desktop will not:

Encode (compress) any data
Enable ArcGIS Desktop to serve ECW or JP2 data
Query the ERDAS APOLLO Advantage Catalog
Read ERDAS ER Mapper ALG or ERS files

ERDAS Press Relase: http://erdas.com/company/news/newsreleases/11-06-28/ERDAS_Extends_ArcGIS_Support_with_New_Version_of_ECW_Plug-in.aspx

Blog Post on Release of ECW for ArcGIS Server product

Hexagon 2011 CEO Keynote: Turning The Pace of Change into the World's Advantage

2011-06-23T10:42:00.004-04:00

Here is the complete version of Ola Rollén's opening session keynote address from Hexagon 2011. It is 51.42 minutes long.

http://www.hexagonmetrology.us/news-and-events/talking-points-blog/entry/hexagon-2011-ceo-keynote-turning-the-pace-of-change-into-the-worlds-advantage

For you ERDASians.... rememeber ERDAS was transfered from Leica Geosystems to Intergraph SGI in a technology swap. Intergraph Security, Government & Infrastructure (SG&I) received software (ERDAS) and Leica Geosystems received sensors (DMC). When Ola mentions Intergraph SG&I, he means Intergraph and ERDAS technologies together.

Frank Warmerdam (Mr GDAL) Joining Google

2011-06-21T18:58:00.007-04:00

Mr. GDAL himself is joining Google in Mountain View, California. See: http://fwarmerdam.blogspot.com/2011/06/joining-google.html.

Google is likely to allow Frank to remain active in GDAL/OGR and in OSGeo (on the board and other committees) while in their employment. So, it looks like GDAL will still be mentored by Mr GDAL (some Google time or Frank's personal time), which is good news indeed.

Read Frank's blog for detailed information.

Also, Frank worked quite a bit over the last 6-months to solidify IMG and ECW support in GDAL. In the past some applications using GDAL created some non-standard IMG and AUX files, and most of these issues have been corrected in GDAL. Now it is up to the applications to make their corrections.

The ECW in GDAL work added support for ERDAS ECW/JP2 SDK 4.1 and 4.2 and added further control to end-users.

Joel Campbell GIS Cafe Interview at Hexagon 2011

2011-06-17T08:18:00.033-04:00

Did you miss Hexagon 2011? Make sure you plan on Hexagon 2012 June 4 - 7 in Las Vegas, NV, USA!

Here are some links to help you get an idea of what happened at Hexagon 2011 in Orlando.

GISCafe posted and interview with Joel Campbell, ERDAS' President, and Sanjay at Hexagon 2011. As a post conference note, in my opinion, ERDAS received a boost from meeting ERDAS customers, distributors and partners. Also, the interest in ERDAS technology from all the other Hexagon companies was also tremendous.

http://www10.giscafe.com/video/ERDAS-Joel-Campbell-President/35179/media.html

Watch Joel's interview read the other links on "The Field Guide" concerning Hexagon 2011, what is coming with the ERDAS - Intergraph synergy effort, and what is coming in ERDAS 2012 when I return from vacation.

Mladen Stojic discusses the synergy efforts and the new development projects ERDAS is currently working on, and showed at Hexagon 2011: http://www10.giscafe.com/video/ERDAS-Mladen-Stojic/35210/media.html

Ryan Hughes of Skygone has some interesting thoughts on how he believes Hexagon should approach addressing the software product (ERDAS-Intergraph) synergy effort in this article: http://cloudcomputing.sys-con.com/node/1860109%20. His interview at Hexagon 2011 is found here: http://www10.giscafe.com/video/Skygone-Ryan-Hugheshttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif-COO/35180/media.html.

Other Hexagon 2011 links:

Movie showing ERDAS IMAGINE Live Link with GeoMedia narrated by Paul.

3D the Way Forward for GIS Industry

The Future of Spatial Analysis Through Intergraph and ERDAS

Hexagon 2011 international Conference Attracts 2,500+ Attendees From 65 Countries

Hexagon 2011 Kicks Off with Game-Changing Vision for the Future

Field Report: Hexagon 2011 International Conference

Hexagon 2011 Facebook Page: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.206253446083641.50370.169045849804401&l=de2f88525b

Hexagon 2011; the razing of the wall

2011-06-08T22:22:00.008-04:00

The ERDAS portion of the Hexagon conference began on June 5, 2011 with customer training and ERDAS Ignite 2011. I arrived Sunday evening the 5th and on Monday morning attended the ERDAS International Distributors Meeting. In this meeting, ERDAS outlined what we are developing for the 2012 release, due in the next service packs and the development synergies we are working on with Intergraph GeoMedia and ERDAS IMAGINE. Our distribution partners are as excited as ERDAS employees about where ERDAS is going, and that ERDAS is aggressive in our plans and execution strategies.

As for me, I may be more excited about a different theme than others. Yes, the new modeling environment is exciting. Yes, the viewing environment moving to a more advanced form of the ER Mapper dynamic processing viewer is powerful. Yes, faster data processing is always enticing. And yes, LiDAR is needed by the mapping market and I love we are moving to deliver solutions there. And yes, Hexagon renting out Universal Studios, including Harry Potter World, for all conference attendees Tuesday evening was great too!

But, the theme of my excitement dates back to conversations I had with the ERDAS management in 1991 and have continued until today; saying ERDAS should be the one to tear down the wall between raster (remote sensing and raster GIS) and vector; by putting a powerful vector processing and database capabilities into ERDAS IMAGINE.

I have long believed this artificial segregation of data formats and processing techniques hurt the greater geospatial community, and ERDAS should raze the wall. Other than a purely academic or research exercise; remote sensing without significant vector capabilities limits what the customer can accomplish. Soon, for the first time ERDAS will have an arsenal of vector processing capabilities and significant database access.

The restrictions are being removed, the raster/vector barrier will be removed at the dawn of the point cloud data processing era. This time next year, you will see a very different ERDAS IMAGINE product. A product that makes the best remote sensing product in the world better, faster, uses dynamic processing, has new photogrammetry tools, new LiDAR tools, has many vector and database tools, and offers more than these to the GIS world.

This is not a token move, this is real. This is the path customers have asked ERDAS to take for 30 years; tearing down the raster – vector wall. The wall will be down before the Hexagon 2012 meeting.

Thank you Mladen Stojic, Joel Campbell, John Graham, Jürgen Dold, and Ola Rollén for giving the GIS community what they have long requested.

ESRI Adding for ECWP in ArcGIS 10

2011-05-26T18:42:00.008-04:00

When ESRI released ArcGIS 10, they added support for reading ECW files from the free ERDAS ECW/JP2 SDK, v3.3. Now ESRI is working on support for the ECW Protocol for streaming ECW and JP2 data from an ERDAS APOLLO IWS server into ArcGIS products. This link provides information from ESRI’s support site concerning the matter. It is great to see ESRI support ECWP!

ERDAS continues development of our latest version of the ECW Plugin for ArcGIS. We expect to deliver the product to the market soon. I will give more detailed information on the ArcGIS Plugin around the time of the Hexagon 2011 Conference. ERDAS' goal is to add support for these capabilities to this version of the plugin:

ArcGIS 9.3.1, 9.3.1 SP2, and 10.0

New dynamic progressive rendering of ECWP layers

ECWP local caching (persistent and configurable)

Opacity channels

Faster progressive display

Support for foreign language versions of Windows (GUI not localized)

Re-projection of the ECWP streams on-the-fly

ERDAS is working with Autodesk on a new ECW Plugin for AutoCAD 2010/2011 as well. I will provide more information on that topic after Autodesk and ERDAS work through some bumps in the road.

For more in ECW support in ArcGIS 10, see: http://field-guide.blogspot.com/2011/05/esri-adding-for-ecwp-in-arcgis.html

Virtual Mosaics using images from multiple directories

2011-05-12T09:28:00.001-04:00

Many ERDAS IMAGINE customers think of Virtual Mosaic as a Viewer capability. ERDAS added ‘Virtual Mosaic’, along with ‘Virtual Layer Stack’ and ‘Virtual Independent Files’ into ERDAS IMAGINE 8.6, which was released in 2002.

The .vmc file is created using the Multiple option when multi-selecting images in the File Chooser, for most any process (Multiple tab pops up on the file chooser when shift-selecting images). Because the File Chooser does not support the ability to select across multiple directories at the same time, a .vmc file containing files from multiple different folders cannot be created with the file chooser.

Because the .vmc is a ASCII text file, the customer can easily create a file containing images from a multiplicity of file folders.

Below is an example of a .vmc file containing MrSID images from multiple different folders. Started the creation with windows command as follows: dir *.sid /b /s > glenville_virtual-mosaic.vmc. I then had to do some editing of the file to make sure the slashes ‘/’ were in the right direction, add VMC at the topeof the file and so forth…..

This is what glenville_virtual-mosaic.vmc looked like when I was finished with my text-smithing.

VMC
//atlbck1/data/georgia/georgia-99doqq-mrsid/g_quads/glennville/glennville_ne.sid
//atlbck1/data/georgia/georgia-99doqq-mrsid/g_quads/glennville/glennville_nw.sid
//atlbck1/data/georgia/georgia-99doqq-mrsid/g_quads/glennville/glennville_se.sid
//atlbck1/data/georgia/georgia-99doqq-mrsid/g_quads/glennville/glennville_sw.sid
//atlbck1/data/georgia/georgia-99doqq-mrsid/g_quads/glennville_ne/glennville_ne_ne.sid
//atlbck1/data/georgia/georgia-99doqq-mrsid/g_quads/glennville_ne/glennville_ne_nw.sid
//atlbck1/data/georgia/georgia-99doqq-mrsid/g_quads/glennville_ne/glennville_ne_se.sid
//atlbck1/data/georgia/georgia-99doqq-mrsid/g_quads/glennville_ne/glennville_ne_sw.sid
//atlbck1/data/georgia/georgia-99doqq-mrsid/g_quads/glennville_se/glennville_se_ne.sid
//atlbck1/data/georgia/georgia-99doqq-mrsid/g_quads/glennville_se/glennville_se_nw.sid
//atlbck1/data/georgia/georgia-99doqq-mrsid/g_quads/glennville_se/glennville_se_se.sid
//atlbck1/data/georgia/georgia-99doqq-mrsid/g_quads/glennville_se/glennville_se_sw.sid
//atlbck1/data/georgia/georgia-99doqq-mrsid/g_quads/glennville_sw/glennville_sw_ne.sid
//atlbck1/data/georgia/georgia-99doqq-mrsid/g_quads/glennville_sw/glennville_sw_nw.sid
//atlbck1/data/georgia/georgia-99doqq-mrsid/g_quads/glennville_sw/glennville_sw_se.sid
//atlbck1/data/georgia/georgia-99doqq-mrsid/g_quads/glennville_sw/glennville_sw_sw.sid

ERDAS IMAGINE and GeoMedia, where are they going?

2011-05-02T15:41:00.005-04:00

Over the last few months people have asked me what is going to happen with ERDAS IMAGINE and Intergraph's GeoMedia, two leading geospatial products under one roof. Ola Rollѐn sat down with Joe Francica this past January and at the end of the interview discussed this very point.

Basically Ola says, both products have been around a long time and have their own audiences and customers. He states Hexagon must be respectful of the two markets the products are serving. Longer-term, the GeoMedia and ERDAS IMAGINE products need to be able to speak and communicate one to another.

Here is the Joe Francica / Ola Rollѐn interview.

As the GIS market grows, there is a lot of room for growth for the old pioneers and the new arrivals. This because, the GIS pie is still growing. I believe the market is about positioned for a very big surge in growth. GIS companies can fight over the same piece of the pie, or companies can position themselves by improving and innovating, and grow as the whole GIS market pie grows.

News Release: ERDAS Releases New Product, ECW for ArcGIS Server

2011-04-11T09:19:00.006-04:00

The following news has just been distributed to the press....

ERDAS Releases New Product, ECW for ArcGIS Server Norcross, GA — ERDAS proudly announces the introduction of the all-new ECW for ArcGIS Server, which provides a means for ArcGIS Server 10 to deliver Enhanced Compression Wavelet (ECW) data to clients via OGC-compliant Web Coverage Service (WCS) and Web Map Service (WMS).

Using components of the ERDAS ECW/JP2 SDK version 4.2, ECW for ArcGIS Server enables ArcGIS Server to support ECW imagery, providing the fastest decompression available. Using minimal memory, ECW can quickly decompress and open massive files, in many cases faster than uncompressed imagery can be opened. Additionally, multi-resolution level of detail is built into the file, eliminating the need to generate or distribute pyramids or overviews. The ECW technique does not require that immediate tiles (RRDs) be calculated and stored on disk; they are an inherent part of ECW’s Discrete Wavelet Transformations (DWT). ECW also supports opacity channels, allowing images to overlay other imagery cleanly without showing compression artifacts around the edges.

The ERDAS ECW/JP2 SDK technology was developed by ER Mapper Ltd beginning in 1998 and is governed by three patents (US6201897, US6442298, and US6633688).

ECW for ArcGIS Server may be installed on a single ArcGIS Server, with or without other ERDAS software installed. However, ECW for ArcGIS Server does require a FlexNet license file from ERDAS.

This new product expands the industry-wide level of support for the ECW format. ECW is already supported in traditional desktop GIS, CAD and remote sensing packages such as ArcGIS®, AutoCAD®, ERDAS IMAGINE®, ERDAS ER Mapper, FalconView™, Bentley Microstation®, ENVI® and PCI Geomatica®.

"ERDAS created ECW for ArcGIS Server in response to overwhelming user demand. For any geospatial organization requiring an accelerated workflow and reduction of hardware costs, ECW is the compression format of choice," said Paul Beaty, Technical Product Manager, ERDAS. "Its popularity stems from the fact that it doesn’t merely compress files; it simplifies their handling by making them faster to decompress and transfer. ERDAS is committed to providing rapid geospatial data delivery for organizations using any software platform."

To learn more about ECW for ArcGIS Server, please visit the official product page or attend a free webinar on Wednesday, April 13, 2011 at 11 am or 7 pm (GMT -4).

For more information about ERDAS or its products and services, please call +1 770 776 3400, toll free +1 877 GO ERDAS, or visit http://www.erdas.com/.

This means the two articles 32824 and 36261 posted on ESRI's Support website concerning ECW in ArcGIS Server 10 are now out-of-date. Just get ECW for ArcGIS Server from ERDAS, and you are off to the races.

Potential GPS signal reception problems

2011-04-07T12:24:00.005-04:00

Some believe a serious threat to the reliability and viability of the Global Positioning System (GPS) has risen.

LightSquared, has been granted a conditional waiver by the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) to build 40,000 ground stations in the US that may cause widespread interference to GPS signals; endangering a national utility which millions of Americans rely on every day.

LightSquared plans to transmit ground-based radio signals that are said to be one billion or more times more powerful as received on earth than GPS's low-powered satellite-based signals. This potentially may cause significant interference impacting millions of GPS receivers.

I have not determined if there is a competitive company trying to block/slow-down LightSquared, or if this is a real threat. Notwithstanding, I thought you may wish to visit http://www.saveourgps.org/ and start your own research into the matter.

Related Field Guide Post: http://field-guide.blogspot.com/2011/10/lightsquared-and-gps-still-in-news.html

ERDAS is about to introduce a new product.....

2011-03-30T17:09:00.008-04:00

Please allow me to confirm the rumor....

ERDAS will soon announce a new product, ‘ECW for ArcGIS Server.’

ECW for ArcGIS Server will provide the licenses and tools needed to decode ECW data to an ArcGIS Server client via ArcGIS Server using WMS / WCS. ECW for ArcGIS Server will support the ECW opacity layer introduced in the ERDAS ECW/JP2 SDK 4.1 in 2010.

ECW for ArcGIS Server is built using ERDAS ECW/JP2 SDK 4.2 and is designed to assist the ArcGIS user community in using the most powerful geospatial image format available today. ECW for ArcGIS Server will offer Software Maintenance (SWM) and will have regular upgrades just as does other ERDAS products.

Where does ECW for ArcGIS Server fit into the ERDAS portfolio? Think of ECW for ArcGIS Server as an ArcGIS Server Extension. ECW for ArcGIS Server is not a replacement product, but a new product.

Keep an eye open for an ERDAS press release announcing ECW for ArcGIS Server soon. With the press release, ERDAS will launch a product web-page containing a product description, systems specifications, ArcGIS Server versions supported and more.

This product will only be available from ERDAS’ global sales network.

Q/A From Today's ECW/JP2 SDK Webinar

2011-03-22T17:00:00.007-04:00

Below are the questions and answers that we covered in today's ERDAS ECW/JP2 SDK Webinar.

Q1: Compression is always followed by the loss of detail information, right? How does ECW handle that? Which compression rates are useful?

A1: ECW does not support numerically lossless compression at this time. However, if you use a target compression of 4 to 6:1 on RGB data, you should have a visually lossless image at a 2x zoom. See my blog for more information: http://field-guide.blogspot.com/2010/07/understanding-target-compression-ratio.html

Q2: Would you recommend ECW over JP2?

A2: I would recommend ECW over JP2 for all applications where an 8-bit lossy compression works. In the GIS community, a visually lossless setting is usually fine. We did a test when I was at Georgia Tech to see what compression was needed for the majority of users using a statewide dataset. The results are documented on my blog, linked above.

But remember, the ERDAS ECW/JP2 SDK supports JP2 very solidly! Any product using the SDK will have fast JP2 support and even faster ECW support.

Q3: It seems ECW cannot be used on ArcGIS Server and image server, any comment?

A3: ERDAS will release a new product, ECW for ArcGIS Server, spring 2011 to address this very issue. Look for it!

Q4: For aerial photos and orthophotos, which is better for delivering products without losing resolution and data, ECW or JP2?

A4: Pixel resolution is never lost in compression. The first thing you’ll notice in compression is very minor loss of contrast. As you compress further, a little more contrast is lost, and in heavier compression artifacts appear around road lines, edges and other linear features on aerial imagery. The question to ask is, “Do I need visually lossless or numerical lossless compression?” In most GIS applications, visually lossless compression works very well. In some (but not all) remote sensing applications, numerically lossless compression is needed.

The reason data vendors deliver numerically lossless data is that the data provider does not know if you are a GIS user doing imagery analysis or an image expert doing detailed remote sensing. They deliver one version to all, numerically lossless JP2. No problem, the ECW/JP2 SDK supports this!

Q5: Does a standard/report exist for the compression rates for several products (vector map production, base ortho maps, etc.)?

A5: I wish I knew of one, but I do not. This is an area for cartographers and remote sensing researchers to look for research grants. We need a standard.

Q6: How much faster can ERDAS ECW/JP2 SDK make image compression?

A6: I tested and documented this on my blog. Some SDK customers say their applications using v4.2 ECW encode 7x faster than it did in v3.3. Our research indicates most applications will experience greater than 2 x improvements over v3.3. But, JP2 is faster in v4.2 as well. Please see the following link for some tests I ran: http://field-guide.blogspot.com/2010/04/single-core-vs-multi-core-image.html

Q7: What can I provide a customer if he cannot read the ECW format - can I offer him a simple/free ECW reader/decoder?

A7: Many GIS applications can read ECW. ERDAS has a free viewer, ER Viewer that can be used as well. See: http://www.erdas.com/products/ERDASERMapper/ERDASERViewer/Details.aspx

Q8: At times, ECW cannot be opened directly in ArcGIS 10. Any suggestions about how to do that?

A8: There are two possibilities. One, ArcGIS 10 uses a version of GDAL that uses an older version of the ERDAS ECW/JP2 SDK . GDAL has now addressed that and supports v4.2; ESRI will pick up the ball and do the rest.

Two, some organizations who have licenses for the ERDAS ECW/JP2 SDK have added things to the ECW file that are not in compliance with the file format. This will cause problems. You might want to contact the organization that created the data to make sure they do not add any ‘goodies’ to the file format.

Q9: Are there any plans to use GP-GPU for compression?

A9: Yes. I cannot give specifics at this time, but I can say ‘yes.’

Q10: Can I lose accurate pixel value when I compress ECW data?

A10: At the present time, ECW has a visually lossless capability, not a numerically lossless capability.

Q11: Do you have any plans to support the updating of parts of an existing ECW file?

A11: Yes, this is under discussion. I will assume your question indicates an interest and will put your name in the request column. Thanks!

Q12: What would you use for storing floating point data, e.g. DEM data?

A12: Up until now, geospatial people have been using some sort of DR-RLE compression, such as that found in ERDAS’s IMG file format. Going forward, as the floating point JPEG2000 standard takes hold we will see more people use JP2 for lossless floating point data.

The question to ask is whether the maximum 2.5x reduction in file size on encoding worth the slowdown in decoding?

Q13: Which format is useful for signed16-bit data, ECW or JP2?

A13: ECW does not support signed data right now. Therefore, JP2 is the solution at this time.

Q14: Spanish users are having issues with plug-ins when using the Spanish version of the ERDAS ECW/JP2 SDK. Are you going to solve this soon?

A14: The ECW/JP2 SDK should not have a problem with this. If there is a problem with the free plug-in, it is in the plug-in code, not the ECW/JP2 SDK. We are working with Autodesk Germany on the AutoCAD 2011/2011 Plug-in to solve language support issues right now.

Q15: Paul, can you say anything publicly about when the AutoCAD 2010 plug-in will appear?

A15: We are waiting on Autodesk to help with a few installer questions. After that, we are ready to go.

Q16: Does ECW support stereo imagery data?

A16: Not inside the ECW file format. There are some companies that have modified the ECW file format (breaking the file for others), to support stereo parameters inside the file format. We have asked them to work with us to get it formally supported in the formal standard.

Until that time, the stereo parameters can be stored in the external .aux file.

Q17: Why is it necessary to have a plug-in to work with ECW in ERDAS software?

A17: When older versions of ERDAS software were made, ERDAS had not purchased ER Mapper and ECW support was incomplete. ERDAS purchased ER Mapper in May 2007, so that is when native ECW support became standard.

Q18: For unsigned 8-bit, unsigned 16 bit mss data, which format is more useable, ECW or JP2?

A18: ECW is an unsigned 8-bit data format. It can store panchromatic, RGB and multispectral data. 16-bit data should be stored in JP2 at this time.

Q19: Can the ECW format support hyperspectral data?

A19: ECW is a lossy, unsigned 8-bit data format that supports 65,535 bands. Give ECW a try!

Q20: We need to be able to make the background pixels of imagery transparent in ArcMap. ECW doesn't support this, but JP2 does. Is there any way to get the background pixels in ECW files to "disappear" in ArcMap (i.e. set the bg values to 255 or 0)?

A20: ECW added support for transparency in ECW/JP2 SDK v4.1, released in the fall of 2010. We had beta versions available in the summer, but this was too late for ESRI to get it supported in ArcGIS Desktop 10. GDAL is now updated, and the ball is in ESRI’s court. Let them know you want it!

In the ERDAS IMAGINE 2011 Exporter and MosaicPro, we enable you to define whatever value you want to be transparent; you can even define a region using a polygon.

Using ERDAS IMAGINE 2011’s “Create ECW Transparency” feature, you can also add a transparency layer to an existing ECW file via DNs or polygons without recompressing.

Q21: ECW or JP2 - where can I use each format and I how do I know?

A21: Both file formats are broadly accepted in the geospatial industry. If you wish to buy a product that does not support ECW/JP2, tell that product’s manager to give me a call. Remember, the SDK to provide desktop/client ECW, JP2, ECWP reading is free to the software developer.

Q22: Will you post the webinar.

A22: As usual, I forgot to record the webinar! I will re-record and post it later this week.

ERDAS ECW/JP2 SDK Product Page Link: http://www.erdas.com/products/ERDASECWJPEG2000SDK/Details.aspx

ERDAS ECW/JP2 SDK Webinar Today

2011-03-22T08:10:00.006-04:00

I will be doing a webinar on the ECW/JP2 SDK Webinar today at 11am US Eastern Daylight Savings time.

Below is the description:

Are you a software developer producing geospatial software? With the ERDAS ECW/JP2 SDK, you can create applications that dramatically reduce the time, money, and effort required to handle massive geospatial imagery.

The ERDAS ECW/JP2 SDK allows you to provide support for the visually-lossless ECW imagery format and the ECWP protocol in your desktop and server applications. ERDAS’ Enhanced Compression Wavelet (ECW) technology compresses bulky imagery files into manageable sizes, enabling faster processing and transfer of imagery, reducing the hardware investment required for the geospatial workflow. Using minimal memory, ECW can rapidly compress massive files to smaller sizes than other formats, while still preserving the quality of the images. ECW files can then be reopened quickly, in many cases faster than uncompressed imagery. Additionally, multi-resolution level of detail is built into the file, eliminating the need to generate or distribute pyramids or overviews. Enhanced Compression Wavelet Protocol (ECWP) allows streaming of ECW images, enabling rapid delivery of large quantities of imagery over the internet to thousands of users with standard server hardware of eight cores or less.

During this webinar, we will showcase the value that ECW and ECWP support can bring to your applications, easily increasing their value and appeal to your potential customers.

Link

ERDAS ECW/JP2 SDK, Version 4.2 Available Now!

2011-03-14T11:49:00.005-04:00

ERDAS Just released the following Press Release:

Norcross, GA — ERDAS announces the release of a new version of the ERDAS ECW/JP2 SDK, which allows software developers to enable rapid and efficient file handling in the applications they create by including robust support for selected wavelet compression formats and protocols.

The ERDAS ECW/JP2 SDK provides support for the visually-lossless ECW imagery format and the ECWP protocol. ERDAS’ Enhanced Compression Wavelet (ECW) technology compresses bulky imagery files into manageable sizes, enabling faster processing and transfer of imagery and reducing the hardware investment required for the geospatial workflow. Using minimal memory, ECW can compress massive files to smaller sizes faster than other formats, while still preserving the quality of the images. ECW files can then be reopened quickly, in many cases faster than uncompressed imagery. Additionally, multi-resolution level of detail is built into the file, eliminating the need to generate or distribute pyramids or overviews. Enhanced Compression Wavelet Protocol (ECWP) allows streaming of ECW images, enabling rapid delivery of large quantities of imagery over the internet to thousands of users with standard server hardware of just eight cores or less. The SDK also provides support for the numerically-lossless JPEG2000, an ISO-certified compressed image format commonly used for geospatial imagery.

“Massive files are a fact of life in the geospatial industry, and as sensors evolve to collect more information and at higher resolutions, typical file sizes are steadily increasing. While any compression format can make a file somewhat smaller to save money on storage space, the highest hardware costs of dealing with large files result from the need to acquire extra memory and more expensive server technology. Organizations also experience a relentless drain on profit from the productivity reduction caused by a slow workflow,” said Mark Sheridan, Development Manager for the ECW SDK and Image Web Server, ERDAS. “Using ECW and ECWP, applications can compress, decompress and transfer files extremely fast with very little memory and standard server equipment, imparting a comprehensive cost reduction that other formats just cannot offer.”

New for Version 4.2, the ERDAS ECW/JP2 SDK is being offered as three different editions, with tool sets targeted specifically for either desktop or server applications. As in previous versions, the SDK is also available as a free, read-only edition that allows developers to sample the speed and power of ECW and ECWP before upgrading to one of the full editions. All editions of the ERDAS ECW/JP2 SDK are compatible with Microsoft Visual Studio 2005, 2008, and 2010.

ERDAS ECW/JP2 SDK Desktop Read-Only is a free product that provides software developers with tools to add read support for ECW, ECWP and JPEG2000 in their desktop applications.

ERDAS ECW/JP2 SDK Desktop Read-Write provides software developers with tools to add read support for ECW, ECWP and JPEG2000 in their desktop applications. It also provides the tools to compress images into ECW and JPEG2000 data formats.

The newly released ERDAS ECW/JP2 SDK Server Read-Write provides software developers with tools to enable server applications to read ECW, ECWP, and JPEG2000 data, serve ECW and JPEG2000 data, and compress images into the ECW and JPEG2000 data formats.

To learn more about the ERDAS ECW/JP2 SDK, please visit the official product page or attend a free webinar on March 22nd.
For more information about ERDAS or its products and services, please call +1 770 776 3400, toll free +1 877 GO ERDAS, or visit www.erdas.com.

ERDAS Desktop 2011 Version 11.0.2

2011-03-07T08:48:00.005-05:00

From the ERDAS desktop product download pages.... Released March 2, 2011. ERDAS Desktop 2011 Version 11.0.2 provides fixes and enhancements to the ERDAS Desktop 2011 products (ERDAS IMAGINE 2011, LPS 2011, and ERDAS ER Mapper 2011) and requires at least one of the ERDAS Desktop 2011 products to be installed before this version can be installed. This version installs the fixes found in ERDAS Desktop 2011 Version 11.0.1, which is superseded and no longer available.

See: http://www.erdas.com/service/support/fixes_enhancements/ERDASIMAGINE2011.aspx

Ugraded ECW Version Support in GDAL

2011-02-23T08:35:00.006-05:00

In earlier posts I mentioned work was being done to support the latest ECW SDKs in GDAL (see this link). That work is now complete and developers are using the tools. The v4.1 ECW/JP2 SDK has higher performance for both ECW and JP2 data and supports transparency.

Verison 4.2 of the ERDAS ECW/JP2 SDK will be released soon. It contains a few fixes and introduces VC10 development support. GDAL is ready to support v4.2 when it is released.

Do remember, you must get a product license to use the ECW SDK with GDAL. Here is the product page: http://www.erdas.com/products/ERDASECWJPEG2000SDK/Details.aspx

Hexagon 2011 User Conference, Building a Smarter World June 6-9, 2011

2011-02-01T09:19:00.009-05:00

Hexagon has announced Hexagon 2011 with the theme "Building a Smarter World." It will be held June 6 - 9, 2011 in Orlando, Florida USA. This international Conference will include Intergraph, ERDAS, Leica Geosystems, and Hexagon Metrology technologies.

See: http://www.hexagonconference.com/. There is a 1-minute video from Ola Rollén, and other customer interviews as well.

This conference fuses the multiple user conferences held by the separate geospatial entities into one conference, making for greater networking opportunities.

Some of you ERDAS folks remember the early 1990s when ERDAS had a solid user conference of its own drawing around 400 users. Now, Atlanta as a venue was OK (attending Braves baseball playoff) games in the evenings, but honestly Orlando is much more interesting.

A Brief History of ERDAS ER Mapper

2011-01-17T23:15:00.037-05:00

I thought I would take some time to briefly outline some of the major points in the history of ERDAS ER Mapper. I have rebuilt this history from "What's New" PowerPoints and "What's New" documents, software documentation, software media, software code, advertisements, and personal interviews. I do not have as much materials as I did to build the A Brief History of ERDAS IMAGINE, immediately at hand, but will build the history as I uncover documents.

As a master’s student at the University of South Carolina Department of Geography and Remote Sensing Specialist at SC DNR, I interviewed with ER Mapper while at ASPRS in Baltimore Maryland the week of March 24, 1991 and was invited to interview with ER Mapper in San Diego in mid-May 1991. During my visit in May, I met with David Hayward and Stuart Nixon. David gave me an extensive demo of the software. I was very impressed with the software.

I was somewhat concerned when Stuart stated ER Mapper would be larger than ERDAS within 2-years. ER Mapper hired Jill Andrews rather than me. I accepted a technical sales position at ERDAS and started at ERDAS on July 15, 1991. On May 21 2007, ERDAS announced the purchase of ER Mapper Ltd.

19 Feb 1990, Australian Beta Release (Beta 1)

Introduces Dynamic Algorithm Compiler (on-the-fly image processing) to Remote Sensing community
Sun Workstation only

6 Apr 1990, US Beta Release (Beta 2)
1 May 1990, ER Mapper 1.0 released
9 Jul 1990, ER Mapper 1.1 released
21 Sep 1990, ER Mapper 1.2 released
10 Jan 1991, ER Mapper 2.0 released

Expanded marketing efforts into Europe and Americas

22 Nov 1991, ER Mapper 3.0 released
20 May 1992, ER Mapper 3.1 released
26 Aug 1992, ER Mapper 3.2 released
15 Jan 1993, ER Mapper 4.0 released

Expanded capabilities to support forestry, land use and water resources
As reported by GISL Limited, the first PC ER Mapper license was purchased in Europe by GISL Limited, but Windows was not supported until a later version.

25 Oct 1993, ER Mapper 4.1 released
4 Feb 1994, ER Mapper 4.1a released
18 Oct 1994, ER Mapper 4.2 released
30 Jun 1995, ER Mapper 5.0 released

Support Sun, SGI, DEC, HP And Windows NT
3D Capability introduced

Sep 1995, ER Mapper 5.1 released

Microsoft Windows 95 support added

20 April 1996, ER Mapper 5.2 released
27 Feb 1997, ER Mapper 5.5 released

HP-UX and DEC Alpha support dropped, Sun Solaris, SGI Irix, and Windows 95/NT remain
Improved 3D capability
Oil and Gas Wizards to exchange data with Charisma, GeoQuest and SeisWorks
Customers include Landmark, Schlumberger, BP Exploration, Mobile, Texaco and Shell

1 Feb 1999, ER Mapper 6.0 released

Introduce real-time roaming and zooming
Introduce ortho-rectification of images
Introduce image compression wizard
Introduce mosaic wizard
Introduce image gridding wizard (ascii points and vector datasets)
Introduce contour to screen wizard, file save as to create files
Radar processing bundled into core package

15 June 1999, ER Mapper 6.0 CEP released

ECW Compression Enhancement Pack added (ECW v2.0)

29 April 1999, ER Mapper 6.0 SP1 released
4 January 2000, ER Mapper 6.1 released

Image Web Plug-in

11 May 2001, ER Mapper 6.2 released

Improved licensing
Improved ECW performance(70% faster)
Add GeoTIFF support
Wizard to support MapInfo .tab files
Landsat Web publishing wizard
Introduce Mineral Exploration wizard

29 June 2001, Release of OrthoWarp ER (Inpho add-on module)

IKONOS, IRS, Landsat and Spot data supported
Automated tools for orientation, measurement, and error correction

24 September 2001, ER Mapper 6.21 released

Maintenance release
HDF Translator

28 Feb 2002, OrthoWarp ER v2.1 released

Simplified workflows

19 July 2002, ER Mapper 6.3 released

Windows XP Support
Enhanced Compression Tools
Shapefile I/O
Spectral Angle Mapper Formula
Aster Processing Wizard

6 December 2002, ER Mapper 6.3 SP1 released

Maintenance release

14 November 2003, ER Mapper 6.4 released

Reprojection-on-the-fly introduced
Compression to ECW of Multi-TB images (5TB tested)
Reproject GeoTIFF and ECW
Add floating network license support

15 May 2004, ER Mapper 6.4 SP1 released

Maintenance release

22 April 2005, ER Mapper 7.0 released

JPEG2000 support added (Lossly, lossless, NITF), created 1-TB JPEG2000 Landsat mosaic
Added 13 new Batch Processing Wizards
Added new projections

28 July 2005, ER Mapper 7.01 released

Maintenance release

31 March 2006, ER Mapper 7.1 released

Maintenance release
Add support for ERDAS IMAGINE .img format
GeoTIFF enhancements (read and write TIFFs up to 2GB, JPEG format TIFF)
JPEG2000 Alpha Channel Support

21 May 2007, ER Mapper Ltd. Purchased by ERDAS
2 Sept 2008, ER Mapper 7.1 SP1 released

Maintenance release

19 Sept 2008, ER Mapper 7.2 released

Significant maintenance effort
Expanded projection support
Native support to read IMG
Clip Region Wizard, included rotated regions
Add MrSID, RPF (CIB and CADRG) and PCIDSK support
Joint Licensing with IMAGINE Professional
License borrowing

11 Nov 2008, ER Mapper 7.2 SP1 released

Maintenance release

23 Mar 2009, ER Mapper 7.2.1 released

Maintenance release

19 Nov 2009, ER Mapper 2010 released

Support for Windows x32 and x64 for Windows XP, Vista, and 7
Improved raster file format handling
ASTER Processing Wizard
Expanded projection support (use ERDAS projection engine)
Improved Image Handling and Processing
Improved handling and visualization of 16-bit and floating point data

21 April 2009, ER Mapper 2010 v10.1 released

Transparency Masks in ECW and JPEG2000 images
Implement 'Large Memory Aware' to better utilize RAM

7 Dec 2010, ER Mapper 2011 released

Maintenance release
Expand 'Large Memory Aware' use
Handle calibrated IMG files with affine map model
Write IMG files

LiDAR for Dummies Book

2011-01-08T23:05:00.010-05:00

This resource may no longer available. It seems the login page is sometimes there and sometimes not. :(

I just stumbled across (actually Gene Roe via LinkedIn sent me a note), LiDAR for Dummies. LiDAR for Dummies is a product of Autodesk and DLT Solutions. It is a 'Special Edition' and provides the basics of LiDAR.

I believe reading this book will help us find the wording to more effectively communicate with non-technical management. The for Dummies type books comes close to the 8th grade education communication level, which is the level we should strive to communicate with non-technical management (the decision makers).

Hexagon’s Ola Rollén says Hexagon acquisition of Huntsville-based Intergraph 'all about the people'

2011-01-07T20:45:00.004-05:00

This article was written by Budd McLaughlin of the The Huntsville (Alabama) Times Published: Sunday, November 14, 2010, 7:32 AM

-------------

HUNTSVILLE, AL -- When Hexagon first started looking at Intergraph about six years ago, there was one thing that caught the eye of CEO Ola Rollen ... well, maybe there were 5,000 that caught his eye.

5,000 employees, that is.

"It's all about the people," Rollen said. "Intergraph is a great company with great people."

The Stockholm-based company acquired Intergraph in July, and the $2.125 billion deal closed last month. Hexagon has 11,000 employees in 42 countries; of Intergraph's 5,000 employees, about 1,200 are in Huntsville.

A veteran of more than 70 acquisitions, Rollen said this one was "fantastic."

Hexagon is a measurement-technology and systems company, and its combination with Intergraph's highly regarded engineering software is expected to help customers make better and faster decisions.

"We've gotten positive (feedback) from industry analysts," he said. "They could see the foresightedness. ... We're one step ahead (of the competition)."

Unlike a lot of mergers and acquisitions in which the smaller company becomes a subsidiary or division of the larger company, Rollen said there are no plans to drop the Intergraph brand.

He is CEO of Intergraph, succeeding Halsey Wise. Meanwhile, Intergraph's two divisions - Process, Power & Marine and Security, Government & Infrastructure - will continue to operate under the leadership of Gerhard Sallinger and John Graham.

"Intergraph is a strong brand," Rollen said. "It would be foolish to change it. In the industry, people see Intergraph as it's related to the product. I don't see a need to promote Hexagon.

"Why (drop) something we think is good? That's stupid."

He also sees Intergraph continuing to grow and Hexagon benefiting from that growth. Hexagon's vision is to be a market leader, ranking number one or number two in each strategic business in order to generate growth and shareholder value.

The company's strategy is to be the most cost-efficient and innovative supplier, have the best management skills in the business, and have short and rapid decision processes.

Intergraph's solutions, meanwhile, help its customers design, build and operate more efficient plants, ships and offshore facilities, create intelligent maps, protect critical infrastructure and provide security for hundreds of millions of people around the world.

"There are all good intentions when you acquire a company," he said. "Sometimes, they forget why they acquired a company. We think Intergraph is a great company, and we evaluated it against the competition.

"I have a positive outlook for the business. We'll continue to grow Intergraph internationally and have a good footprint."

The company's Process, Power & Marine division will be particularly important in the future, he said.

"Four billion people are joining the global economy, and there will be an increased need for energy," he said. "It will be more and more important how we extract energy. Intergraph has the technologies to do that safely."

However, with his positive outlook, Rollen sees a downside to Intergraph's success, particularly with the Security, Government & Infrastructure division.

"Unfortunately, if you look at the (world events), Intergraph technologies have become more and more important," he said. "With al-Qaida (and other terrorist groups), public safety is most important.

"It requires more technology and more intelligence."

Rollen makes his home in London and said Huntsville was "a pleasant surprise."

He didn't have any preconceived images of the Rocket City, as much as he did of the state, but he called it "quite a fascinating city with an educated work force."

Rollen also reiterated that there were no plans for him to implement any changes because of the acquisition.

"Every acquisition is unique," he said. "You need to understand the people and you need to listen a lot.

"In general, the best we could do is if we don't notice any change at all. That's when we've succeeded."

Capitalizing on Local Government’s Investment in LiDAR

2011-01-05T23:19:00.010-05:00

Jarlath O'Neil-Dunne wrote an article in LiDAR News titled Capitalizing on Local Government’s Investment in LiDAR. Jarlath writes, "In my work using LiDAR data sourced from local government to map land cover in urbanized areas, I find that even in major cities with well-established GIS departments, the point cloud has never been looked at and the term “LiDAR” is typically taken to mean a high-resolution bare earth Digital Elevation Model (DEM)."

I agree with this statement.

Also, the GIS mover and shakers within the State of Georgia are trying to get a elevation project off the ground. Actually, this effort began over a decade ago when I was at the Georgia Tech Center for GIS and a active member of GISCC. (The lesson here, be persistent.)

Because the State of Georgia has 159 counties, it is hard to get the various political powers to agree on spending the money for this project. There has been and will continue to be many surprise floods in Georgia until the state's elevation is mapped correctly. What is sad, nearby states with less financial resources mapped their state's elevation using Lidar many years ago. Thus they are far more prepared for floods than Georgia.

Is political pride getting in the way, or is it lack of education? The Carl Vinson Institute of Government at University of Georgia is trying to overcome the education issue. The Vinson Institute's Office of Information Technology Outreach Services (ITOS) created a Lidar 101 education video to help legislators and other decision makers understand Lidar. It is 13 minutes and 13 seconds long.

Other Lidar post on this blog...

ERDAS ECW JPEG2000 SDK v4.1 and v4.2 (another GDAL Update)

2010-12-29T14:26:00.012-05:00

With the recent release of the ERDAS 2011 software portfolio, the ERDAS ECW JPEG2000 SDK team has been able to focus with Frank Warmerdam on the latest ECW SDK GDAL work. I have recently spoken with Frank on the subject. The joint goal is to update to the latest ECW SDK and expand GDALs capabilities in using the ECW SDK, and allowing use of some ECW SDK tools not available to GDAL customers heretofore. I will post more details, when the work is almost complete to discuss all that is now included in GDALs support of the ECW SDK.

But I will say this, if you plan to access the ECW SDK via GDAL, you will be happy. Also, you may want to consider contracting to Frank to help with your implementation. ERDAS is working closely with him, and Frank can help you put rock-solid ECW and JPEG2000 support (using the ECW SDK) in your products.

Do remember, you must get a product license to use the ECW SDK with GDAL. Here is the product page: http://www.erdas.com/products/ERDASECWJPEG2000SDK/Details.aspx

Expanding Lidar Value in Local Governments

2010-12-28T21:11:00.012-05:00

I often hear local governments who are flying Lidar to establish the terrain component of their aerial ortho projects. These local governments request a copy of the ‘raw’ Lidar data. What does ‘raw’ mean?

Typically, what the local government really wants is not the ‘raw’ Lidar data, but all Lidar returns further down the processing line. Commercial tools to process ‘raw’ Lidar imagery are not easy to use, nor are they currently cost effective. ERDAS, the inventor of commercial remote sensing, has historically been the company to introduce cost-effective remote sensing tools into the market-place. (I see Lidar as a remote sensing tool that heretofore has been used most successfully by photogrammetrists.)

It is understandable that local governments want more than detailed terrain model from their Lidar collection. Heretofore, Lidar collections have centered on elevation, but there is much more value available in Lidar data than only an elevation model. It is my belief, to use Lidar only as an elevation source, is like using imagery only as a backdrop to a GIS vector dataset; valuable, but very wasteful of the tax payer’s money.

Local governments need more value from their Lidar collections than just elevation, but that value is not easily captured in the ‘raw’ data. What Lidar data do local governments need to request? They need Lidar data that has been bore-sighted. Bore-sighting removes the small imprecision found in the GPS and IMU. These errors can be quite significant errors at a flying height of 5,000 feet (1500m).

After bore-sighting, the data are edited to define ground points and other features. This is a needed step to prepare the point cloud for terrain purposes. Yet, the Editing process can introduce very valuable information. Here is where vendor can classify the points into categories. The philosophy that points should be flagged with a classification, rather than be deleted from the dataset, emerged during the development of the LAS data format standard.

Of the several classification categories that can be defined in a LAS file, the categories local governments may wish to take advantage are: Ground; Low Vegetation; Medium Vegetation; High Vegetation; Building; and Water.

It is my opinion; the local government should obtain the intermediate product at this stage. All returns, bore-sighted and classified, no points added or removed. And, a full QA/QC report. If it were me, I’d ask for the intensity information as well.

The final need, the LAS tiles should each have fully defined horizontal and vertical coordinate systems (as ASPRS suggests). So many times local governments accept LAS tiles that only have the horizontal datum defined. Without knowing the vertical datum, you do not really know the height. Also, putting the vertical datum inside the LAS file rather than on a yellow sticky note on the DVD is far more appropriate. (And what happens when the yellow sticky note looses its sticky?)

Local governments ask, what can I use to work with my Lidar data? I said earlier, “Commercial tools to process ‘raw’ Lidar imagery are not easy to use, nor are they currently cost effective. ERDAS, the inventor of commercial remote sensing, has historically been the company to introduce cost-effective remote sensing tools into the market-place.” Now, ERDAS is presenting tools to convert your Lidar data to raster for further processing.

But why raster?

Raster conversion of the point cloud can shrink LAS file to a IMG file ¼ the file size of the LAS (you only store x & y values once in the raster UL corner). But that is not the main reason, as I suggest keeping the LAS files in backup for the day when point processing engines are cost effective.
The files being converted into raster allows a visual QA/QC of the data.
Open Lidar collections up to the ERDAS community in a very cost effective manner (no additional costs). Once the data are in raster, the Spatial Modeler, Model Maker, Classification, Expert Classification, and Objective are available to the customer to process the data.

Latest ERDAS Field Guides on-line

2010-12-22T09:37:00.004-05:00

ERDAS has published the December 2010 ERDAS Field Guides in both HTML Verison and PDF Version on their website. I keep the links up-to-date in the Informative Links section on this blog.

ERDAS 2011 Software - Available Now!

2010-12-20T11:54:00.013-05:00

The following was just released to the press....

Norcross, GA — ERDAS proudly announces the official release of ERDAS 2011 Software, including ERDAS IMAGINE, LPS, ERDAS APOLLO, ERDAS Extensions for ArcGIS 10 and other leading desktop and server products.

Portfolio-wide changes for the ERDAS 2011 Software Release include the ability to localize ERDAS products for a global audience, integrated support for Bing™ Maps base imagery and map data, distributed processing throughout the desktop offerings, and a new product, ERDAS Engine. ERDAS Engine is a simple, cost-effective solution that boosts processing power for ERDAS IMAGINE and LPS, leveraging existing hardware resources for increased production needs or situations requiring faster production output.

“ERDAS already offers customers the most powerful, comprehensive geospatial software tools in the industry. This release revolutionizes the way our customers utilize our applications, truly integrating them into their overall workflow.” said Joel Campbell, President, ERDAS.

ERDAS IMAGINE is the world’s leading geospatial desktop authoring platform, incorporating image processing and analysis, remote sensing and GIS. ERDAS IMAGINE 2011 features upgraded and streamlined imagery analysis workflows, the ability to geolink to Google Earth, and export to Microsoft PowerPoint, Word, or JPEG with a single click. ERDAS IMAGINE 2011 also introduces Hyperspherical Color Space (HCS) pan sharpening, developed specifically for DigitalGlobe’s WorldView-2 data.

LPS is a powerful, workflow-oriented photogrammetry system for production mapping. A key theme for the LPS 2011 release is distributed processing, which enables users to leverage multi-core CPUs and multiple networked servers to accelerate project completion. In addition, LPS 2011 enables ortho generation for a specific area of imagery defined by a shape file or AOI.

ERDAS Extensions for ArcGIS 10 is a production suite of stereo visualization tools that seamlessly integrate into the ArcGIS® 10 environment. Stereo visualization enables users to view imagery in 3D, facilitating interpretation of topological features, enabling more spatially accurate feature collection than digitizing features from an orthorectified image.

ERDAS APOLLO is the market leading geospatial solution for managing and serving imagery, consistently delivering virtually any digital object in an enterprise, faster, using less hardware than server-based products. ERDAS APOLLO 2011 introduces clustering, enabling multiple servers to work in concert to fulfill data searches and requests, increasing the number of supportable users. ERDAS APOLLO 2011 can also catalog and serve LIDAR and point cloud files (LAS).

Campbell continued, “By integrating other popular geospatial tools, boosting the processing capability of the software, and streamlining workflows, we’re enabling users to accomplish more, faster, easier, and more accurately and economically than was previously possible, or can be done with any other competitive offering.”

All products are now available for download on the ERDAS website. For a more detailed list of What’s New in ERDAS 2011, a webinar showcasing new features, and full product descriptions, technical specifications for each product in the ERDAS portfolio, please visit http://www.erdas.com/.

To request more information about ERDAS or its products and services, please call +1 770 776 3400, toll free +1 877 GO ERDAS.
-------------

Refer to What's New in ERDAS 2011 Software Release, a document with more details.

To be directed to the ERDAS IMAGINE download page, chick here:

Finally, a much higher-speed download mechanism has been implemented on a global basis. This will help customers from all corners of the globe to more rapidly download 2011 and get started with the new tools and enhancements right-a-way.

Workflows and Integration Characterize ERDAS 2011 Release

2010-12-09T08:05:00.003-05:00

Below is a link to a November 29, 2010 GISCafe GISWeekly article on the rapidly approaching ERDAS 2011 product release.

One point made, "ERDAS Engine is a solution that boosts processing power for ERDAS IMAGINE and LPS, leveraging existing hardware resources for increased production needs or situations requiring faster workflow throughput."

Article by Susan Smith, Managing Editor of GISCafe, based on an interview with Joel Campbell

US Census Bureau Utilizes ERDAS APOLLO

2010-12-08T15:23:00.007-05:00

The press release below was just distributed to the press. The performance and efficiency of the ECW SDK implementation in ERDAS APOLLO Essentials IWS is really nice. The image serving is so efficient (APOLLO can do a lot with a very little), the US Census Bureau is considering scaling the image serving hardware down (number of cores) to a lower cost solution to save taxpayers money on hardware.
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Norcross, GA, USA – For the 2010 census, the US Census Bureau used ERDAS’ server-based technologies for timely updating of their integrated national mapping and address system.

In 2007, the Census Bureau began implementing ERDAS ADE to provide a real-time, interactive web editing solution based on the Oracle Spatial 10g/11g topology model. The project, named Geographic ADE-based Topological Real-time Editing System (GATRES), provides tools for selecting and updating features and housing units, creating links to other features.

ERDAS ADE allows multiple users to simultaneously view and edit the same feature in Oracle’s Topology Data Model. With ERDAS ADE, the Census Bureau has a visual tool for managing primitive attributes and tracking spatial and non-spatial features and metadata. Users work with address ranges linked to the spatial data in the Master Address File/Topologically Integrated Geocoding and Referencing (MAF/TIGER) System.

Later, the US Census Bureau enhanced the system, adding ERDAS APOLLO to manage and rapidly serve the organization’s massive amounts of imagery. This massive data repository included one meter (or better) imagery for the majority of the counties in the United States, for multiple years. ERDAS APOLLO consistently delivers more data, quicker, using less hardware than other image serving products. An interoperable Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and International Organization for Standardization (ISO) based solution, ERDAS APOLLO also easily delivers feature data, terrain and virtually any digital object in an enterprise.

ERDAS APOLLO also provides imagery backdrops to the vector data in GATRES. In addition, ERDAS APOLLO works as a plug-in with the organization’s other geospatial desktop products. With ERDAS APOLLO, users can quickly search the catalog and serve files using the Enhanced Compression Wavelet Protocol (ECWP), as well as JPEG2000, an ISO-certified compressed image format. ECWP allows streaming of ECW files, enabling rapid delivery of terabyte-sized images over the internet using inexpensive server technology.

With ERDAS’ technology, the solution was able to scale over many remote US Census sites, providing multiple users the ability to dynamically edit and update Oracle Spatial information. In addition, this enterprise system was able to efficiently distribute processes, enabling the US Census Bureau to save hardware costs. ERDAS APOLLO regularly handled several hundred users and the CPU usage rarely exceeded approximately 30% once ERDAS APOLLO was optimized for the Census production environment. While the workload has now decreased, ERDAS APOLLO continues to handle 100-150 users simultaneously.

“The US Census Bureau provides comprehensive and high quality data about the nation’s people and economy,” said Kurt Schwoppe, Vice President, Services, ERDAS. “For the 2010 census, we were able to leverage our imagery expertise, providing a comprehensive solution that could not only handle the Bureau’s massive amount of geospatial data, but also enable users to quickly update and deliver this information in a variety of environments.”

The US Census Bureau continues to use both ERDAS IMAGINE and ERDAS ER Mapper. For more information about ERDAS or its products and services, please call +1 770 776 3400, toll free +1 877 GO ERDAS, or visit www.erdas.com.

Joel Campbell Interview at GEOINT 2010

2010-12-02T08:29:00.004-05:00

I was not able to attend GEOINT this year as it fell on my anniversary. Sorry, geospatial community, I'd rather be with my wife. :) Anyway, Sanjay gives a good interview with Joel at GEOINT 2010.

NGA Increases Commitment to ERDAS Products with 5-Year Contract Renewal

2010-11-30T19:40:00.004-05:00

The following news was just distributed to the press:
ERDAS is pleased to announce that the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) recently signed a 5-year contract renewal with ERDAS. The contract includes support and upgrades for NGA’s existing ERDAS software holdings and preferred buying arrangements for additional products, licenses and software maintenance renewals.

With this contract, NGA has expanded its ERDAS investment by 20%, meeting an increased demand across the organization for ERDAS products and software licenses. ERDAS has been providing commercial image processing software to NGA since its inception as the National Imagery and Mapping Agency. NGA has continued to increase its investment in ERDAS’ offering, with thousands of licenses for ERDAS software applications. This renewed investment signifies NGA’s continued loyalty to the ERDAS brand and products.

“ERDAS values its relationship with NGA tremendously and was pleased to offer them an agreement that will allow them to use leading geospatial software solutions at a significant savings. NGA’s renewed commitment to ERDAS software for another five years is a vote of confidence for ERDAS that we are extremely proud of,” said Joel Campbell, President, ERDAS. “This agreement also benefits the greater geospatial community, as the work we’ve done to meet the precise standards of NGA have created a more exceptional product portfolio to offer the rest of the industry.”

NGA collects and processes geospatial imagery to produce geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) products that present physical features and geographically referenced activities on the Earth. NGA’s timely, relevant and exceptionally accurate GEOINT supports improved decision-making for national security objectives and enables the United States military to remain at peak readiness to protect the nation. GEOINT from NGA also supports multiple humanitarian endeavors. In 2005, NGA provided imagery to support FEMA and other first responders after hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and in 2007 it provided over 150 GEOINT products to help combat the California wildfires.

NGA currently owns licenses for most products in the ERDAS portfolio, including ERDAS IMAGINE and LPS, their add-on modules, and ERDAS APOLLO.

ERDAS IMAGINE 2011 Coming Soon

2010-11-29T18:34:00.003-05:00

Here we are again, another year later and ERDAS is about to put out another software release. ERDAS IMAGINE 2011 will meet its scheduled release next month. At this time, I will not cover what all is in 2011, as that is for the World Tour Events and soon to be released on the erdas.com website.

Also, I have spoke with Frank Warmerdam and the integration of the v4.1 of the ERDAS ECW JPEG2000 SDK into GDAL is going very well. It should make the GDAL v1.8 release due out this year as well.

One subject I will speak of on is the ERDAS ECW JPEG2000 SDK use within ERDAS IMAGINE. ERDAS has bumped the IMAGINE Essentials input file size for ECW and JPEG2000 creation from 10Gpixels to 250Gpixels and in IMAGINE Advantage from 100Gpixels to 500Gpixels.

Transparency layers can be created with new compressions in Exporter and MosaicPro. There is a new tool to add ECW Transparency layers to existing ECW files without re-compressing the data too.

Link to ERDAS download...

ERDAS ECW JPEG2000 SDK v.4.1 (GDAL Update)

2010-10-05T09:33:00.004-04:00

I recently got an update from the ECW team in Perth concerning the ERDAS ECW JPEG2000 SDK v4.1 support in GDAL.

ERDAS is currently compiling the ERDAS ECW JPEG2000 v4.1 SDK against GDAL 1.7.2, in both 32- and 64-bit Windows variants. It is known to compile against 1.5 as well, so using the 1.7.2 driver with 1.6 should probably work (with a bit of fidgeting around). There remain some outstanding issues to address (like opacity channel support), but once the ERDAS 2011 products are released later this quarter, ERDAS will finalize our GDAL driver and give to the work Frank Warmerdam and the GDAL team for incorporation into the main GDAL source.

Hexagon’s Ola Rollén Oct 2010 Geospatial World Interview

2010-10-04T12:46:00.005-04:00

Selected questions and answers from Hexagon’s Ola Rollén in an Oct 2010, Geospatial World Interview

What would be different at Intergraph under your leadership?

“Hexagon will bring in more aggressive investment and re-investment to keep customer satisfaction and belief in Intergraph intact. Process, Power and Marine (PPM) business of Intergraph has grown significantly in the last few years but I do agree that GeoMedia has not advanced as much as it should have. There is definitely an opportunity for Hexagon to turn it around. It is a great product and with capital investments of Hexagon, I am quite confident of bringing it to the required levels and Erdas will provide a great support and help in this endeavour.”

Shall we presume that Erdas will get integrated with Intergraph?

“Yes, we can presume that Erdas will become a part of Intergraph as it makes more sense to be integrated with Intergraph and at the same time Zeiss/Intergraph (ZI) will become a part of Leica Geosystems. There will be an exchange of technology between the two groups.”

Acquisition of Intergraph, for sure, puts Hexagon well ahead of other geospatial companies, making it the leader of the geospatial market. Such a position also puts extraordinary pressure to not just maintain the leadership position, but also to invest in market development and provide direction to the industry. What specific plans do you have to address this situation?

“Hexagon is one of the leaders of the geospatial industry and we understand our responsibility well. In the short term, we have the obligation to provide a more competitive GeoMedia for traditional and loyal users who relied on it for decades. In the long term, I think it is even more important to provide a path to the GIS user to remain competitive against the large movements led by Google and Microsoft as they begin to encroach upon the professional GIS space. I think that's where Hexagon could provide a more stable solution to professional GIS community to further their profession.”

http://geospatialworld.net/

ECW Support in ArcGIS 10 Desktop

2010-09-21T18:43:00.027-04:00

With the release of ArcGIS 10, ESRI’s desktop products support ECW image files natively through GDAL. The GDAL move was part of ESRI's switch from the ERDAS Raster Data Objects (RDO) that ESRI paid ERDAS to use. It was very low cost, as ESRI has historically been a business partner, but ESRI wanted to go in another direction. (The ESRI community can expect a bumpy raster ride for a few releases.)

The GDAL version used in ArcGIS 10 uses an older version of the ERDAS ECW JPEG2000 SDK (ECW SDK), so opacity is not supported and the speed is a little slower than what will be available using the latest version of the ECW SDK, v4.1.

ERDAS is working with GDAL to upgrade GDAL to the latest version of the ECW SDK, scheduled to be complete before Feb 1, 2011. Once the GDAL work is complete, software companies using GDAL (such as ESRI) need only download the Read Only ECW SDK and build in their desktop application as defined by GDAL and according to the ECW SDK EULA for free ECW, ECWP and JPEG2000 desktop read capability.

GDAL is a SDK and the ECW SDK EULA states a SDK cannot deliver the ECW SDK with their SDK. The solution is for GDAL to build against the ECW SDK, but not deliver the ECW SDK. Then the companies using GDAL can simply download the Read Only ECW SDK from ERDAS and put GDAL and the ECW SDK in their desktop software application.

The beauty of the way the Read Only and Full ECW SDKs were put together, once the developer has done the work for ECW, the work to implement ECWP and JPEG2000 may take as few as 30 more minutes’ development time.

If a company wishes their software application to write ECW and JPEG2000 data, they can use the same GDAL approach noted above; and with a purchase of the Full ECW SDK from ERDAS, they add writing ECW and JPEG2000 data.

For ECW support in ArcGIS Server see: http://field-guide.blogspot.com/2011/04/news-release-erdas-releases-new-product.html

For streaming ECW and JP2 data via ECWP in ArcGIS desktop see: http://field-guide.blogspot.com/2011/05/esri-adding-for-ecwp-in-arcgis.html

Why ECW?
Many in the geospatial community correctly think of ECW (Enhanced Compression Wavelet) as a data format that saves disk space. A more powerful aspect of ECW, because of its fundamental mathematical breakthrough enabling fast compression, the same breakthrough provides very fast decompression as well; while only using a small amount of RAM. Whether accessing ECW on a desktop, over a LAN, or over the internet, ECW is very fast. In many cases, ECW is much faster than accessing the imagery in an uncompressed format.

What is ECWP?
Geospatial images can be hundreds or thousands of gigabytes in size. Traditional mechanisms for serving image data over the internet are inadequate when high-speed performance is required. ECWP (Enhanced Compression Wavelet Protocol) leverages the benefits of a the mathematically efficient ECW format and allows the server to stream these large geospatial images to a user's application, rather than sending a regular image ver HTTP, while only using a tiny amount of RAM. JPEG2000 can be streamed with ECWP as well, with higher performance than JPIP.

Why JPEG2000?
JPEG2000 is an ISO-certified wavelet compression image format that is commonly used for geospatial imagery. The format is defined by the Joint Photographic Experts Group. Because JPEG2000 was designed by a committee to do a great many things, it will never be as fast as ECW. Because JPEG2000 compression and decompression technology is similar to ECW, it was simple to add this capability to the ERDAS ECW JPEG2000 SDK, even supporting JPEG2000 streaming within ECWP. But, because JPEG2000 was created by a committee to a great many things, JPEG2000 is unlikely to ever be as fast as ECW.

ECW on Wikipedia

ERDAS Releases New Version of ERDAS ECW JPEG2000 SDK

2010-09-20T18:36:00.006-04:00

As many of you know, I am also the Product Manager for the ERDAS ECW JPEG2000 SDK. I am proud of the work the SDK development team in Perth has done. Components of this released version of the SDK are being used in all ERDAS 2010 v10.1 products. There is a discussion forum for the SDK on ERDAS Communities.

The following was released to the press earlier today:

Norcross, GA — ERDAS announces the release of a new version of the ERDAS ECW JPEG2000 SDK, which enables software developers to include robust support for selected wavelet compression formats and protocols in the desktop applications they create.

The ERDAS ECW JPEG2000 SDK provides read and write support for the visually-lossless ECW and numerically-lossless JPEG2000 imagery formats, and read support for the ECWP protocol. Enhanced Compression Wavelet (ECW) is a compressed format designed specifically for geospatial imagery, which can quickly compress and decompress huge images using minimal memory. Enhanced Compression Wavelet Protocol ECWP) allows streaming of ECW images, enabling rapid delivery of terabyte-sized images over the internet using inexpensive server technology. JPEG2000 is an ISO-certified compressed image format that is commonly used for geospatial imagery.

Originally used in the ER Mapper products, this SDK has been implemented in all ERDAS software. ERDAS IMAGINE, LPS and ERDAS APOLLO use the SDK to provide support for these wavelet compression and transmission technologies. For over ten years, this industry-proven SDK has produced stable, high-quality commercial applications.

“The ERDAS ECW JPEG2000 SDK allows any software developer to quickly implement industry-proven support of the ECW and JPEG2000 formats in their desktop applications, easily increasing the value and appeal of those applications to end users. On top of that, we’ve included changes in the latest release that result in remarkable performance increases, allowing your customers to decode ECW and JPEG2000 images and stream via ECWP faster than ever before,” said Mark Sheridan, Director of Engineering at ERDAS and one of the original developers of ER Mapper and ECW technology.

Developers can use the newest SDK to implement read and write support for ECW and JPEG200 images with opacity bands, allowing images to overlay other imagery cleanly without showing compression artifacts around the edges. Also, the SDK can now store compressed blocks delivered over an ECWP stream in the client cache, so previously viewed data can be opened faster. This also reduces the server’s bandwidth requirement, since less data is transferred to the client.

The C++ API provided in the SDK includes new functions for file decoding, rendering and accessing lower-level JPEG2000 features, such as the number of quality layers to include during decoding. Additionally, the API allows developers to retrieve and set options related to opacity, fussy or resilient modes in the decoder, the configuration of J2I index files, and caching parameters.

ERDAS distributes a free version of the SDK that enables read support for ECW, JPEG2000 and ECWP on its product web site.

For more information about ERDAS or its products and services, please call +1 770 776 3400, toll free +1 877 GO ERDAS, or visit www.erdas.com.

ERDAS IMAGINE 2010 Ribbon UI: Invest one week and experiment for yourself

2010-09-13T08:27:00.005-04:00

There have been many positive comments about the ERDAS IMAGINE 2010 Ribbon user interface (UI). There are some users who have not made the transition, saying they do not want to learn a new UI. I understand the comfortable feeling we have with an old UI. I remember not liking the move from a command prompt / menu system of the ERDAS 7.x series and the pre-ArcGIS versions to the graphical user interface (GUI) of ERDAS IMAGINE in the 1990s and of ArcGIS in the 2000s. Notwithstanding humans seeking to stay within a comfort zone of what is known, if we are not learning something new every day, are we wasting the learning skills we developed in all our years in school?

Val Clarke, a wise friend of mine and Dr. John Jensen's, told me in about 1983, "There is no growth without change." I have discovered over the subsequent 27 years, he is correct.

To help with ERDAS' customers transition (or growth), ERDAS wrote a document last year to help the transition. This document is named, "Increasing Workflow Efficiency with ERDAS IMAGINE 2010" and can be found on the ERDAS IMAGINE Product page under the "Product Literature" tab (see: http://www.erdas.com/tabid/84/currentid/1050/default.aspx).

The move to the Ribbon design has allowed ERDAS to expose more of the power of ERDAS IMAGINE than ever before. We spend a lot of time on placement of functions, and continue to debate and improve each development iteration. If you have not spent one-week using the ERDAS IMAGINE 2010 Ribbon User Interface, you are missing out. Invest one-week and then tell me if the old UI is better than the new.

Don't take my word for it. Invest one week and experiment for yourself.

Hexagon participates at Intergraph 2010 event

2010-09-01T19:24:00.003-04:00

Today Ola Rollén, President and CEO of Hexagon AB, participates at the Intergraph Corporation's annual international users' conference in Las Vegas, USA. The event "Intergraph 2010" hosts approximately 2 000 Intergraph customers from across the world and offers previews of new Intergraph technology, presentations by industry experts and hands-on training of Intergraph technology.

In a keynote address Ola Rollén comments on the planned acquisition of Intergraph announced on 7 July 2010. He reiterates Hexagon's intentions of continuous commitment and investment in Intergraph's vision, solutions, customers and employees. Ola Rollén also confirms Hexagon's intent to support Intergraph's product roadmap and to further invest in research and development.

"It is our intention that Intergraph's solutions will become Hexagon's core software platform, providing differentiated and vertically-focused software solutions. By combining Intergraph's technologies with our global resources and technologies, Hexagon will be able to create new exciting solutions to customers going forward", says Ola Rollén.

The acquisition of Intergraph is subject to completion of regulatory process and satisfaction of customary closing conditions. Competition law notifications have been submitted to the relevant regulatory authorities and the applicable waiting periods have expired. Completion of the remaining regulatory procedures is pending. Financial consolidation is estimated to take place in the fourth quarter of 2010.

At closing, Intergraph will become a fully owned subsidiary of Hexagon AB and will operate as a separate Hexagon division under the Intergraph name and branding. Following closing, it is planned that Ola Rollén will assume the role of CEO of Intergraph in accordance with the Hexagon model for successful integration into the Hexagon Group. Following closing, the two Intergraph divisions Process, Power & Marine and Security Government & Infrastructure will continue to operate under the leadership of Gerhard Sallinger and John Graham, respectively.

For further information please contact: Sara Kraft, Corporate Communications, Hexagon AB, +46 8 601 26 23, sara.kraft@hexagon.se

Hexagon AB is a global measurement technologies company with strong market positions. Hexagon's mission is to develop and market leading technologies and services to measure in one, two or three dimensions, to position and update objects and to time processes. The group has about 7 500 employees in 39 countries and net sales of about 12 000 MSEK.

Extracted 09/01/2010 http://investors.hexagon.se/index.php?p=press&afw_lang=en

See Ola's Keynote at the Intergraph User Conference

Understanding the Target Compression Ratio when using the ERDAS ECW JPEG2000 SDK

2010-07-19T13:55:00.008-04:00

It is important to note that when using the ERDAS ECW JPEG2000 SDK, the ECW and JPEG2000 target compression ratio makes no guarantees about the actual output size that will be achieved. Images with certain features (for example, air photos showing large regions of a similar color, like background values, oceans or forests) are easier to compress than others (completely random images).

When compressing images there is a tradeoff between the degree of compression achieved and the quality of the resulting image. The highest rates of compression can only be achieved by discarding some less important data from the image, known as lossy decompression. In the ERDAS ECW JPEG2000 SDK, the target compression ratio is an abstract figure representing your choice in this tradeoff. It approximates the likely ratio of input file size to output file size, given certain parameters for compression.

It is often unwise to try and force each image into a compressed file of the same size. This is because the resulting compressed images will have widely varying quality levels which may reduce their usefulness and any subsequent processing will have decreased value when combining different image tiles of different quality compression together.

Below is a table taken from the ERDAS IMAGINE 2010 Help (to be released later in 2011). This table was created from in-house testing and customer feedback.

Imagery	Target Compression Ratio
Visually Lossless RGB Image	Crisp Image Interpretation (2x zoom)	4:1
Near Visually Lossless RGB Image	Clear Image Interpretation (2x zoom)	6:1
RGB Image	High Quality Printed Maps and typical GIS applications	15:1 to 25:1
RGB Image	Internet or Email Distribution	15:1 to 40:1
Visually Lossless Panchromatic Image	Crisp Image Interpretation (2x zoom)	2:1
Near Visually Lossless Panchromatic Image	Clear Image Interpretation (2x zoom)	3:1
Panchromatic Image	High Quality Printed Maps and typical GIS applications	10:1 to 15:1
Panchromatic Image	Internet or Email Distribution	15:1 to 30:1
Visually Lossless Multispectral Image	Crisp Image Interpretation (2x zoom)	3:1
Near Visually Lossless Multispectral Image	Clear Image Interpretation (2x zoom)	4:1
Numerically Lossless RGB, Panchromatic, and Multispectral (JPEG 2000 Only)	Imagery with perfect numeric reconstruction	1:1

Numerically Lossless or Visually Lossless Wavelet Compression

2010-07-08T18:33:00.002-04:00

I hear so very often, we need lossless image compression (meaning numerically lossless - NL). I respect the point much more when I hear it from remote sensing and photogrammetry scientists than from GIS users.

Why my differentiation? Am I diss’ing the GIS folks? I hope not, that is not my intention.

Way back in 2001 I did a little test. I was at Georgia Tech Center for GIS (CGIS) and was asked by the State of Georgia to determine what compression level was acceptable to compress the state’s Color-Infrared aerials. Wavelet NL was not available through COTS software at the time (MrSID and ECW) and CGIS was not funded to research a new compression method. We were told to research what COTS compression level to use.

So, we pulled together engineering students, business students, architectural students, geospatial scientists, and secretaries. Most had some geospatial training and a few did not. We displayed an 8-bit uncompressed image, and compressed versions of the same image at 10:1, 15:1, 20:1, 25:1 and 30:1 compressions.

The people were allowed display images side-by-side, use swipe, blend, and fade functions. They could zoom in and out, but no further than a 4x zoom.

Only one person could see the compression artifacts at a 1:1 zoom before 20:1 compression. At 20:1 all the experienced remote sensing people could see a few artifacts. The experienced GIS people could see the artifacts at a 2x zoom of 15:1, but only one of non-geospatial people (a business student) could see the artifacts at 2x 15:1. (Later she decided to work as a research assistant for me and is still in the geospatial industry).

My point is… many in the geospatial industry push the 2 – 2.5x file size saving when using NL compression; when many trained geospatial people cannot see a compression artifacts in 3-band image compressions below 10:1 unless they zoom in to 4x. (Sure, we all know of the exceptions; the remote sensing, and photogrammetry experts duly noted above; but these are the exception, not the rule.)

So why not compress at a VL level when you are not doing precise remote sensing or photogrammetry? The medical imaging industry is gravitating on between 8:1 and12:1. Is what we are doing in the geospatial world so important we have to preserve more precision than the medical imaging? Are we protecting more precision than our accuracy supports?

I for one think we are wasting space and time when we do not compress to at least the VL compression level.

A final note, I am running tests to know at what level we can wavelet compress data and not affect autocorrelation, classification, and vegetation indices. Have any of you dared such tests? Care to let us know?

Hexagon Aquires Intergraph

2010-07-07T10:31:00.012-04:00

Hexagon, the parent company of Leica Geosystems (the parent company of ERDAS) announced today it acquired Intergraph yesterday, July 6, 2010. With this acquisition, Hexagon owns the two most respected areal imaging / LIDAR sensor companies. This capability along with the high precision GPS, CAD, GIS and Remote Sensing software capabilities, and different market access should make for interesting synergies among Hexagon's geospatial companies over the next few years.

Hexagon Announcement

Intergraph Announcement

With this acquisition, has Ola Rollen, CEO of Hexagon positioned Hexagon as the largest geospatial organization on the planet? Looking at the Intergraph, Leica Geosystems, NovAtel and ERDAS numbers, the case can surely be proposed.

Ola has told his ERDAS and Leica Geosystems people Hexagon is dedicated to the software business. This move puts real teeth behind his comments and right in the middle of the geospatial industry.

Ola Rollen's Press Conference

Hexagon will move Intergraph's sensor unit over to Leica Geosystems and ERDAS, Inc. over to Intergraph. This will consolidate geospatial hardware under Leica Geosystems and geospatial software under Intergraph.

Stay Tuned!

The first ERDAS Manual

2010-06-16T09:41:00.009-04:00

Brad Skelton, as a hobby over the years, has been the ERDAS archivist. I enjoy visiting his office and looking at the more than 30 years of ERDAS historical ‘stuff.’ One bit of ‘stuff’ Brad has archived carries a lot of significance, the very first ERDAS Manual. I am embarking on an effort to scan and OCR the document into a searchable PDF that looks exactly like the original document. Two beautiful and multi-talented ERDAS ladies, Candy Billips and Jenn Gazdziak, will help me with the effort. (Truth be told, I could not do it without their help.)

The first ERDAS Manual was written by Mark Finlay, Larry Brantley and Brad Skelton. Andrea Gernazian (Bruce Rado's, one of the three ERDAS founders, wife) proof-read the manual and performed word processing duties along with Melissa Ergle using Wordstar on a Cromemco Z80 microcomputer. The entire document was printed with great effort on a Brother daisy wheel printer (which had the tendency to jam every few pages, or smear printer dust over the pages). Andrea coined the phrase “The Oh, Brother! Printer”.

I quoted from another page of the first ERDAS Manual in the blog post, A Brief History of ERDAS IMAGINE

Below is the introduction page (page 2-1) from the first manual. Note the spelling error ’digitial,’ which everyone missed in 1983.

INTRODUCTION Rev 7.1 / 1 June 1983
A. ERDAS 2300/2400 SYSTEM

I. Introduction
The ERDAS 2300/2400 system is a complete turn key stand alone image processing system for performing image analysis of remotely sensed data, such as LANDSAT or SPOT satellite data, video digitized image data such as aerial photographs, or gridded polygon data such as digitized soils or topography maps. The ERDAS software package that comes with the 2400 system provides many standard image processing functions , a complete and integrated geographic information system (GIS), polygon capture software for use with a table digitizer, and many data base management utilities, all run in a menu-driven and highly interactive environment. The ERDAS 2400 system may be configured to work with several different image processors, ranging from the low cost Digital Graphics CAT system to the more powerful, higher resolution displays such as the Raster Technologies and Gould (DeAnza) image processors. Through the GIS software, many different types of data may be combined in one analysis to provide solutions to problems that cannot be solved using only one type of data. The ERDAS mapping package can produce true scale hard copy map output on the graphics line printer provided as standard equipment. The amount of data that can be processed and stored on the system is limited only by the amount of disk space that is purchased with the system, and more disk space can always be added later if the need arises. As little as 20 megabytes of storage can be used for small scale image processing requirements, or as much as 1000 megabytes can be purchased. A standard 9-track tape drive is also provided with the system to allow for easy access to digital image data from a large number of sources. A number of different CPUs, ranging from the PDP 11/23+, and MICRO-VAX for small scale operations, up to the VAX 11/780, for large scale image processing, are available to satisfy the most demanding applications. An optional table digitizer may also be purchased to allow the system to capture data directly from maps of almost any scale. Multi-user capability is also provided with the ERDAS system. One or many users may perform data processing simultaneously, and in fact, each individual user can run and manage several concurrently running programs so that tasks such as loading a tape can be performed in the background, while other, more interactive tasks, can be done at the console. Data files may be shared by several users or protected from unauthorized access by the file protection system of the RSXll-M or VMS operating system. The ERDAS system is designed to provide a powerful software tool for managing, displaying, and processing digitial image and geographic data, without requiring sophisticated knowledge of computers or programming.

Copyright 1983, 1984 by ERDAS, Inc. All rights reserved

Utah State University Image Standardization Tools

2010-06-03T14:21:00.006-04:00

Years ago I ran into a tool built by the Remote Sensing/GIS lab and Utah State University. I recently stumbled onto the tool once again and immediately thought of sharing the tool with you folks.

The website states, “This website provides three tools that create ERDAS Imagine TM spatial models (.gmd format). Each tool creates a different .gmd file providing a slightly different approach to standardization. These tools are designed for Landsat 5 TM and Landsat 7 ETM+ scenes and require, as input, the header file (*.h1) accompanying NLAPS formatted imagery from the USGS at Eros Data Center.”

It offers,

DN-to-Reflectance Conversion
COST Atmospheric Correction
COST without Tau (Dark Object Subtraction) Atmospheric Correction

Check it out and have fun...

Utah State University Image Standardization Tools

Condolences to Dr. Robert Moses' family, friends, and colleagues at PCI Geomatics

2010-05-06T15:10:00.013-04:00

I send out my condolences to Dr. Robert Moses' family, friends, and colleagues at PCI Geomatics. Dr. Moses passed away Monday, May 3rd at his home in Chelsea, Quebec, Canada.

PCI Press Release: http://www.pcigeomatics.com/pressnews/Dr_Robert_Moses.pdf

Single core vs. multi-core image processing (vol 2)

2010-04-25T22:28:00.018-04:00

As discussed in Single core vs. multi-core image processing (vol 1), I want to present the times for ECW and JPEG2000 compression in ERDAS IMAGINE 2010 v10.1. I tested using the Export to ECW and Export to JPEG2000 commands, running in batch mode.

As you may recall, with the release of ERDAS IMAGINE 2010 this past December 2009, each IMAGINE Advantage license provides the customer the capability to batch process up to four simultaneous processes. If you have more IMAGINE Advantage licenses brokered using a floating license manager, each floating IMAGINE Advantage license can add four more simultaneous processes. In this experiment, I tested with one IMAGINE Advantage for 1 – 4 processes and another floating IMAGINE Advantage license for 5 – 8 processes.

With ERDAS IMAGINE 2010 v10.1 the latest version of the ECW JPEG2000 Codec SDK, v4.1 is used. This new version of the SDK has focused in JPEG2000 improvements. This new version of the ECW JPEG2000 Codec SDK will be made available to the market soon.

As discussed in vol 1, thanks to Dell, Inc. for providing the test system and SAM Inc for inspiring the software performance upgrades. The test system is configured as follows:

Dell Precision T7500
Processor: Dual Quad Core, 2.13GHz with 4MB Cache
System RAM: 4GB 1066MHz
Internal Controller: C4 SATA Non-RAID
Internal Disks: Four 1.5TB 7200 RPM SATA with 3.0Gbps, 16MB Data Burst Cache

External Storage: 15 Bay SAS/SATA Array
Array Controller: PERC 6/E SAS RAID, 256MB Memory
Array Disks: Ten 750GB 7200 RPM 3.0Gbps (note above, array can hold 15 disks)
Configuration: RAID 0

Operating System: Microsoft Windows Server 2008 x64, R2

I ran tests using the 2095 uncompressed strip GeoTIFFs of 5000 x 5000 x 3-bands x 8-bit data (each file is 73,282MB). The target compression ratio for both ECW and JPEG2000 was 15:1.

When processing one image at a time, there was a lot of unused processing capacity. For example, when compressing one ECW file at a time 700MB of total RAM was used; 25% of all eight cores were used; and 20% of the disk bandwidth was used.

By using this extra capacity with multiple simultaneous compressions we more effectively use our total available computing power. When compressing eight ECW files simultaneously 1.3GB of total RAM was used; 75% of all eight cores were used; and 90% of the disk bandwidth was used.

While the ERDAS IMAGINE batch engine does not limit its multi-core processing to the number of cores on the system, I stopped at eight because the disk capacity was filling up. I am convinced I could have pushed the number of simultaneous processes to 10 (or more) if I had added five more disks to fill the array container (but these additional five disks were not available).

ERDAS ER Mapper users will have slightly faster times when compressing one image, But, when running a batch of many images and more especially when running simultaneous processes, ERDAS IMAGINE will be significantly faster. In the future, we will incorporate into ERDAS IMAGINE what makes ERDAS ER Mapper faster when processing one image. Below are the times:

# Processes	ECW Time	JPEG2000 Time
1	2:51:15	5:46:44
2	1:29:27	2:44:44
3	0:43:48	1:58:24
4	0:41:19	1:47:03
5	0:41:37	1:06:55
6	0:35:49	0:55:03
7	0:33:01	0:45:51
8	0:31:53	0:43:14

Looking at these numbers, we can see that a new day is rising for the remote sensing and GIS user community. Think for a moment, one ECW image was being completed every 0.9 seconds when running eight processes, and one JPEG2000 image was being completed every 1.2 seconds. This means you complete a large compression task in less time than it takes to each you to go eat lunch.

If you need a reason for your boss to spend money on an updated system, in the long term a fast processing configuration like the one I have tested is likely the least expensive productivity enhancement they can buy. All they need to do is determine how fast solutions are needed. Is compressing 2095 images over lunch fast enough?

Volume 1 Post Reference: http://field-guide.blogspot.com/2010/04/single-core-versus-multi-core-image.html

Single core vs multi-core image processing (vol 1)

2010-04-21T09:08:00.011-04:00

For many years the remote sensing and photogrammetry community have demanded more performance in processing of image data. (I still remember how excited I was when upgrading from an IBM XP with a 10MB hard disk to a Compaq 386 with a 300MB hard disk.) While, some functions continue to be limited by raw processing performance, most applications can receive massive benefit from a higher performance disk configuration. The next few post will discuss this topic.

Thanks to Dell, Inc. for the test system they provided. This is a cost-effective, yet solid performance server configuration. The test system is as follows:

Dell Precision T7500
Processor: Dual Quad Core, 2.13GHz with 4MB Cache
System RAM: 4GB 1066MHz
Internal Controller: C4 SATA Non-RAID
Internal Disks: Four 1.5TB 7200 RPM SATA with 3.0Gbps, 16MB Data Burst Cache

External Storage: 15 Bay SAS/SATA Array
Array Controller: PERC 6/E SAS RAID, 256MB Memory
Array Disks: Ten 750GB 7200 RPM 3.0Gbps
Configuration: RAID 0

Operating System: Microsoft Windows Server 2008 x64, R2

Since some people will read this blog months after these posts, I will not post prices. Notwithstanding my reluctance to mention prices, I will say that the performance boost will pay for itself. I suggest you look for the price this system on Dell’s website.

This effort actually began a few years ago over the Christmas Holidays when Chuck Patterson (SAM Inc. IT), Dell, Haiyan Qu (ERDAS Customer Support) and I got together to understand the performance of Dell’s EqualLogic Storage Array Network (SAN) device running ERDAS IMAGINE processes. That discussion was in the middle of ERDAS’ development of multi-core batch processing (former working name BatchX). With the completion of the multi-core batch processing effort at ERDAS, Dell and I restarted the testing with standard Disk Arrays. We will expand to SANs over the next few months.

As a benchmark to the speed of the system, I ran tests using the standard copy command in a .bat command file to determine the read-write speed of the configuration. Here are the speeds recorded on the system using 2095 uncompressed GeoTIFFs of 5000 x 5000 x 3-bands x 8-bit data (each file is 73,282MB):

0:14:26 Disk Array to Disk Array
0:23:01 Internal Disk to Disk Array
0:27:20 Disk Array to Internal Disk
0:40:01 Internal Disk, different disks
0:53:56 Internal Disk, same disks

As expected, the RAID 0 Disk Array really boosts performance. To be noted, RAID 0 is not redundant, and therefore long-term data storage on this configuration is not a good idea. But, processing data (especially writing) on a RAID 0 gives you powerful a performance boost.

In the next few posts, I will present file creation speeds of JPEG2000 and ECW in ERDAS IMAGINE 2010.1’s implementation of the ECW JPEG2000 Codec SDK v4.1 using this configuration. I hope you will find posts these useful.

Volume 2 post: http://field-guide.blogspot.com/2010/04/single-core-vs-multi-core-image.html

When does a .img image roll-over to a .ige image?

2010-04-16T11:33:00.027-04:00

The HFA .img format was designed by ERDAS in the early 1990’s. At that time, Microsoft’s operating system file size limit on disk was 2,147,483,648 bytes (2.1GB) was considered huge. Today, 2.1GB is not considered huge.

In 1999, before Microsoft upgraded their OS to support a true 32-bit file size on disk (2^32 or 4.2GB), ERDAS released a work-around (tricking the OS) using the .ige spill-over image files (an uncompressible 64-bit offset data file). ERDAS has plans (but no time-table at present) to move to a 64-bit offset .img file, eliminating the need for the .ige files (and allowing DR-RLE compresssion of .img files > 2.1GB).

Until the time when a 64-bit offset .img file with DR-RLE support is supported, the mapping community must deal with the question, "when will this file spill-over to a .ige file?" To help the ERDAS IMAGINE community with this challenge, I want to take a moment to help explain when spill-over to the .ige file occurs. This will allow you to plan for the transition from a .img to a .ige file when creating new files.

One major thing to understand, when determining if an image needs a .ige file ERDAS counts pixels, not bytes. This is done because when using the DR-RLE compression ERDAS cannot know prior to writing out the image the size of the final compressed image. Therefore, counting pixels rather than bytes is a safe method.

Below are helpful calculations for understanding the transition zone…

Nevertheless, these calculations do not account for all the elements contributing to the final file size. The number of data blocks (block size) and metadata such as stats, projection, and attributes (thematic data) will also play into the final file size of a .img file. You are not likely to store the full pixel numbers below before the rollover.

The formula for calculating the total number of pixels is:
Total bytes allowed / bytes per pixel = total # pixels
For 1-bit data: 2^31 / 0.125 = 17,179,869,184 pixels (17.180 gigapixels)
For 2-bit data: 2^31 / 0.25 = 8,589,934,592 pixels (8.590 gigapixels)
For 4-bit data: 2^31 / 0.5 = 4,294,967,296 pixels (4.294 gigapixels)
For 8-bit data: 2^31 / 1 = 2,147,483,648 pixels (2.147 gigapixels)
For 16-bit data: 2^31 / 2 = 1,073,741,824 pixels (1.073 gigapixels)

Take the square root to get an approximate square array size for the 1-band panchromatic or thematic (color palette) image:
Sqrt of 17,179,869,184 gives a 131,072 X 131,072 x 1-band x 1-bit image
Sqrt of 8,589,934,592 gives a 92,681 x 92,681 x 1-band x 2-bit image
Sqrt of 4,294,967,296 gives a 65,536 x 65,536 x 1-band x 4-bit image
Sqrt of 2,147,483,648 gives a 46,341 x 46,341 x 1-band x 8-bit image
Sqrt of 1,073,741,824 gives a 32,768 x 32,768 x 1-band x 16-bit image

For a 3-band image, the formula is (less than 8-bit not used for multi-layer files):
(Total bytes allowed / # bands) / bytes per pixel = pixels in each band
For 8-bit data: (2^31 / 3) / 1 = 715,827,883 pixels
For 16-bit data: (2^31 / 3) / 2 = 357,913,941 pixels

Take the square root to get an approximate array size for the 3-band image:
Sqrt of 715,827,883 gives a 26,755 x 26,755 x 3-band x 8-bit image
Sqrt of 357,913,941 gives a 18,919 x 18,919 x 3-band x 16-bit image

For a 4-band images:
For 8-bit data: sqrt ((2^31 / 4) / 1) gives a 23,170 x 23,170 x 4-band x 8-bit image
For 16-bit data: sqrt ((2^31 / 4) / 2) gives a 16,384 x 16,384 x 3-band x 16-bit image

Related Blog Post, Fast and Lossless Compression

Tried out ERDAS Communities?

2010-03-09T09:21:00.004-05:00

The ERDAS Communities forums are starting to pick up speed. There are quite a few long-time ERDAS (power) users on the forums. Some of these people are former ERDAS employees as well. You will find current ERDAS employees on-line from time-to-time (as work load permits).

Check out ERDAS Communities soon.

It can be found at: http://community.erdas.com/

Trip Report from Perth Australia and Tokyo Japan ERDAS Rocks 2010

2010-02-19T08:09:00.009-05:00

Sorry for the late posting this year; we in product management are very much in demand supporting sales on the recent 2010 release and working overtime planning 2010.1, 2011 and beyond. Far more than ‘all is well’ is the mantra early in 2010. Indeed, ERDAS Rocks!

Over the last two weeks, I have been in Perth Australia and Tokyo Japan for the ERDAS Rocks 2010 Tour. The customer and prospect reception was tremendous. I discussed the history of ERDAS IMAGINE and ERDAS ER Mapper as well as the current efforts in fusing of ER Mapper, Image Compressor, and IMAGINE technologies. I also discussed the future of the technology fusing efforts, which will include LPS and new technologies we have yet to openly discuss.

Chris Tweedie discussed the current stage of ERDAS APOLLO and the fusing of ERDAS IWS technology into ERDAS APOLLO. During his demo in both Perth and Tokyo, the audience was amazed at the speed ERDAS APOLLO served imagery and vectors. He did such a good job a PO for ERDAS APOLLO was waiting on us when we arrived in the Perth ERDAS office the following morning.

In Tokyo, the audience had thought web services were supposed to be slow, that slow was the nature web services. Were they every pleasantly surprised; their questions and comments showed a new interest in web services. And to think, what we have in development is faster than what we demoed live in Perth and Tokyo!

To my Chinese friends, Happy New Year! The year of the Tiger is off to a roaring start for ERDAS.

Two Poems to Usher in 2010

2009-12-30T21:01:00.006-05:00

Pardon me as I post something non-geospatial to end 2009 and begin 2010. To me, these poems are insightful on why it is important check ourselves every so often to make sure we have our priorities in order. Happy New Year.

THE WAYS
But to every man there openeth,
A way, and way, and away,
A high soul climbs the highway,
And the low soul gropes the low,
And in between on the misty flats,
The rest drift to and fro.

But to every man there openeth,
A high way and a low,
And every mind decideth,
The way his soul shall go.
-John Oxenham

THE WINDS OF FATE
One ship sails East,
And another West,
By the self-same winds that blow,
'Tis the set of the sails
And not the gales,
That tells the way we go.

Like the winds of the sea
Are the waves of time,
As we journey along through life,
'Tis the set of the soul,
That determines the goal,
And not the calm or the strife.
-Ella Wheeler Wilcox

What is LPS eATE?

2009-12-17T08:00:00.003-05:00

LPS eATE is an add-on module to LPS for automatically extracting terrain from stereo optical imagery. The difference between LPS eATE and LPS ATE is the precision and accuracy of LPS eATE is much higher than LPS ATE, requiring less manual editing after the automatic processing is complete.

LPS eATE is a scalable tool, scaling from parallel processing using multiple cores on a single system, to distributed processing using multiple cores on multiple systems on your network.

Because of the processing power and the new algorithms a highly dense point cloud (matching on almost every point in the stereo coverage), can be output.

LPS eATE is being released soon to customers as a technology preview. If you have collected elevation points using optical imagery in the past, you will want to test-drive LPS eATE. (And ERDAS would like your feedback on your test drive.)

ERDAS APOLLO Benchmarks with Open Source Image Servers

2009-12-14T17:41:00.004-05:00

Chris Tweedie, and ERDAS employee did some image server benchmarking on his own time. The results indicate ERDAS APOLLO is as strong in the image server world as its name indicates.

Chris' tests are an extension to the initial OGC Web Map Service raster benchmarks conducted at FOSS4g 2009 in Sydney. Unfortunately ERDAS were unable to participate. Chris took in upon himself to not only run the same suite of tests but expand and test on a completely different platform.

Have a heavy image server load to lift, you owe it to yourself to have a look. http://blog.webmapper.com.au/image-server-benchmark/

ERDAS Announces Joel Campbell as new President

2009-12-14T10:16:00.003-05:00

ERDAS, Inc. just released this to the press:

ERDAS Announces Joel Campbell as new President

Norcross, GA — ERDAS Inc. is pleased to announce that industry veteran Joel Campbell will join the management team as the new President in January 2010, reporting to the ERDAS Board of Directors.

Mr. Campbell is well known and highly regarded throughout the geospatial industry, where he has been a featured speaker, lecturer and trainer for many geospatial organizations around the world. He has over 20 years of experience in the geospatial industry, in a variety of senior roles including sales, business development and product management. His previous employers include GeoEye, Definiens, EarthData and ESRI, along with operating his own consulting firm.

Most recently, Campbell was the Senior Director of Product Management for GeoEye, where he helped manage the company’s expansion into new commercial markets and supported the launch of products from the recently launched GeoEye-1 earth imaging satellite. During more than a decade with ESRI, he held chief leadership and management positions in the U.S. sales operation. These included Director of U.S. Sales, supervising regional offices and several hundred staff members, as well as expanding the company’s presence in the Washington D.C. area.

“Joel brings invaluable experience to ERDAS.” said Juergen Dold, President, Geospatial Solutions Division, Hexagon “We are pleased that he will be joining the management team, where he can apply his diverse experience across the geospatial value chain from capture to delivery.”

“ERDAS offers a compelling suite of products to the geospatial community, providing the world’s most respected desktop remote sensing and photogrammetry solutions, complimented with innovative enterprise solutions,” said Campbell. “I am thrilled to join the management team as we continue to focus on serving the full spectrum of our customers’ needs.”

-----
My comment: Joel met with the ERDAS employees last week for a question and answer session. My fellow ERDAS employees (and I) are excited about Joel becoming an Erdasian. Welcome aboard Joel!

ERDAS IMAGINE 2010 available for download...

2009-12-09T11:04:00.007-05:00

Customers may download ERDAS IMAGINE 2010 by going to the ERDAS IMAGINE Product page Download tab: http://www.erdas.com/products/ERDASIMAGINE/ERDASIMAGINE/Downloads.aspx

The "ERDAS IMAGINE 2010 What's New" and "Increasing Workflow Efficiency with ERDAS IMAGINE 2010" documents found in the Product Literature tab should be very beneficial.

ERDAS IMAGINE 2010 is supported on the following platforms:
Windows XP Professional x32 and x64 SP3 or higher
Windows Vista x32 and x64 SP2 or higher, Business, Enterprise & Ultimate
Windows 7 x32 and x64 Professional & Ultimate
Windows Server 2008 x32 and x64 SP2 or higher

Note: Microsoft Windows XP x32 has limited large output file sizes. The maximum file size depends upon system configuration and rarely exceeds 70GB. All other supported OS versions do not experience this limitation.

Signed, Sealed and Delivered: ERDAS 2010 Software Release Now Available

2009-12-07T11:58:00.003-05:00

ERDAS, Inc. Press Release.....

Norcross, GA – ERDAS Inc. announces the availability of the ERDAS 2010 annual software release, which includes new and updated versions of ERDAS’ products to author, manage, connect and deliver geospatial information.

The ERDAS 2010 Software includes new versions of ERDAS IMAGINE, LPS, ERDAS ER Mapper, ERDAS Extensions for ArcGIS, ERDAS ADE, ERDAS APOLLO and ERDAS TITAN Client. In addition, ERDAS is introducing several new products, including IMAGINE Feature Interoperability and IMAGINE SAR Interferometry, as well as a technology preview of a new automated terrain extraction capability in LPS eATE. Product downloads, collateral and licensing information are available on the ERDAS website. Media kits will begin shipping later this month to software maintenance customers.

“The ERDAS 2010 software is a significant release, bringing remarkable productivity, performance, interoperability and value to geospatial users throughout the industry,” said Mladen Stojic, Senior Vice President, Product Management and Marketing, ERDAS. “ERDAS 2010 caters to the needs of our users worldwide. This release provides a renaissance in the usability of ERDAS IMAGINE through the new ribbon interface, parallel processing support and a fully integrated enterprise geoprocessing offering based on the OGC WPS specification.”

ERDAS IMAGINE 2010 is an all in one, fully integrated desktop authoring platform, incorporating image analysis, remote sensing and GIS capabilities. Featuring a new ribbon interface, ERDAS IMAGINE makes it easier for users to streamline workflows and customize their workspace. ERDAS IMAGINE also provides enhanced tools for parallel batch processing, spatial modeling, map production, mosaicking and change detection.

LPS 2010 is a powerful softcopy photogrammetry system for a variety of workflows, including defense, remote-area mapping, transportation planning, orthophoto production (for basemap generation) and close-range applications. LPS eATE enables users to generate high-resolution terrain information from stereo imagery like never before, ensuring speed and accuracy, providing an unparalleled environment for processing terrain data from airborne and satellite sensors.

ERDAS APOLLO 2010 is equipped to fully understand, competently manage and rapidly serve large volumes of vector, raster and terrain data. ERDAS APOLLO implements an out-of-the box Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), that provides a publish, find and bind workflow for any data type. Integrating ERDAS Image Web Server and ERDAS TITAN, ERDAS APOLLO is now available in three tiers to cater to any organization’s management, collaboration and delivery needs. From a low-cost, remarkably fast image and feature server to a comprehensive data management and on demand geoprocessing system, ERDAS APOLLO provides unprecedented performance, even when handling the largest data archives.

To learn more about ERDAS 2010 Software, please call +1 770 776 3400, toll free +1 877 GO ERDAS, or visit www.erdas.com.

JPEG2000 Performance

2009-11-20T09:21:00.016-05:00

When the former ER Mapper, Ltd (purchased in May 2007 by ERDAS) began work in 2003 to add support for JPEG2000 (JP2) to the ECW SDK, ER Mapper noticed JP2 specifications were very broad. As a result, JP2’s speed would not approach ECW speeds for decades, if ever. Think of it this way, JP2 is a Sports Utility Vehicle (SUV or 4-wheel drive) and ECW is a Formula 1 Ferrari.

The geospatial industry deals with dozens to thousands of images at a time and speed is critical. While geospatial users need the Formula 1 Ferrari, they must drive on public roads (lowest common IT standards), and thus must use the SUV not the Formula 1.

How can SUV owners get more speed from their JP2 beast? By using the ERDAS ECW/JP2 SDK’s J2I file. This ‘index’ file to the JP2 file allows customers to more rapidly access JP2 data in a viewing technology that uses the ECW SDK to read ECW and JP2 files. The J2I file will significantly improve your performance by fine tuning your existing engine.

The improvement in speed depends on the encoding method. Some encoding methods mandated by less geospatially sophisticated IT departments are like pulling a loaded trailer behind the SUV. An engine tuning helps, but slow starts cannot be avoided.

You may ask, how do I create these on JP2 J2I files in ERDAS IMAGINE 2010? For one image at a time, just touch the file with any ERDAS IMAGINE function, and like the aux file, it is automatically created.

For batch creation, use the Edit Image Metadata (aka Image Command Tool). Select one image needed, select ‘Batch’, the select all images needed in the batch tool.

You may be asking, why is there no check-box function for creation the J2I file on Edit Image Metadata? All you need to do is touch the file with any ERDAS IMAGINE function and it is created. Thus only touching the file in Batch Mode is needed.

And with the IMAGINE Advantage 2010 batch mode, you can touch up to four images at a time with each IMAGINE Advantage floating license you have available.

Back to our cars (image file formats); what I want from my GIS and remote sensing data format and software is a street version Ferrari (has a roof, stereo, leather seats, electric windows, air-conditioning, and of course GPS).

Ref: What are J2I files? and Why compress?

GEOINT 2009 Interview with GISCafe

2009-11-13T09:51:00.003-05:00

Here is an interview with me at GEOINT 2009 found in GISCafe.

http://www10.giscafe.com/video/display_media.php?category_id=10197&link_id_display=29522

Transparency with MrSID background data

2009-11-09T18:32:00.007-05:00

For many years ERDAS IMAGINE has not provided correct transparency creation with the IMAGINE MrSID Encoders. This was addressed in 9.3 and continues on through the 9.3 Service Packs and into ERDAS IMAGINE 2010. Yet, it is not obvious how to do this.

The user must set the NoData (NullData) in ImageInfo (LayerInfo) or in Image Command Tool (Image Metadata Editor in 2010), then use the IMAGINE MrSID Encoders. Voilà you have a true transparent background data.

ERDAS will make the correct transparency creation ability more prominent and flexible in a future release.

Here is one big thing to remember; ERDAS uses 0 as the transparent value while ESRI uses 255. ERDAS as well as other remote sensing and photogrammetric packages have a black background page while ESRI has a white background page. The more careful image providers now create 8-bit data with a range from 1 to 254 rather than 0 to 255. All 0 and 255 values will be outside of the actual image footprint. This approach allows their customers to be flexible with whatever package they they are using at the moment.

MrSID Performance on MosaicPro and more....

2009-09-22T16:52:00.008-04:00

ERDAS has researched, researched, tuned and tuned.... now we are processing 3982 MrSID DOQQs (all the state of Georgia, USA) into one seamless mosaic. The memory usage does not exceed 1GB at any point. We did not get an exact time, and file size.... but it took about 3 days and produced a >700GB output file.

3982 is NOT the maximum number, just the largest number we have tested. The steady memory usage indicates the maximum number is much, much higher than 3982.

One thing to note..... There is a bug in Microsoft's XP x32 operating system affecting very large file creation. Our conversations with Microsoft have lead to the conclusion the bug was introduced between XP SP1 and XP SP2. The bug keeps the operating system from supporting very large files. The maximum file size you can create depends on your system configuration. The largest we have heard of is 70GB. Most systems cannot exceed 35GB.

We have tried rolling back the XP operating systems back to SP1, or back to the original Windows XP, but that has not been successful. Once Windows XP SP2 is loaded, something is not being unloaded. This is a puzzle for both ERDAS and Microsoft.

What is the solution for large file creation in ERDAS IMAGINE 9.3.x? Use Windows XP x64 or Windows Vista. ERDAS will expand operating system support for ERDAS IMAGINE 2010, the versions to be announced later.

** A post-post clarification, if I may. I received a few emails concerning the XP x32 file size limit. This limit is not related to any specific file format. Rather, it is limited to the operating system not allowing the creation of a single large file of any type. Again, there are some variations, but if you need large files of any type you must move from Windows XP x32. For all its bad press, Vista x32 does not have this problem.

More on Consolidated Mosaic

2009-08-24T09:13:00.016-04:00

Well, it has become well known by now that MosaicPro will be included as a native part of IMAGINE Advantage and LPS Core in ERDAS IMAGINE 2010, due Fall 2009. The new MosaicPro had an internal working name of Consolidated Mosaic. MosaicTool, MosaicPro, lessons from ER Mapper and more were used to create the new MosaicPro (http://field-guide.blogspot.com/2009/06/consolidated-mosaic.html). Moreover, we have optimized MosaicPro to be much more RAM and CPU scalable, and that it touches each pixel the fewest times possible.

Yet, let me yell this from the house top.... all ERDAS IMAGINE and LPS customers with current Software Maintenance (SWM) will be receiving this 'new' MosaicPro in version 2010. It is a real gem. You will be impressed.

Here are some early tests:
Dual-core 2 GHz CPU, 4GB RAM, standard disks, Vista Business

Load 3840 images:
9.3.2 16:40 minutes; 463 MB RAM
2010 3:05 minutes; 98 MB RAM

Load 4896 images:
9.3.2 35:06 minutes; 669 MB RAM
2010 4:16 minutes; 113 MB RAM

Cutline Generation on 4896 images:
9.3.2 45:47 minutes; 1,606 MB RAM
2010 01:41 minutes; 125 MB RAM

Mosaicking 127 images:
9.3.2 41:41 minutes
2010 29:11 minutes

Dual Quad-core 2.328 GHz CPU, 16GB RAM, average speed disk array, XP-64
Mosaicking 3982 images:
9.3.2 Not possible
2010 >700GB output file in under 2.5 days

Mosaicking 1147 images:
9.3.2 Not possible
2010 >2.6TB output file in under 5.5 days

All processes used a maximum of just over 800MB of RAM. We researched using more RAM with MosaicPro and found it does not help. This is because we have tuned it so thoroughly that the bottleneck is now the operating system’s thread handling, and hard disk I/O. So, it is time to test fast disks.

But, when using the new added ECW / JPEG2000 direct-write from MosaicPro, MosaicPro will need more RAM. We are working on that as well. We expect we can protect the speed while shrinking down the memory requirement significantly. We expect this will occur in version 2010.1 (Sprilg 2010) or version 2011 (Fall 2010).

Now, we are ready to take MosaicPro to 64-bit. As you can see, when ERDAS goes to 64-bit, we will really take advantage of what 64-bit can really do. Many companies have used a 64-bit port to mask their sloppy coding by accessing more RAM. Not at ERDAS! We know there are a lot of issues surrounding true speed improvement and large file handling. We want our loyal customers to have it all! (http://field-guide.blogspot.com/2009/02/benefits-of-64-bit-architecture-in.html)

Personally, I enjoy looking at ERDAS IMAGINE as a CPU race-car entry. Maybe we can get Intel to test MosaicPro as it does ECW in its performance testing matrix?

Return to Singapore

2009-07-31T08:58:00.014-04:00

After 16 years and 11 months, I am returning to Singapore. In September 1992 I traveled to Singapore with Karen Willoughby, Bruce Rado and Jack Dangermond; followed up by Adelaide, Australia. The trip was to attend the 1992 South Asia and OZRI User Group Meetings (UGM). In those days, ERDAS and ESRI held joint international UGMs as most of our distributors sold both companies products and the companies were considered business partners.

At the UGMs I presented a pre–release version of ERDAS IMAGINE 8.0.2. The products I presented were the recently released IMAGINE Digital Ortho and the soon to be released WYSIWYG Map Composer, IMAGINE Vector Module, and the graphic flow chart model builder enhancement to Spatial Modeler script language, Model Maker.

During the same meetings, Jack presented ESRI’s soon to be released product, ArcView. This was ESRI’s move to a graphical user interface. While ERDAS IMAGINE had already made the jump in 1991, ESRI was making the jump in 1992.

When we had some quiet time, Jack demoed ArcView to me and answered my questions. I was impressed at the simplicity of the product. I recognized it a difficult task to take niche technology and create a product to reach out to a wider, non-geospatial trained community. As I discussed ArcView with him, I saw that the product could make that transition.

After we finished looking and discussing ArcView, Jack said he wanted to see IMAGINE Model Maker. Of course, I ran the models that I had planned to run and knew the models would run. Then, as I did to Jack, he asked me to do things that were not planned. He wanted a specific model built from the beginning. I cannot remember the models, but I built and ran them… no problems (ArcView had crashed all over the place on Jack when I asked for specific things).

Almost 17 years later, ArcView has grown up to ArcGIS. For the release of ArcGIS 9.0 in 2004, ESRI copied the Model Maker idea to create Model Builder. ArcView targeted a horizontal expansion of the market and Model Maker targeted a deeper penetration in the existing market. Both product ideas are powerful and have succeeded.

Where will geo-processing be in another 16 years and 11 months? As for ERDAS IMAGINE, imagine that ERDAS IMAGINE 2010 is just the beginning.

IMAGINE Your Future (The Map of the Future is an Intelligent Image)

2009-07-22T15:45:00.012-04:00

Here is a corporate video I believe was created from interviews made during the 1991 ERDAS User Group Meeting at SwissHotel; and completed during the spring of 1992. I am in this video at about 3:48. Thanks are due to Rob Luxeder (in the video at 6:08) for finding this jewel.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2L0dJBHZBw

People I see in the video are: Doug Stowe, Rudolph Richter, Bob Parrott, Kass Green, Richard Lacey, Gail MacAulay, Bill Newland, Roger Hoffer, Oliver Weatherbee, John Althausen (both then students at South Carolina), Bruce Rado, Lawrie Jordan, Brad Skelton, Jeff Dooley, Steve Sperry, Cheryl Brantley, Andy Zusmanis, Andy Bury, Xinghe Yang, Stan Quinn, Donn Rodekohr, Kurt Schwoppe, Barrie Collins, Rob Luxeder, Mike Schlemmer, Fred Woods, Andrea Gernazian, Hongyue Lin, Bill Sharp, Lynn Davis and Paul Beaty.

Who can you find?

See the Brief History of ERDAS IMAGINE in this blog here: http://field-guide.blogspot.com/2009/04/brief-history-of-erdas-imagine.html

Reprojecting Compressed Images

2009-07-21T09:34:00.009-04:00

Have you ever had a very large compressed image you needed to reproject? The challenge is, you do not want to reproject to a new uncompressed version of the image file and then re-compress.

Have you used Calibration in ERDAS IMAGINE?

Let’s say you have a 2GB 20:1 MrSID compressed color infrared (CIR) image you need to deliver to an ArcGIS user in your organization. The last thing you want to do is resample and re-compress, right? That takes too much disk space and time.

Display the image in the Viewer, select Raster > Geometric Correct > Reprojection. On the dialog that appears, select the new projection and then select the ‘ruler’ on the Geo Correction Tools dialog to calibrate the image.

This process will create a .aux for you MrSID file storing the mathematical model to reproject the image on-the-fly.

Deliver both the MrSID image and the .aux file to your ArcGIS friend. That as fast and simple.

Notes:

Starting ERDAS IMAGINE 9.2+, the IMAGINE MrSID encoders write full projection information to the MrSID header. WKT strings are written to MG2, and WKT strings and GeoTIFF tags to MG3 data.
With this change, the need for .sdw files and .aux files for map and projection data are no longer needed, but are available.

ERDAS IMAGINE 2010 will have a Shoebox, what is that?

2009-07-06T11:45:00.004-04:00

In the new Ribbon Interface for ERDAS IMAGINE 2010 we will add a new feature named, "Shoebox." The idea is to provide the customer a easy to use tool where a list of the data they are likely to use in a project are readily available. The Shoebox will not load the data in a database, but rather create an XML list of the locations of the data.

Hammad Kahn outlines some of the basic concepts of the Shoebox in, “Kicking Around With the Shoebox,” found at labs.erdas.com. Some of you have commented and asked questions below the article.

We may seem a little vague at times when discussing things on labs.erdas.com because it may not be the right time to discuss the more strategic features and future of new tool. Please do not feel we are offended when we side-step a question. In fact, we will use the specific question to help refine the new tool and from time-to-time contact you in private for clarification.

Anyway, please check out Kicking Around With the Shoebox at: http://labs.erdas.com/blog_view.aspx?q=6098

Consolidated Mosaic

2009-06-27T23:41:00.009-04:00

Consolidated Mosaic is a working name for a new mosaic paradigm that will be introduced in ERDAS IMAGINE 2010. Consider the different tools ERDAS, Inc. has for mosaicking images:

ERDAS IMAGINE's MosaicTool (original mosaic tools, good defaults options)
ERDAS MosaicPro (advanced MosaicTool, easy cutlines, ortho-correct from block files )
ERDAS ER Mapper Mosaic (fast virtual mosaic, a lot of capacity, limited capability)
ERDAS ER Mapper Color Balance (fast color balance, limited to true color)
ERDAS Image Compressor (fast ECW and JPEG 2000 compression)
ERDAS IMAGINE's MosaicDirect (Wizard to feed to MosaicPro and batch)
ERDAS IMAGINE's MosaicWizard (Wizard to process mosaic)
ERDAS IMAGINE's Virtual Mosaic (more capability than ER Mapper Mosaic, less capacity)

What if we combined these products in a single product? What if you could mosaic >2.5 terapixels of data straight into a single >2.5 terapixel IMG, or to a 20:1 compressed ECW, or to a lossless compressed JPEG2000 image. What if you could break that >2.5 terapixel mosaic into tiles with your shapefiles (and it has no temp files)? What if you could do all this within a 32-bit operating system environment?

If you think this can help you, keep your eyes open for a WebEx or an erdas labs discussion on this topic very soon.

I gave you a hint of where we were going when I asked Hammad to post to The Field Guide in: http://field-guide.blogspot.com/2009/02/benefits-of-64-bit-architecture-in.html

Web Demo of ERDAS Enterprise Server Products

2009-06-08T10:07:00.005-04:00

Recently, ERDAS placed web demos of ERDAS Enterprise Server Products on the web for the world to play with. The data are from Cherokee County, Georgia. I believe the speed is incredible. Give it a look at: http://demo.erdas.com/

If you wish, compare to the online mapping of: http://www.richlandmaps.com/#mapping

Preview the Future of ERDAS IMAGINE and more on ERDAS Labs

2009-06-04T14:10:00.002-04:00

This is going to be fun....

ERDAS Inc. announces the launch of ERDAS Labs, an informative new site highlighting technology currently being developed.

“ERDAS Labs provides the market and our customers a window into our product development activities; whether it’s a concept or idea we’re exploring, or a new feature under development for a product,” said Bruce Chaplin, Senior Vice President, Product Development, ERDAS. “We’ll showcase projects under active development, engaging our customers in conversations about these projects and soliciting their feedback.”

Whether it is an innovative new idea being explored or a major new feature being implemented for the next version of a product, ERDAS Labs provides a forum for discussion with the development team.

Visit http://labs.erdas.com/.

Vote Early and Vote Often

2009-06-03T18:43:00.017-04:00

Please cast your vote for the image file formats you use.

Пожалуйста отдайте свой голос за формат или форматы, которые Вы чаще всего используете.

Para favor lance seu voto para os formatos de arquivo de imagem que você usa.

Vote para favor para los formatos de archivo de imagen que usted utiliza.

S'il vous plaît voter pour les formats de dossier d'image vous utilisez.

使用されている画像フォーマットの投票に参加してください。

请为你使用的图像文件格式投票。

Stem alstublieft op de raster formaten die u het meest gebruikt.

Bitte wählen Sie die Bildformate, mit welchen Sie arbeiten.

Per favore di lanciare il suo voto per i formati di file di immagine lei usa.

Behag støp din stemme for avbildene arkivene formatene som du bruker.

The "Vote Early and Vote Often" phrase in the US is a humorous way of saying, "Make sure you vote, and vote in each election." It appears I am saying, "Vote early in the morning and vote many times during the same election." That is illegal and morally wrong. I would be disappointed in someone who would do that.