mosaic attempt 2

Today we tried to use Hugin to create a photomosaic of some of the field images from 9/11/12. Hugin is freeware, available for OSX and Windows. Trying to use Windows didn't work very well, so the best option was to use my Mac.

Hugin was pretty easy to use - we used the Assistant which expedited the process. 

We're uncertain about the projection type still, but we may try this method next:

http://hugin.sourceforge.net/tutorials/Mosaic-mode/en.shtml

Mosaic Generation from Hugin

Today we tried to use Hugin to create a photomosaic of some of the field images from 9/11/12. Hugin is freeware, available for OSX and Windows. Trying to use Windows didn't work very well, so the best option was to use my Mac.

Hugin was pretty easy to use - we used the Assistant which expedited the process.

We're uncertain about the projection type still, but we may try this method next:

http://hugin.sourceforge.net/tutorials/Mosaic-mode/en.shtml

Start to Finish Image Processing Attempt 1

Here's a quick three step process to go from JPG and JPGw from Palentier to a projected geotiff:

1. Copy both the JPG and the JPGw files into a folder that you want to work with
2. Open up the program "OpenEV". Load each file, then export as a GeoTiff to the appropriate directory. Make sure the file extension is .tif   - do this for all images (one at a time now, but hopefully we can batch this process in the future). When you save the file, name the file without an extension, and then afterwards, while viewing it in windows, give it a .tif extension. For some reason, giving the file a .tif extension during the export will give you a B+W image.
3. Add the .tif file into Arc. This should automatically create an .aux file in the directory with projection information. This should translate and be able to be read by ENVI.

Updated Image Processing Workflow

In order to keep current, here is a photo of our updated image processing workflow. Now, we convert from JPG and JPGW into a GeoTIFF using the OPEN_EV program. The OPEN_EV program has a GUI and is very intuitive, just requiring an export. Currently there is no way to batch convert the files as GeoTIFFS, but it doesn't take very long (just a few clicks per file).

Once turned into a GeoTIFF, we need to set the projection. For a still unknown reason, I can't figure out why Palentier is not producing a proper projection file for the JPG when it matches the jpg and gpx files. This may be a flaw in the code/design. Setting the projection is easy - in Arc, just define the projection based on what is in the original jpgw file (through the toolbox). Batch 'define projection' is currently not working for me, so again we need to do this individually, but at least it functions.

Until we have focused imagery, it'll be tough to make a proper determination as to which mosaicking procedure works best for us.

Converting JPG to GeoTIFF

Here is a link that will help us with our JPG to TIF issues. It uses GDAL, which is a program that I'll put on the lab machine.

http://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/2312/how-can-i-transform-a-georeferenced-jpg-to-a-georeferenced-tif

Here is the text of the answer:

You could use gdaltranslate.
gdal_translate -of GTiff myFile.jpg myFile.tifThis will actually give you a geoTiff, not a tiff with a world file.

And for more information on GDAL:

gdaltranslate is one of the commandline utilty tools that are part of gdal [gdal.org/]. gdal is used by both OpenSource and ESRI (raster only) tools to provide support for reading/writing raster and vector data. For windows, the easiest way to install it is to either use the OSGEO4W installer or the FWTools installer. The OpenSource Desktop GIS QGIS has a plugin called GDALTools which allows you to do this using a gui tool.

I'll try it out and see what happens...

Here is the workflow for our image processing. This is as of 9/3/2012.