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What is OrthoVista?

OrthoVista is a powerful professional software product that improves the quality, utility and value of digital image orthophoto mosaics. OrthoVista automatically performs a series of radiometric image adjustments designed to compensate image non uniformity and to match color and brightness across component images. Then OrthoVista utilizes advanced image processing algorithms to automatically combine the adjusted images into a single seamless mosaic.

What can OrthoVista do?

OrthoVista computes radiometric adjustments that compensate for visual effects such as hot spots, lens vignetting and mismatches between adjacent mosaic images. In addition, OrthoVista automates production of high quality, photogrammetric orthophoto mosaics, providing the capability to define mosaic production quickly and easily on a project wide basis.

OrthoVista increases the efficiency, profitability and quality of GIS and photogrammetric processing by automating the production of uniform and seamless digital image mosaics.

Before OrthoVista Processing

After OrthoVista Processing

Aerial photography over Loveland Colorado USA provided by EarthWatch Inc.

OrthoVista provides four basic capabilities of great value for the production of visually pleasing geographic image information mosaics. These key capabilities are: Dodging of individual images; Adjustment to match color and intensity of adjacent images; Automatic composition of adjusted images into a single seamless mosaic image; and project level management of large quantities of image data.

Project Level Interaction

All OrthoVista operations are performed on an entire project or project section. The operators need only request and entire project area and specify a handful of processing options for the whole project. OrthoVista automatically applies these options to individual images and sets of images as appropriate. Typical setup time is on the order of 90-120 seconds for projects containing tens, hundreds or even thousands of images.

Transfer interrupted! a Main Screen

Automatic Image Dodging

OrthoVista removes solar reflection "hot spots" and improves visual uniformity of most orthophotos by balancing the intensity and color variation across each frame. The software compensates for lens vignetting and various illumination effects by fitting sophisticated mathematic models to the image data and then using these models to remove undesirable brightness and color trends. This process compensates individual image intensity and color variation which may result from camera and/or scanning characteristics.
 

Automatic Mosaic Color Balancing

After adjusting individual image characteristics, OrthoVista automatically analyses and compares the color and intensity characteristics of adjacent images. This information is used to simultaneously adjust all mosaic source images in order to produce smooth and consistent intensity and color properties across the entire mosaic. This process compensates frame-to-frame variation of image characteristics which may be introduced during scanning or from exposures taken at different times.

Input Source Imagery

Color Balanced Result

Automatic Mosaic Generation

After computing intensity and color adjustments for individual images and for adjacent images, OrthoVista provides a variety of methods for automatically combining the individual images into a single mosaic image. All mosaic methods operate automatically without operator intervention. The result is a seamless image mosaic automatically created from tens, hundreds, or thousands of images. The result is a professional quality orthophoto mosaic for use in a wide range of Geographic Information System (GIS) and remote sensing applications.

Automatic Mosaic Composition

Automatic Adaptive Feathering

How does OrthoVista fit into production operations?

In normal production workflow, OrthoVista processing is inserted after the "rectification" processing and before the final QC and packaging operations.  OrthoVista accepts a set of orthophoto images as input and produces a mosaic image ready for final QC and packaging for delivery.

OrthoVista works with georeferenced digital image data in standard formats. These data typically are produced from georeferencing programs and/or orthophotography software such as found in softcopy photogrammetric systems. OrthoVista's source imagery consists of a set of rectified digital image files and corresponding georeference information files. OrthoVista converts this set of individual ortho images into a single, radiometrically uniform, seamless mosaic image file. For output the mosaic image can be partitioned into a set of manageable "tiles" each of which is a georeferenced image itself.
 

Is OrthoVista a "Magic Bullet"?

While OrthoVista does an excellent job of performing radiometric corrections for a majority of the imagery that is processed, there will always be extreme cases that automated image processing cannot address satisfactorily. Likewise, while OrthoVista will produce seamless mosaics most of the time, you may encounter problems with some cases involving exceptionally demanding imagery. These extreme cases normally constitute a very small portion of the throughput of a typical production operation and can normally be handled by manual processing of the individual images.

Another situation to consider is the case where source images are of extremely poor quality from the outset. It is wise to remember the following very true statement:
 

"Quality In, Quality Out"
 
The higher quality and more consistent the input imagery, the better the quality of the output imagery. OrthoVista should be considered an "Adjustment Process" which "Refines" the properties of the source image data. If the source data are extremely poor, only so much 'refinement' is possible. Therefore, it is always best to strive for a good product from the outset - then use OrthoVista to produce an excellent product.