Update Archive

2006

2006.12.21 Version

MACINTOSH and WINDOWS VERSION

File - Open Image

One can display locations in an image window in latitude-longitude or map units for the sinusoidal projection. The projection information will be saved in geoTIFF images created from these images using the Reformat - Change Image File Format processor.

Processor - Display Multispectral Image

This version adds a new display type: 1-channel Thematic Display. This is useful (at least for me) to display "product" type images such as MODIS NDVI or any of the other many MODIS products. The data values are grouped into the desired number of levels and a legend is displayed to the left of the image indicating which palette colors are associated with each range of data. One can also enter a factor to use to multiply times the data values displayed in the legend to reflect the actual measurement value. Sometimes the data value may the the measurement value times 100 or 1000. One can use the Reformat - Change Image File Format processor to create thematic images based on what is displayed in the image window. One can use the Min/Max User Specified dialog box item to set the min and max values for the range of data to be displayed. Black is the default color for data values less than the minimum and white is the default color for values greater than the maximum. (Note: This feature can be considered as a supervised 1-channel levels classifier and maybe should be in the classifer processor, but it was easier to implement as part of the display processor.)

Also a feature has been added to help reduce the number of "clicks" to set some of the parameters in the dialog box.This is useful when one is opening several of the same images with a set of channels that are different than the default channel set. As long as the images have the same number of channels and data value type, the last setting of the channels to red-green -blue will be used.

Another feature along this line is a new feature to automatically display already open shape files onto a new image window when the shape file intersects the new image. The default is to display the shape file. There is a checkbox though to turn the vector display off if needed. Again this was implented to save time.

Thematic Image Windows

A new palette has been added: MODIS NDVI. It is a brown - green color range.

Also changes were made so that color selections for continuous range palettes such as blue-green-red or MODIS NDVI will be scattered across the available range of colors to maximize the color separation instead of just using the first 10 colors of one of these palettes for an image with 10 classes.

Processor - Reformat - Change Image File Format

A bug was fixed which caused PCA image files to not be created correctly.

A bug was fixed which caused an error when appending to a band sequential file.

2006.08.30 Version

MACINTOSH and WINDOWS VERSION

Processor - Cluster

A fix was made for a significant bug which was found earlier today that causes the statistics generated by the cluster processor to not be saved to project files correctly. Therefore the classify processor would not work correctly with these statistics. This bug was introduced in 6.20.06 version when the ability to handle 32-bit and 64-bit data were added.

Processor - Classify

The message in the classify output listing that the cluster fields cannot be used because there are no coordinates was removed. This caused confusion since the statistics are being used. One just cannnot classify the cluster field areas; that message is given if any training and/or test results listed.

2006.08.26 Version

MACINTOSH and WINDOWS VERSION

Thematic Image Windows

The "Correlation Matrix" palette is assigned to classes now such that the entire range of colors will be used when the number of classes is significantly less that the number of colors available (around 240).

File - Open Image

Map information in ENVI data set header files are now read for the Gauss-Krueger S-1942 projection. Let us know if you have other projections that you want added to this.

More cases are properly identified as being compressed data in the warning dialog message to users when hdf formatted files containing compressed data are read.

Map information in hdf files generated by SeaSpace TeraScan software are now read.

GeoTIFF files (Reading / Writing / editing Map Parameters)

The Pulkovo 1942 datum was added as another datum option.

Map projection parameters for several of the map projections are now being written out to GeoTIFF formatted files. The goal is to make the map information easily read by ArcGIS, ENVI and Imagine. I find though that each seems to handle this information differently; so the result is not perfect but much better than it was. Improvements were made in handling the Orthographic projection in GeoTIFF files. This was done to help handle data coming from our new tracking antenna.

The map projection parameters are listed in the output text window when one uses the Processor - Utilities - List Image Description menu item.

Processor - Cluster

Problem was fixed which caused all data to be thresholded when running the classify option within the Cluster Processor. Setting the threshold value now works correctly.

WINDOWS VERSION

Processor - Histogram

Problem was fixed which caused the listing of the number of pixels that were included in the histogram calculations to not be correct in the text output window.

060720 Version

The big change is for the Windows version: a change was made so that MultiSpec does not cause all txt files to be associated with MultiSpec when it starts up.

MACINTOSH and WINDOWS VERSION

File - Open Image

The pixel size is now read for ASTER L2B03 (Temperature) and L4 (DTM) data.

The Cylindrical Equal Area projection is read for EASE-Grid data sets. One can display locations in the image in latitude-longitude or map units. This was tested using the AMSR-E daily land data sets.

Map information in ENVI data set header files are now read for UTM and Geographic. Let us know if you have other projections that you want added to this.

A problem was fixed so that the swap bytes parameter in ENVI and ArcView formatted files would be read correctly for 4 and 8 byte data values.

Changes were made when reading hdf formatted image files to reduce the number of "mouse clicks" when opening this type of files. The message about selecting a data set is only displayed the first time a hdf file is opened after MultiSpec starts up. A button with a question has been added to display this message if one wants to review it. Also MultiSpec will default to the previous hdf data set selection when opening hdf files as long as that data set is available to be opened.

File - Open Image (Thematic) & .trl files

A change was made so that modifications to colors and class names for thematic image values that are saved to .trl files will be read back in correctly when not all classes are included in the thematic image file.

File - Open Shape File

A fix was made so that all of the available vectors would be displayed on images with map orientation angles other than 0. In some case some along the edge would not be displayed at some zoom settings.

Processor - Classify

Classification overlays are generated correctly for the PowerPC Mac version and the Windows version for images that have a map orientation angle other than 0.

Processor - Cluster

Cluster overlays are generated correctly for the PowerPC Mac version and the Windows version for images that have a map orientation angle other than 0.

WINDOWS VERSION

A change was made so that MultiSpec does not cause all txt files to be associated with MultiSpec when it starts up. Thanks go to Steve Haymes for helping me figure out what was causing this to happen. One can go to the following site to download a file which will restore the txt association back to the default: (http://www.dougknox.com/xp/file_assoc.htm). Select the TXT File Association Fix link.

Processor - Display Image

A problem was fixed which caused an image to not be displayed correctly when one display a side-by-side image and then a one channel image under some conditions.

File - Open Image

Note: A problem has been found that causes MultiSpec to crash when opening images up that are on the desktop. The first one can be opened but when opening a second or third image up, MultiSpec will just quit many times. A fix has not been found for this. A search of developer forums indicate that there are other "freeware" type applications that do this. If anyone has suggestions on what may be causing this, please let us know.

060621 Version

Sorry about this. A problem was found with some of the .sta files that are being written by the 6.20.06 version for some 16-bit integer data.

MACINTOSH and WINDOWS VERSION

File - Open Image

The datum, ellipsoid and utm zone are now included for ASTER Level 2 data. (At least for the ones that I have.)

Processor - Histogram Image

A problem was fixed which caused the statistics image files (.sta files) to not be written correctly for some 16-bit integer data. Images were displayed as black when the incorrect files were read later.

060620 Version

MACINTOSH and WINDOWS VERSION
File - Open Image

As mentioned above, image files with 32-bit signed/unsigned integer, 32-bit real and 64-bit real data types can now be handled.

Hdf & netcdf image files: Similar data sets (those with 1-channel and having the same number of lines, columns, data type, data bytes and the same first 5 characters of the data set name) that are contiguous are automatically grouped together so that they can be treated as a multispectral image file. One does not have to go through the process of linking them together. A group identifier is added to the data set name to indicate which data sets are grouped. The group identifier appears like '_Gn'.

File - Save Thematic Class Info As

A problem was fixed which caused the files with the class names and colors (.trl files) to not be created correctly.

The display multispectral image dialog box has been reorganized in the Windows version to be similar to that in the Macintosh version.

Processor - Reformat - Change Image File Format

One can create image files with data types of 8-bit, 16-bit & 32-bit signed/unsigned integer and 32-bit & 64-bit real. Note that the TIFF/GeoTIFF format is the only output format that can handle all of these data types.

One can now specify that 2-channels be multiplied in the 'New Channel from General Algebraic Transformation' option in the "Set Reformat Transform Parameters" dialog box. It could look like 1.0C1*1.0C2/1.0. Note that one can mix -, + and * operators, but they will be handled strickly left to right. This new capability will allow one to do Brovey transforms.

Note that using real data types can be useful when creating transformed images.

The dialog box for the Reformat - Change Image File Format dialog box has been modified.

Processor - Statistics

One can use hdf and netcdf files for projects. The data set selection being used is saved to the project file so that the proper data set is used when one opens a project file.