AlphaPixel

Download the PixelSense CIR ZIPfile from the Demos page.
Download the sample CIR GeoTIFF ZIPfile from here (5.9Mb zipped).

Installing

When you unzip the PixelSense CIR zipfile, you will have a file called PixelSenseCIR.exe, approximately 656K in size. There is no installation, support files, DLLs, registry entries or other cruft necessary. Place the PixelSenseCIR.exe file anywhere on your system that is convenient for you. To run PixelSense CIR, simply double-click the EXE. If you would like to add PixelSense CIR to your Start Menu, right click on PixelSenseCIR.exe and select the Create ShortCut item from the popup menu. When the shortcut icon appears in the same directory as the PixelSenseCIR.exe, drag the shortcut onto the Windows Start Menu (or QuickLaunch bar, or other locations in newer versions of Windows).

Preparing Input

PixelSense CIR is designed to process any Color Infrared GeoTIFF (or TIFF) image from any source. These images are supplied as a single file, with the Near Infrared band stored where the Red channel normally would be, Red is stored where Green normally would be, Green is stored where Blue normally would be, and there is no real Blue channel supplied at all.

Images of this type are commonly available from numerous sources on the web. Sometimes they are supplied in other file formats (like MrSID) which PixelSense CIR currently cannot read. These images must be converted (and typically cropped) before being used with PixelSense CIR. See the Links page for sources of Color Infrared imagery for PixelSense CIR.

If the files are supplied compressed in the GNU GZIP (.gz) format or ZIP for, Programs like WinZip and 7-Zip (free) can be used to extract the .tif files. You will need to extract the .tif files manually before running PixelSense CIR.

Running

When PixelSense CIR is launched, you will be presented with the main window.

At this time, there are no user-adjustable settings for the PixelSense CIR process. Click on the Open File icon (image of a small yellow folder) in the upper right corner of the window. A File Dialog will appear to allow you to select an input file (or files). When you have selected one or more files, PixelSense CIR will begin creating the finished image.

Another short time later, PixelSense will finish its work, having created a new image in the same directory named something like 24682N.tif. The capital N appended at the end of the original name signifies that this is the Natural Color image. This image file should be approximately the same size as the input image. If the input image was compressed with one of the various TIFF compression methods, the output image will be larger because it is not compressed.

Command-line Options

PixelSense can accept command-line arguments to supply one or more input filenames.

Example:

• PixelSenseCIR.exe 24682.tif

PixelSense can accept wildcards in either/both the directory and filename portion of the file specification. This can be used to process entire directories of dozens, hundreds or even thousands of TIFF files at once. Multiple wildcards can be present in each command-line argument. Both the '*' (0 or any number of characters) and '?' (any single character) are accepted. Multiple wildcard-utilizing arguments can be provided at once.

Examples:

• PixelSenseCIR.exe C:\CIR\Images\*.tif
• PixelSenseCIR.exe C:\CIR\Images\Colo*.tif
• PixelSenseCIR.exe C:\CIR\Images\j*k*.tif
• PixelSenseCIR.exe C:\CIR\Images\j*k19?.tif
• PixelSenseCIR.exe C:\CIR\Images\Colo*.tif C:\Downloads\CIR\*.tif

The unregistered Demo version does not have any time limitations, but all output natural Color images it creates are watermarked with a checkerboard pattern in the Red channel. Every alternating square of the checkboard will have correct coloration, the squares will be brighter Red.

Purchasing

Visit our Purchase page to order a PixelSense CIR license. We will e-mail you a small text file named registration.txt. Simply save this file in the same directory as your PixelSenseCIR.EXE, and PixelSense CIR will become fully authorized to run without the demo limitations.