PixelSense CIR
Point and click processing of Color Infrared imagery into beautiful ready-to-use high-quality natural color GeoTIFF images.
PixelSense CIR is the most efficient and cost-effective way to turn Color Infrared remote-sensed images into stunning natural-color georeferenced TIFF images for use in any mainstream GIS or visualization software. Simply feed the input Color Infrared image into PixelSense CIR and in a very short time, you will have a detailed and realistic output image. No algorithms to mess with. No settings to tweak. No World Files to detatch and re-attach. No multi-thousand-dollar GIS programs to buy. No Photoshop plugins needed. No channel math. No hand-tuning Levels and Curves.
Fast, easy, Inexpensive.
In-Depth Explanation: Color Infrared images lack a Blue component, and instead have an Infrared channel. They have both a Red and a Green channel, but the Red data is stored in the slot normally used to store the Green, and Green is stored where Blue ought to be. The challenge for PixelSense CIR is to fabricate a reasonable new Blue channel that will allow presentation of a natural-appearing image utilizing the remaining available data. PixelSense CIR calculates a facsimile Blue channel using the relationships between the other channels (including the Infrared). The result is surprisingly similar to an actual RGB image, and very useful for visualization purposes. CIR imagery is often available in more areas, higher resolutions and higher qualities than normal RGB color imagery.
Source Image and Output Image (approximately 1200 pixels wide):
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Detail Comparison (Source and Output):
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| Left: Color Infrared | Right: Natural Color |
Validation (Output [left] versus true RGB image [right]):
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| PixelSense CIR | Actual RGB image |
Validation summary: On the left is the natural-color image generated by PixelSense CIR from Color Infrared Imagery (30cm resolution) flown in February 2002. On the right is an unaltered RGB color airphoto (75cm resolution) of the same area taken in May of 2002. The difference in season results in a slight maturation of foliage which results in a stronger green in the RGB image. As well, the photos are different times and resolutions/qualities. While the color cast is not identical, the PixelSense CIR output is very usable as a natural-color image. As well, in this case the CIR imagery is available in higher resolution than the natural RGB color, resulting in much better detail. Reds, and color strength in general is stronger in the RGB image than in the Natural CIR image.
Validation Detail (Output [left] versus true RGB image [right]):
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| PixelSense CIR | Actual RGB image |
Validation Detail summary: This pair of images has been enlarged 2X without any interpolation. This allows for closer inspection of the detail in the two image sources. Here it is clearly visible that while the RGB image (if available) has better color, in this situation the processed CIR image has much cleaner detail.
See the Gallery for more examples of PixelSense CIR output including (for comparison) another example of this same area processed from older, lower-resolution CIR data.
The effort you save using PixelSense CIR the very first time, will pay for the program.
PixelSense CIR costs only USD $49 and can be purchased online. A Demo version is available. Order now!
Current PixelSense CIR Version
06/07/2005 Version 1.02 released.
- Modified to work with TIFF images where final RowsPerStrip block exceeds nominal length of image.