All it takes to do image processing is a basic understanding of the underlying concepts, the right tools, and the data itself. We have tried to cover the conceptual aspects elsewhere in this site, especially in the resource section. In this section, we provide information on where to obtain remote sensing data and the tools necessary to display, manipulate, and analyze those data.
|
We have seven-band, 512x512, 30 meter resolution data sets from the Landsat Thematic Mapper and a step-by-step procedure for viewing and analyzing them using a freeware application that is available for both Macintosh and PC computers. Download the images and the software and you can be doing remote sensing today! |
For each location we no longer provide the following:
The bright people at Purdue University have put together a neat little software package called MultiSpec. There are lots of other packages available (check out our list of remote sensing software), but we picked this one to use in our step-by-step tutorial since it is free and available for both Mac and PC.
Perhaps the simplest multispectral image processing task is the creation of a three-band composite. A three-band composite is created by using the measured reflected energy in each of three TM spectral bands to control the amount of blue, green, and red in a color output image. The step-by-step tutorials below will show you how to create a three-band combination from TM data sets using the MultiSpec software. The techniques and concepts are the same as for any other software package, although the mechanics will vary from one to another. We also provide a discussion of three-band composites.