[Geotiff] Geotiff API's

[Daniel Denk]

Thank you for your suggestions and insights, Frank.

I do have these apps, but haven't used them due to their own claims of
limitation:

Geotiff Examiner
http://www.mentorsoftwareinc.com/freebie/FREE0699.HTM
http://ioc.unesco.org/oceanteacher/resourcekit/M3/Toolbox/GeoTIFFExaminer.ht
m

Geotiff4
http://www.terrainmap.com/rm22.html

I should have mentioned that I was looking for another solution that doesn't
claim limitations, unfortunately I had a head-full when I typed away!

I suppose then, the only thing I could ask, and since these are the [only?]
tools available is - could you please take a look at these and explain
whatever caveats may concern you in their use to export .tfw separation from
.tif, or re-stuffing to Geotiff? The claims seem to be parrellel - in that
they don't support rotation. My preference is that any metadata that's
written to the ESRI file should be intact at export, regardless if it's used
at the time. (Although, just a preference - 'what goes in, should come out,
and vice-versa' way of thinking)

Copyright issues are my concern as well, and I have no intentions or would
suggest stealing from other sources without their approval or credit.
Unfortunately, no one seems to know who or what organization developed the
Geotiff.8bi file that's been found. It also seems to be something that Adobe
takes no interest in (unfortunate). Whenever persuing this, I've hit nothing
but brick walls.

The max of the Geotiff (4GB) that you mention was basically what Chris Russ
was explaining. I was a bit confused in why he'd think there were
limitations other than the 2GB/30,000 line limit in PS. It was exciting to
get a scoop on the 'promise' of no limitations with the newer .PSD spec,
although I'm uncertain that anyone in this industry would go for a format
migration. The logistics would be a nightmare anyway.

Ned Horning has contacted me, although neither of us were copying the list.
He was the one initially looking for a plugin to make Geotiff practical or
useable in PS, and is looking to express support for use of PS with
satellite / RS imagery - for its overwhelming ability to create the pretty
picture product where most-to-all COTs packages fail. (Which I agree and
would like to support this as well).

There's other philosophical/conceptual reasons why I'd like to see an
affordable consumer application be better supported in this case, other than
it being an excellent commercial solution for companies that create raster
products, Vis-Sim, Cartography, and others. But I'm afraid it would take an
entire message to outline, and this doesn't seem to be the forum for such
discussion.

Also discussed between Ned and I was the excitement toward the FITS
Liberator Plugin available for free from ESO/ESA/NASA. I've had an
opportunity to play around with the plugin, and it bears the striking
similarity of the functionality that would be extremely useful in PS for
importing and correcting satellite imagery. The idea however, is to be more
elaborate - allowing for the option to import a Geotiff as-is, and without
clipping the metadata (or at least exporting to TMP while in the PS space,
and to be re-stuffed at export), as well as having the ability to import raw
band information and composite the Geotiff within the plugin.

You can refer to the FITS Liberator Plugin here:
http://www.spacetelescope.org/projects/fits_liberator/

If anyone on this list has contact information, or are involved with the
FITS program - or know of any contact source who may be able to become
involved in creating a Geotiff solution - or have the ability to contribute,
etc... Please reply.



As a personal note (This is probably the 'other discussion that I mentioned'
Oops. But to explain my point-of-view):

It's my personal belief, that as the world of GIS/RS becomes more practical
/functional for use within not only the commercial and government sectors,
but as well as the home-user markets - that Adobe would have a significant
reason to allow for development and support of these products within their
suite of applications. There is currently a plugin for Illustrator and
Macromedia Freehand, which is specifically targetted toward Cartographers in
the mapping industry [MAPublisher http://www.avenza.com/]. With an
additional set of tools to work with imagery within PS, it could only create
the potential for more products - as well as provide the basis for a greater
home-use accessibility (consumer masses). Such a seamless integration of
format technology could be a precursor to a consumer focus reality.

Coming from the design and graphic arts field originally, in print and web,
and understanding the niche that these apps have been tuned to targetting -
and now finding myself in the unique position of working with RS data in PS:

I can only see the future opening up for more consumer accessibilities, to
explore, utilize, and manipulate an imagery type that has a greater
fascination factor than that of creative graphic imagery. Most people within
the home-user markets have little interest in using an application such as
PS due to its 'creativity stigma'. I'm constantly dealing with this
perspective at work [even though we use it in our workflow for various
needs]. This is why I'm exploring the possibilities of a solution to make PS
more RS-friendly. Geotiff appears to be the ultimate key in this happening.

Does this all make sense? Apologies for yet another head-full.

This all relates to what I mentioned as that alternative discussion - a kind
of prediction of the future trend - what will become the next prevalent
consumer base. I can only foresee that as GIS/RS technology advances (which
I see all the pieces of the puzzle currently in play now!), that we will see
a functional, practical use take the fore in mobile uses for this
demographic (referring to the mass consumer public). Could this be the base
of that 'dot-com number 2?' I believe so.

K, gotta go! Wheels are spinning and the brain is about to pop!

Daniel Denk
ddenk at earthlink.net




-----Original Message-----
From: Frank Warmerdam [mailto:warmerdam at pobox.com] 
Sent: Saturday, November 13, 2004 1:13 PM
To: Daniel Denk
Cc: Geotiff
Subject: Re: [Geotiff] Geotiff API's


Daniel Denk wrote:
> Hello, Geotiff,
>  
> Is anyone aware of existing free or Open Source graphical API's
> installable to Windows (and other typical home-use platforms) that allow 
> for a simpler, more intuative approach to say dumping metadata or 
> restuffing the tags to Geotiff [ie: listgeo, geotifcp, etc]?

Daniel,

There is a program called GeoTIFFExaminer that might be helpful in this
regard.  It used to be available from Mentor Software.  I think a google
search would likely turn up a link.  I haven't used it myself.

> Not only would this be useful for those of us who are command-line
> retarded (as my colleagues might say), but it would have potential to 
> aid in awareness of capability for the home-user who will one day be 
> exposed to the wonderful world of GIS / Remote Sensing via mobile 
> applications, etc (dot-com number 2?). It would also be a productive 
> tool for those who are impatient with command-line utilities.

Well, I am personally somewaht doubtful about the usefulness, but I am a bit
GUI retarded myself.  It would certainly be nice to have a GUI app that had
quite a bit of smarts and would help people author compliant geotiff
metadata, pick from the EPSG lists and so forth.

> I have spoken with Chris Russ of Reindeer Graphics, who seems to think
> that the Geotiff format itself - or at least the Tiff spec itself - has 
> inherent limitations in allowing for such functionality due to its bit 
> structure. The question that was instantly raised in my brain when 
> hearing this, was 'Well then, how is it that COTs packages are able to 
> incorporate it with little to no limitations?' He had also briefly 
> mentioned that it would be possible to work-around the 2GB / 30,000 line 
> limit within the newly developed .PSD format, which Adobe claims will 
> work around the bit structure and memory limitations - (according to 
> Chris - provided with the SDK for CS?) I'm not certain of this, or if 
> it's possible. It would also propose the concept of creating a 
> geo-spatial format in .PSD, thus causing all customers to adhere to a 
> newer, more proprietary format, from a vendor source outputting in this 
> format.

TIFF (and GeoTIFF) are essentially limited to 4GB maximum file size due to
the use of 32bit file offsets.  There is work underway in the TIFF community
to definea BigTIFF variation on TIFF that would support large files.  I have
no idea why you would run into a 100MB limit with apps, though many apps
only support files up to 2GB due to use of the old file IO API that uses
signed 32bit ints for offsets in calls like fseek.

> What that idea might introduce however, is the capabilities for
> unlimited bands via channels with no limitations. Is this valueable? I'm 
> not sure, as I'm unaware of any sensor or potential product that would 
> benefit from this - at this time. If any of you are aware - by all means 
> share your insight?

I think I missed a connection here.  However, TIFF does support potentially
large numbers of bands (ie. samples) in an image.  I have certainly worked
with hyperspectral sensor data in TIFF format with 225 or more samples per
pixel (bands).

> If anyone would like me to compress the PS Geotiff plugin and send it
> via the mailing list, or to specific Email addresses, please feel free 
> to reply.

Please don't send binaries to the mailing list unless they are tiny. It also
seems likely that the plugin would be copyrighted software and that you
would not have permissions to redistribute.  I do not approve of copyright
violation, even though I would like to see a more liberal "IP" regime.

Best regards,
-- 
---------------------------------------+--------------------------------
---------------------------------------+------
I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam,
warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | Geospatial Programmer for Rent