Leica digital camera processing

The RCD produces raw files that need to be processed in order to create TIFF files. The processing basically uses a gain and offset scaling and (probably) corrects for lens distortion. See the RCD page for more details, including filename convention.

Processing the raws

1. Load the Leica photo processing software
   • Under Windows, select start->programs->leica->calibration->Calibration Post Processing
   • If using wine, run "leica_photo_processing"
2. Select the appropriate camera config (Parameters)
   • As of late 2009, this is CH39_021_060
   • There may be updates to this as the camera is recalibrated
3. Select the input files
   • Typically this will be something like ~airborne/workspace/IPY09_11-2009_219_Helheim/leica/RCD/images
   • You can click and shift-click to select a list from the open file dialog, but be aware that it appears to take about 5 seconds per file under wine, so expect a long wait while it's thinking (it hasn't crashed!)
4. Unset all the processing options (Auto Contrast, Adaptive left-right balance)
5. Select the output directory
   • Typically this will be something like ~airborne/workspace/IPY09_11-2009_219_Helheim/leica/RCD/images-processed
6. Select 16 bit TIFF output (this is important''')
7. Hit the start button and go for coffee (allow about 20-30secs per file)

A typical processing setup looks like:

Tagging the TIFFs

TBC:

python ~chrfi/tifftagger -v -V -p IPY09/11 -l Helheim -f 219 /users/rsg/airborne/workspace/IPY09_11-2009_219_Helheim/leica/RCD/logs/090807-120958ImageEvents1.csv /users/rsg/airborne/workspace/IPY09_11-2009_219_Helheim/leica/RCD/images-processed/

for the moment to check the changes use

~chrfi/usr/bin/exiv2 -pa pr /users/rsg/airborne/workspace/IPY09_11-2009_219_Helheim/leica/RCD/images-processed/07120958100001G4.tif 

Code needs some cleanup, putting into subversion, and a wrapper written that'll cross check on errors (e.g. compare no of images in and out).

Creating Thumbnails

We need to create thumbnail images for the delivery and for getting an overview of the images for the checking procedure. To do this use the photo2thumb.sh script.

EG photo2thumb.sh -d proc_images -o thumbnails

Will create JPG thumbnails of all the TIF images in the proc_images directory and save them into a directory called thumbnails. For further usage run photo2thumb.sh -h

Subsequent processing

There are several other steps that could be undertaken:

• orthorectification (map the photos with respect to the ground/aircraft position)
• ? geocorrection (map the photos with respect to the ground + a DEM) - possibly only Bill's azgcorr mods could do this
• compositing orthorectified photos and seam-line adjustment
  • compositing is easy, but will have ugly problems when you get different views on an object with vertical structure
  • to improve the look of this, you have to manually edit the positioning of the joins - this is currently a very manual process and we do not currently have software for it