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Orthophoto & plotting problems

  • 1.  Orthophoto & plotting problems

    Posted 04-01-2019 12:19

    Hi!

     

    Maybe someone can answer this.

    We have a big problem, we have 17 orthophotos in a project (created with Agisoft) and 2 of them shows up like the picture below. With a white frame on top of my google erth picture. ALL of the 17 photos are exported at the same time and in the exact same way byt 2 of the shows up with a frame in TBC. Does not matter what i do. And when we use a border around those 2 the plotting goes crazy. In the plan view it looks like the orthophoto is on top but in the plotview its the other way around and in the plotted pdf is the other way around again. And when we try to use boarders it goes worse. Then its showing the google earth pictura in some places and not in others. Going crazy here....:(  

    Anyone that can take a look at the orthophotos and see why its a frame around one of them? Thanks.

    Dropbox - Ortofoto 10.tif 

    Dropbox - Ortofoto 11.tif 

    Dropbox - Asplången-Mem 2019-007.jpg 

     



  • 2.  Re: Orthophoto & plotting problems

    Posted 04-02-2019 08:31

    Fred

    Apologies - I started this response last night and got a Blue Screen of Death and I figured it was my PC telling me "Enough" for the day (maybe my wife is training it or something ...) and I lost the response I had drafted and ran out of time - so here goes again.

     

    There are two areas in TBC where you have settings on Images / image handling that are likely the cause of the issue that you are seeing. I imported the 2x images OK into TBC myself and they seemed to work just fine, however I think this depends on your settings somewhat.

     

    1) After import, the settings are established, so you have to look at the properties of the Image. Find the image in Project Explorer under Imported Files. Select the image and look at its properties. The issue you are seeing is likely one of two things. First the View Priority - the higher the number the higher the priority the image has when two things overlap. If your images overlap, then set one image to a Higher View priority than the other. Secondly, when a software writes an image file, the area around the image to fill out the rectangle is painted in a color - typically white or Black and there should be a Transparency setting with the image that sets that color to Transparent - sometimes we get images where that is not set and you get the White Background (Rectangle around the image set to White or Black) that blocks out other images in the set - You can change that setting in the Properties for which color is the background color and it's Transparency. That will likely fix the issue you are seeing. (Transparent Background (Yes) and Transparent Pixel Color (Black or White (Typically at least)). These settings are available when you use Tiling, but not when you use No Tiling and Downsize the Images

     

    2) On import of Images - we use the Settings that are found under Support - Options - Images and there you can manage images that come in from Station Set Ups (e.g. from SX10) and from Georeferenced Images. Here you can decide to Tile (for faster multiple resolution viewing) and to Downsize (to reduce the resolution of the images for faster working when handling large images at high resolution). You can also determine how to manage the Background Transparency (Set Pixel Transparency on Import and then select the color of Pixel to Black or White). This should fix the issues on Import of images. Once imported revert to option 1 above.

     

    I am almost 100% certain that the above is your issue - let me know if not and send me screen grabs of these settings panes for each photo properties and the Support Options Dialog

     

    The other challenge with these images is that they are great images and extremely high resolution - and while downsizing may not be what you want to do with them - I downsized to 2048x2048 and the res was still good and the display speed was much faster. You can do this on the fly and it will re process the images as requested and update the graphics

     

    Alan



  • 3.  Re: Orthophoto & plotting problems

    Posted 04-02-2019 08:56

    Hi!

     

    Ha ha! Thats ok, my wife probably doing the same thing.  

    We did solve the problem, but not the way you wrote. I will try that to. 

    I exported the 2 orthophotos that hade a "frame" again from agisoft and did not change anything except that i exportded the in pieces instead. approx 12000x12000pix and then it was no frame.

     

    As i wrote above we did get a lot of problems when we plotted theese. 

     

    1. When we see the orthophoto on top of the google earthphoto in the plan view it shows the other way around in the plotview but comes out correct when we plot them to a pdf. 

    2. When we add a boundary to one of the orthophotos the things goes bananas. Planview and plotview shows completly different things and on the pdf it can be anything. Edges and white spots and the google earthphoto can be visible on some places and the orthophoto in some. No logic att all. It does not matter what viewing priority order they get.

     

    Do you get the same issues?

     

    Here is the set that we finally managed to print, 8 pieces of 2m long drawings.   Dropbox - PdfOutput - Simplify your life 

     

     

    Thanks for a fast answer! (again)



  • 4.  Re: Orthophoto & plotting problems

    Posted 04-02-2019 08:46

    When I turn off tiling I get one of the images with a white background and I don't find a way to turn that off after import - I think it must be hard coded in the image because the other image is fine - this could be a Pix4D issue or an Import Issue (Support Options settings (set Pixel color to White) - I looked at our settings and could not remove the white box when we downsize the images - I will have someone take a look at this to see if it us or the image - I am not sure here and I have no way of really telling either.

     

    I will let you know if I find out more

     

    Alan



  • 5.  Re: Orthophoto & plotting problems

    Posted 04-02-2019 08:53

    For now - turn off the Downsizing and use the Tiled Images (Support - Options - Images) and you will be anle to product the Plots without the white rectangles

     

    Alan



  • 6.  Re: Orthophoto & plotting problems

    Posted 04-02-2019 09:02

    Understand that with 17 of these images that you likely want to downsize them as that s a huge amount of High Res Imagery to hold in Memory in TBC - and maybe you are also experiencing some Memory Issues / Graphics Memory Issues



  • 7.  Re: Orthophoto & plotting problems

    Posted 04-02-2019 09:18

    Yes, its probably memory issues, i need a new computer. ))))



  • 8.  Re: Orthophoto & plotting problems

    Posted 04-02-2019 09:19

    magnus@fmtmark.se">Magnus Bengtsson, här har vi svaret.



  • 9.  Re: Orthophoto & plotting problems

    Posted 04-03-2019 09:09

    See the emails I sent to you this am Fred

     

    Getting to the bottom of this one now.

     

    Hope we can address the issues you are seeing here and that the explanations of why it is happening are useful background to assist you

     

    Thanks as always for communicating to help this become a better product

     

    Alan



  • 10.  Re: Orthophoto & plotting problems

    Posted 04-03-2019 10:06

    Thanks for always giving us fast answers, its helps a lot. In most cases we do find a workaround at the moment and with the quick answers from all Trimble guys it always get worked out. One way or another. 



  • 11.  Re: Orthophoto & plotting problems

    Posted 04-04-2019 14:28

    Just saw this thread, and I use Agisoft PS also so know how big the orthos are. A couple things I would mention:

    1) Tifs are generally not my first choice for color images. You can go png if you must have lossless, or jpg if some loss is ok and you will have much smaller files, like 10x smaller. You have the same pixels though, and cad/gis progs "expand" the compressed image formats to memory so this will not help with performance or plotting.

    2) Orthos this big should be resampled by 50% for general consumption, and even 25% for things not needing high detail. If you are pulling in the full res items, you are usually wasting time even if they work.

     

    Drone and Scan data are always in the realm of "large datasets", and half your skills are just avoiding overload in a given situation. Using downsampled images is one of those ways.

    BTW, if you are using tif because it can have geo-ref info in it, switch to jpg and have it make a world file for you instead. World files are much easier as you can use photoshop to downsample an image, this killing the georef info, then add it back by creating a new world file using tools in cad, gis, or possibly TBC.

    thx



  • 12.  Re: Orthophoto & plotting problems

    Posted 04-04-2019 15:15

    There are automatic downsizing tools in TBC either on import or after the fact - this helps a lot to keep the images manageable - especially when there are a lot of them and they are super high resolution - we retain the original images so you can dial up or down the resolution and reprocess at any time.

     

    You are for sure right on the "managing the data issue" - everyone however starts out holding everything "because they don't want to lose fidelity" but at the expense of losing significant performance - you can always use Low Res until you are 100% ready for final deliverables and then crank up the point clouds and image resolution to get better use of the fidelity of the original data - it is a challenge and one that I see every day - glad to hear that everyone else has similar issues in handling large data (and themselves) ...

     

    Alan