I wanted to share information about an “in-field” image analysis tool that has been helping me a lot recently. It is a new Windows PC application that just launched and allows you to analyze your mapping mission captures BEFORE leaving a job site. It was developed by an optical engineer (Michael Sanchez) so it is fast and easy to use. He created this lightweight Windows PC application that I think many of you might find valuable.
It isn’t a fancy piece of software (only $30 during introductory period) – but it is fast and gets the job done (which all I want in the field!) The PC application quickly plots your images and provides an immediate Image Overlap analysis in less than 3 minutes. This has helped me validate that I captured nadir images over the whole site and that I have enough overlap for a job before ever leaving the site for the day (it is even more terrific when you are flying multiple missions over multiple days.) Using the Beta version at just one job site saved us a full day’s travel and reshoot time.
The application also checks image density and exposure (takes a bit longer in the field… but still better than finding out 6 hours later during Step 1 or 2 of processing.
Check it out here: http://www.sanchezeng.com/pique.html