Possibility to import image masks from external softwares

[sso]

Currently, image annotation masks can only be created inside Pix4Dmapper (to the best of my knowledge).
I would really like to see a function where externally created masks can be imported e.g. like a black and white .png/.jpg image as is possible in Agisoft Metashape.

For example, I work with coral reef imagery suffering from glint and breaking waves.
Both things are easily selected with a single luminance mask applied to all images in Lightroom/Photoshop.
These masks can be exported as a separate black and white image.
Trying to recreate these mask in Pix4D’s annotation tool would take hours and hours.
However, currently there is no option to import these masks into Pix4D.
I tried copying them into the project_name\1_initial\project_data\segments
using a image_name_labels.png format as referenced here: Annotate Mask/Global Mask - #3 by Ramiro_Massa
However, this crashes the annotation tool and does not seem to work.

[sso]

I found a solution to my issue above.
Since I edited my original pictures into ‘mask images’ they still contained 3 image bands.
I removed the 2 redundant bands from the image using gdal_translate.
After this Pix4D is able to read the …_labels.png images, allowing you to import externally created masks.
However, you will still need to create the image segments individually for each image to make this work, see Create segmented image for all images .
This also means the masks will not be transferred with exact pixel accuracy, just the regions corresponding to the pix4d generated segments.
Hope this helps anyone facing the same issue.
Cheers, Brian Nieuwenhuis

[Mike_K]

Hi SSO,
Thank you for sharing this workaround. Hopefully, it is helpful to another user.

[justin.ridge]

First - thank you, Brian, for trailblazing this workflow. I’m trying to follow Brian’s workflow, I generated mask PNGs using a glintmask tool and labeled them with _labels (e.g., DJI_0016_labels). I went through and segmented each of the images (almost 300! there should definitely be a batch function in Pix4D for this) and pulled in the _labels.png files to the segments folder. But when I try to run Step 2, it tries to run but will not generate any points for any cluster. Am I doing something wrong?

[justin.ridge]

This is an example of one of my mask pngs