Free For All – Monteverdi

It’s not often you find a freeware application that has a suite of capabilities that rivals those found in the paid remote sensing packages–and when I run across one, it will certainly be the focus of my Free For All. Designed by the French Space Agency (CNES), the ORFEO Toolbox (OTB) is a command line driven, open source library with a vast array of remote sensing algorithms and tool for processing optical, hyperspectral and radar data. For most users, OTB will be challenging to work with (including me!). Recognizing this, a lightweight and slightly more user-friendly interface was designed, Monteverdi. You can download the freeware application, Monteverdi, here.

While Monteverdi does not score highly for its user-friendly interface, it is an extremely robust remote sensing package with options from color balancing to image segmentation. Some minimal directions can be gleaned from the online OTB Cook Book found here. In this month’s G-FAQ, I will show our readers how to use Monteverdi to color balance satellite imagery.

The key features of Monteverdi include:

• Image and band mosaicking
• Change detection
• Band math
• Radiometric calibration (and for the most popular high resolution satellites, this process is rather automated)
• Calculation of image statistics including the maximum and minimum pixel values
• Viewing of and export to multiple raster imagery formats

Until my next edition of Free For All, happy hunting for free geospatial goodies!

Brock Adam McCarty
Map Wizard
(720) 470-7988
brock@apollomapping.com