I-RAS C

I/RAS™ C is your complete image display and manipulation solution, whether your applications include cartographic updating, aerial image mapping, GIS, or civil engineering. I/RAS C’s powerful tools help you manipulate and display binary, gray-scale, and color raster images and maps.

I/RAS C’s functionality helps to improve your images in all stages of your workflow. Take advantage of a full set of image commands including:

• Display
• Mosaic
• Edit
• Enhance
• Warp
• Plot

Display your data faster

To generate images, you can scan existing aerial photographs or hardcopy maps, or collect them directly from a digital camera or sensor on an airborne or satellite-based platform. I/RAS C provides "load-and-go" support (native-read - no conversion required) for a wide variety of formats, including:

• TIFF
• TIFF World
• GeoTIFF
• JFIF (JPEG)
• JPEG 2000
• USGS DOQ
• MrSID
• ECW
• Intergraph
• ADRG/I
• NITF
• BMP
• BIL/BIP
• PCX

Use I/RAS C to convert data from commercial vendors, such as SPOT, Landsat, IRS, RADARSAT, and others, into standard TIFF or GeoTIFF raster file format. I/RAS C can also access, display, and manipulate images that are managed by Z/I Imaging's TerraShare image management system.

Preprocess your images

Raster images often require some preliminary processing. With I/RAS C, you can improve the quality of your images, whether they come from a scanned map, an aerial photograph, or a satellite image. Commands in I/RAS C, such as Pixel Paint and Pixel Clone, allow you to fix minor flaws such as scratches and dust particles associated with scanned raster images.

I/RAS C also provides tools that enable you to fill in areas with a specified pixel value, or cut an area from one image and paste it into another with warping and blending at the edges. The software offers easy-to-use contrast and brightness controls, and histogram-based contrast adjustment. In addition, I/RAS C provides a pseudo-color tool to highlight features of interest in color on gray-scale images.

Perform warping and mosaicking

With I/RAS C, georeferencing your image has never been easier. You can easily and rapidly define the coordinate system for your data and transform your data to fit. I/RAS C supports more than 40 world coordinate systems and more than 200 datums and ellipsoids. You can also retrieve coordinate readouts, either in your defined coordinate system or in longitude and latitude.

I/RAS C’s sophisticated image warping helps you perform image-to-map registration with sub-pixel accuracy and image-to-image registration with automatic point estimation and correlation assistance. These features ensure accurate registration of imagery to your design file or your reference image.

You can seamlessly mosaic your imagery using contrast matching and seam feathering along a user-defined seam line. I/RAS C’s spatial filters can sharpen your image, and edge detectors can find feature edges such as edge of pavement boundaries and fence rows. Create your own custom filters and edge detectors to fit your workflow. Providing a broad set of functions, such as image-to-map registration, mosaicking, contrast enhancements, and spatial enhancements, I/RAS C is designed to be your total image mapping solution.

Analyze your data

I/RAS C includes sophisticated commands that help you extract more information from your image than traditional visual analysis techniques. Imagery is collected at various wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum, which measures how much light, such as red, green, blue, or infrared, is reflected from an object. The human eye sees only a limited range of the electromagnetic spectrum – the portion that falls in the visible range. In addition, the human eye can distinguish only a small number of gray shades and colors, while the computer can distinguish millions of colors. Commands such as Simple Arithmetic and Classify RGB help you use the computing power of your desktop computer to extract features automatically and accurately.

For example, if you have a color image taken during a flood event, I/RAS C allows you to map the flood’s extent quickly and accurately. Taking advantage of the PC’s computing power and I/RAS C’s ability to perform image arithmetic, you can create
the mathematical expression of blue light divided by red light to distinguish standing water. This process is much faster than having an operator manually trace around the water seen on the image. Allowing the computer to mathematically derive features is faster and more accurate than the traditional methods of manual photographic interpretation.

I/RAS C also allows you to extract an area of interest using a user-defined polygon or a vector polygon. Polygons are also the basis for raster-to-vector conversion in I/RAS C. You can convert a raster area of your image into a vector polygon. The newly created vector graphic can be imported into a number of GIS-based applications, or plotted for better presentation. Using I/RAS C and MicroStation, you can manipulate vector graphics over the displayed raster images. The ability to work with raster images as a backdrop for screen-based digitizing and vector map creation/revision is one of the most powerful features of I/RAS C.

Take your choice of output options

Once you have finished manipulating your data and are ready to plot, I/RAS C helps you produce image maps by automatically creating vector grid lines to represent longitude and latitude or northing and easting values. Before plotting, you define the distance between grid lines, tick marks, or labels as they should be applied to the design files.

I/RAS C gives you options for plotting your images. Hybrid raster/vector plotting through MicroStation is built in, and you can perform enhanced plotting through InterPlot®. The tight integration between InterPlot and I/RAS C automatically produces a high-quality plot with high throughput. All enhancement and contrast adjustments made in I/RAS C carry over to the plotted image.