WASHINGTON — Software packages for working with satellite imagery have gotten easier to use in recent years as commercial data became more popular, software manufacturers said.
Further refinement of such software could accelerate growth of the commercial satellite imagery market by making it accessible to more people, company officials said.
Image processing software originally was developed for scientific users, and often required significant training to work with, said Bill Shelley, director of software product management for Leica Geosystems GIS and Mapping Division, Atlanta.
"Since the first of the Landsat satellites was launched back in 1972, most of the remote sensing applications were written in Fortran on big computers that required a high level of expertise to use," Shelley said.
With the advent of commercial imagery satellites and Internet-based access to imagery, companies are trying to develop programs for a new and much larger market. The programs will be designed for users who do not need all the advanced functions of earlier image processing programs, said Mark Lucas, the chief technology officer for Melbourne, Fla.-based ImageLinks.
Newer software offers graphical user interfaces and menu systems in place of more arcane user-typed commands, Shelley said. Software companies will need to continue to simplify the user interfaces if they want satellite imagery applications to become truly widespread, he said.
These simpler software packages will help expand the use of commercial imagery in markets such as farming, real estate and education, developers said. These users often do not have advanced training and do not need the capabilities of the more advanced, and often more expensive, software suites that scientists use, developers said.
"We’re just trying to get real straightforward tools so you don’t have to be a scientist or photogrammetrist to figure out how to use the thing," Lucas said.
One ImageLinks product, dubbed ReccVue, is being developed for military users in the field who may just have a high school education and often just need to blend imagery from several different sources together and then find locations, Lucas said.
Jim Kelley, vice president of product marketing for ENVI for Research Systems Inc., Boulder, Colo., said the software manufacturers have to keep their original scientific clientele in mind while making products easier to use.
"It’s a classic problem in any software," he said. "If you dumb it down too much, you don’t make it very useful for anybody."
Research Systems is adapting ENVI for more basic users by adding simpler user interfaces, and thinks it has found a balance that will satisfy both types of customers, Kelley said.
"We should be able to take somebody with little or no training and give them the proper answer rather easily," Kelley said, "but we want to give someone with more training a program that also allows them to enhance their imagery and get their results."
PCI Geomatics, Richmond Hill, Ontario, is taking a different approach, said Arnold Hougham, the company’s vice president of sales and product marketing. While the company is trying to make its software easier to use, its advances are still aimed at its core scientific customers, he said.
The company’s Geomatica 9 software suite, slated to be released May 30, is focused on making it simpler for scientific users to do advanced work, rather than on attracting a broader user market, Hougham said. The software combines the functions of several of PCI’s older programs. "We want to remove the problem of having to move the data from program to program to perform different advanced functions," he said.
"Ease of use is in the eye of the beholder," Hougham said. For expert software users, ease of use means having all the requisite tools at hand in the software, he said.
New firms are entering the imagery software market, hoping to capitalize on the growing demand for basic programs. Pixoneer Geomatics, a two-year-old company based in Falls Church, Va., is packaging its program with an education program and aiming for the university market, said Greg Tilton, the company’s national sales manager.
The company’s Earth 2.2 software, debuting later this month, uses graphical user interfaces for its on-screen displays, Tilton said. The software also includes a two-semester-long course designed to teach the basics of satellite imagery, Tilton said. However, first time users with no background in imagery could be trained in the basics of the program in three to five days, Tilton said.
"Once you explain remote sensing and imagery and the tools it would be two to three hours to begin using the program," he said. "There would then be the additional learning curve in science, but the program wouldn’t allow you to go ahead of yourself."
