Recent versions of GeoExpress include the following new features and enhancements:
GeoExpress 9.5.2 is a patch release to enable users with a floating license to access the software via Remote Desktop. Previously, users were forced to use a special Remote Edition license.
Some operations are optimizable, which means the image does not need to be re-encoded, making the operations significantly faster.
In GeoExpress 9.5.1, we've added two new options that allow the application to default to the optimized process whenever possible:
For more information on the default output format setting, see Default Output File Format.
For more information on compression optimization, including a full list of optimizable operations, see The Output Panel.
GeoExpress supports PCIDSK (PIX) files as input files. The output image is stored in the MrSid Generation 4 format.
GeoExpress is now supported on Windows 10 32-bit and 64-bit systems.
GeoExpress supports compressing LiDAR point clouds stored in plain-text format or in the LAS and LAZ formats. The output image is stored in the MrSID Generation 4 format or the LAZ format.
When you crop images, you can define the area that you want to crop with a shapefile. The shapefile that you select can contain multiple polygons. You can then create a single image that contains the area of all the polygons, or you can create separate images for each polygon. Previously, shapefiles needed to contain exactly one polygon.
Perform color balancing operations on multiple images. When you adjust color balancing settings for one image, you can apply the settings to multiple other images. Previously, you could only color balance single images and mosaics.
Each edition of GeoExpress, including the trial, now uses the same installer. For example, you can enter a license code to change from the trial to the standard edition or from the standard edition to the unlimited version. Previously, you needed to uninstall one edition of GeoExpress then download a separate installer for the other editions of GeoExpress.
When you compress a floating point image, GeoExpress uses quantization to compress the image. You can create 32-bit floating point images in the MrSID Generation 4 format.
Quantization is a lossy compression method that reduces the number of pixel values in the image. Quantization is necessary for floating point images for two reasons:
Performing arithmetic on floating point values results in rounding discrepancies.
Compressing floating point values results in unnecessarily large images. This is because some of the digits in each pixel value contain data that is not significant and cannot be compressed.
As a result, GeoExpress uses a lossy compression method for floating point images, but guarantees the accuracy of the image data to an optimized precision value.
To improve the appearance of MrSID images in other GIS programs, you can use GeoExpress to write dynamic range metadata for images. For an image where the dynamic range is less than the full range of possible values for the image, you can use your GIS program to stretch the pixel values across the full range. For example, if you have a 16-bit image and the dynamic range is 12 bits, then you may want to use dynamic range stretching to improve the appearance of the image.
When you create an auxiliary file for an image, GeoExpress writes additional metadata into the auxiliary file. If the image contains regions without image data, the no-data values are stored in the auxiliary file. Additionally, if you generate dynamic range metadata for the image, the dynamic range values are stored in the auxiliary file.
The performance of multi-core processing has been improved. Each job that you run in GeoExpress uses less processing power and finishes faster.
You can calculate image statistics for each band in an image from the command line. The image statistics include the minimum value, the maximum value, the mean value, and the standard deviation. Enter the following command to calculate statistics for an image:
mrsidgeoinfo -stats <Image Name>
Any images that you add to the GeoExpress graphical user interface appear in the same simple job list. You can view and run all jobs in the same job list regardless of the image compression and manipulation operations that you want to perform. Previously, jobs were scattered across multiple tabs.
GeoExpress automatically uses its optimization feature whenever possible. The optimization feature performs a subset of image compression and manipulation operations without re-encoding images. Previously, to use optimization you needed to remember which operations supported optimization, and you needed to add images to a separate Optimize tab.
The user interface includes updated window graphics and icons.
If you run GeoExpress on a machine with a multi-core processor or on a machine with multiple processors, GeoExpress creates multiple threads to process jobs more quickly. The number of threads and jobs that you can run at one time depends on the number of cores in your machine's processor.You can use a maximum of eight cores for image encoding.
For images that include rotation metadata, GeoExpress creates rotated output images. This feature is turned on by default so that your images are displayed with the correct orientation even in viewers that do not support metadata for image rotation. Previously, GeoExpress preserved rotation metadata without rotating the output image.
You can add custom watermarks to your images. GeoExpress supports watermark images in BMP, PNG, and JPEG formats. You can use black and white images with maximum dimensions of 128 pixels by 128 pixels.
You can create mosaics that use multiple coordinate reference systems from the command line.
GeoExpress now supports PNG files. You can perform any operation with PNG files that you can perform with other supported file formats.
GeoExpress can now interpret NITF files with RPC metadata.
NOTE: To see a list of fixes and other information for the current version of GeoExpress, see the Readme.