Opticks 101: Mastering the Import Dialog

Now that we've covered the basics in Opticks 101: Loading Data, let's delve a little deeper into your loading options by looking at the Import dialog in more detail.

First, a quick reminder on how to bring up the Import dialog. You can click on the "Import Data..." menu item under the File menu. You can click on the "Import Data" icon that appears on the toolbar, see below for a screenshot. Or you can press "Ctrl+O" on your keyboard to bring up the Import dialog.


Looking at the import dialog, you will have the following options which I will be discussing further.


1. Importer Selection
This combo box is used to select the Importer that you like to use to load the data into Opticks. This is always defaulted to "Auto Importer". This is a special importer provided by Opticks that will query all of the other available importers in order to automatically determine the best importer to use. This combo box is provided in the rare circumstance that this auto detection logic is not sufficient and you would like to override it's importer selection.

2. Import Options
Clicking the "Options..." button will bring up the Import Options dialog. I'll be discussing this in more detail in a later Opticks 101 post. See below for an idea of what the Import Options will let you do:

• Subset or chip the image to exclude rows, columns and bands from being loaded.
• View and edit the metadata associated with image.
• Change the interleave and processing location (these will be explained in a later post, but have a large impact on performance).
• Select the datasets to load if a particular file contains more than one image.
• Fill-in the load parameters required for the "generic importers" (i.e. those need to load data from any Hdf5 file, and those required to load raw formatted files).
  

3. Image Preview
Clicking this button will bring up a preview of the image. See below for an example.



This preview will only show the first band of the image. This preview will show a small rectangle. You can drag this rectangle out and that will only select those rows and columns for load and exclude those rows/columns outside the box. This allows you visually select the region of the image you want to load. See below for an screenshot showing a selected chip.



4. Quick access sidebar
This pane can be used to store your favorite directories for quicker access. See below for a screenshot.




You can drag and drop directories into this pane. If you want to remove an entry from this sidebar, select it and press the "delete" key. To persist the changes, you will need to load something from the Import dialog.

Other Tips & Tricks

• Starting with 4.3.0, you can quickly load datasets or switch directories by typing directly into the "File name" field. You'll even get auto-complete as you type.
• You can change the default directory that the Import dialog starts it. You just need to edit the "Import path" setting in the "Options..." dialog available under the "Tools" menu. See the screenshot below.
  
  
  

Why is this blog called Optick Illusions?

So, why did I call this blog Optick Illusions? Because I wanted to. Ok, there are some reasons besides that. When members of the Opticks project were trying to come up with the name for what is now called, Opticks Extras, a number of names were generated. One of the names I came up with was Optick Illusions, but we decided instead to go with Opticks Extras. I liked the name so much that I decided to use it name my blog about Opticks. So, now you know and knowing is half the battle.

Opticks 101: Loading Data

I thought I would start a series of posts that introduce some of the basics of how to use Opticks. I'll include some tips and tricks along the way. The first posting is this series deals with how to load remote sensing imagery into Opticks.

Approach 1: Use the Import dialog.
You first bring up the Import dialog by either clicking on the "Import Data..." menu item under the File menu or you can click on the "Import Data" icon that shows up on the Standard toolbar. This will bring up the Import dialog that is shown below.

You can the browse to the directory in question, click on any number of image files and click the "Open" button to load them. All of the selected images are loaded and you are off and running. You can click on "Options.." to change some of the options on how the image is imported (I'll be discussing this more in a future post). If an image cannot be loaded without user input, then the import options dialog will be shown (I'll be discussing this in a future post). Tip Alert: Opticks 4.3.0 and later allow you to select multiple files in this dialog, earlier versions only let you select a single file.

Approach 2: Drag and Drop
This is my personal favorite. It's easy. Grab the files from Windows Explorer and then drag and drop them onto the running application. You can drag and drop as many files as you like and they will immediately load into Opticks. If you want to bring up the Import options (equivalent to clicking "Options..." as shown above), you can hold the right mouse button as you drag and drop the image onto the application and you'll see a right-click menu show up when drop the files onto Opticks as shown in the screenshot below.

The bold item in the menu is what happens when you simply drag and drop the image onto the application using the left mouse button.

Keep your eye out for future posts in this Opticks 101 series.

Hopes for this blog

I'm starting this blog as a way to share my thoughts about everything Opticks. Opticks is an open-source application (LGPL) to perform remote sensing and image analysis. I'm currently an active committer of the Opticks project, as well as the web guy. I'm hoping to share the ups and downs of the project and hopefully get some people interested in the project along the way.