GeoExpress 6.1

LizardTech (WA, USA) has released GeoExpress 6.1. This updated version comes equipped with non-uniform colour balancing, geography mark-up language (GML) for JPEG 2000 (JP2) support and enables users to easily load imagery directly into Oracle Spatial via the GeoExpress Graphical User Interface (GUI).

As part of the current workflow, automatic or manual adjustments for colour balancing allow customers to control brightness, contrast and histograms for each colour band within an image. In mosaics of tiled images, in addition to applying corrections uniformly across a tile, GeoExpress 6.1 adds the option of making non-uniform corrections within tiles such as for tilt and vignetting.

Additionally, GeoExpress 6.1 allows GML metadata to be added to JPEG 2000 imagery in conformity to the new Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) GMLJP2 standard. The lack of a geospatial metadata standard meant that applications and viewers may not have been able to read geospatial metadata in a JPEG 2000 file. The expanded use of GMLJP2 will help advance the adoption and interoperability of JPEG 2000 as a geospatial image format.

Another key feature of GeoExpress 6.1 is its integration with LizardTech’s Spatial Express application. Customers are able to optimise their investment in their Oracle Spatial 10g, an option to Oracle Database Enterprise Edition, by storing raster imagery natively in MrSID and JPEG 2000 formats. Spatial Express enables users to reduce the storage space used for raster imagery by up to 95% while retaining visually lossless image quality. In addition, they can now select an Oracle database and table to output to directly from within the GeoExpress GUI, making it easier than ever to load MrSID and JPEG 2000 imagery into Oracle Spatial. Thanks to MrSID geospatial image compression format and the ISO standard JPEG 2000 format, customers can store, manage, and access images that are hundreds of gigabytes in size more efficiently from within their Oracle database.