[X] My Assistant

[Tman]

Hi Nirgal and all, I would like to discuss about vignetting and methods of resolution for it. I'm mainly interested in mathematical methods that could automatically calculate and adjust the right grey value for each pixel in a single picture.

My current method works with more or less transparent layers over the original picture that so roughly are able to balance the grey values. A perfect layer have to be the exact inverted brightness difference of each picture with this shadow effects. This method is very effective if you get the correct inverted values. These shots of the Mars sky come nearly at such a perfect mask, but not always. And of course the center of the pictures lose much of theirs original brightness/luminance sadly.

I have in mind a mathematical method that can adjust each grey value in a pic in order to obtain a completely balanced brightness over the entire picture. But I'm not in the position to reach that. I only know one have to start with the calculation of the grey values in the center of the picture. In the center are quasi the reference values of the whole picture, if I'm correct.
Is there a possibility (mathematical method) to get (roughly) the same brightness and luminance like in the center over the whole picture from the MERs?

Greetings, Peter

[MichaelT]

I have now modified the anti-vignetting-program (using IDL) such that it can deal with any kind of jpeg-image. Also, it does not use FFT any longer but simply takes a 2D-cosine-shaped mask. That mask is fitted to the chosen image and the amount of vignetting automatically determined (that can be done RGB-channel specific). It also allows to save images as 16-bit-tiff so that none of the original information is lost in the out-put image. You can also do manual adjustments if the amount of vignetting is over- or underestimated by the program (depends on the structure of the image). All that has to be done with each single image and cannot be aplied to a ready panorama.

Below are two examples (SOL 582).

Without anit-vignetting:


After anti-vignetting:


After anti-vignetting the sky shows a very even color distribution, without these nasty green edges. These are obviously due to different amounts of vignetting in the RGB-channels.

I also tested that program with scanned slides and digital camera images and it works very well. So it does not only work with martian craters but also with terrestrial ones The image below shows Wolfe Creek meteorite crater in Western Australia. Its got a diameter of 850 m and is about 30-40 meters deep. Like martian craters it is filled with sand and dust (80 meters).

Panorama from three frames.


The only draw-back is that I cannot provide a stand-alone version of that program Though, a pre-compiled version of the program can be run with RSI's "Virtual Machine". It's free, but requires registering and is a 115 MB download
Is there anybody here who's got a license to turn this IDL-program into a stand-alone one?

Michael

[dilo]

WOW!
MichaelT, I think would be really GREAT to implement your algorithm inside MMB... I would know opinion from the other Michael on this item...

[mhoward]

WOW!
MichaelT, I think would be really GREAT to implement your algorithm inside MMB... I would know opinion from the other Michael on this item... 

If there were a Java version of this algorithm, it might be possible to put it into MMB. It would be neat to have Navcam mmbpans with anti-vignetted images. Since MMB is open-source now somebody else could work on this as well.

[dilo]

If there were a Java version of this algorithm, it might be possible to put it into MMB. It would be neat to have Navcam mmbpans with anti-vignetted images. Since MMB is open-source now somebody else could work on this as well.

This is a very important item, I already suggested to implement anti-vignetting in MMB some time ago!
I do not know Opens Source / Java, hope some expert volunteer will work on this.
Apart the advantage for perfect stitching, not only NavCam will improve. Biggest single-image benefits would be on hazcam, as showed in the following example from Sol639 Opportunity (I made also some image processing in addition to anti-vignetting, now I wonder how much information can be recovered from extreme-conditions images like this!)

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