Thanks for an explanation.

Argh, so many beautiful panoramas yet still I see that MR "schmutz" (Emily's words) on just about every one of them. For those who can't run the Photoshop automation mentioned above, there is an alternate automated way of doing so using Linux/Unix/Solaris. It requires jpegpixi-1.1.1 (which in turn requires jpeglib). See "Remove bad pixels..." for more info.

For Mastcam right 1200x1200, the deadpixels.txt contents is:


I created this by desaturating one of the images that had obvious defects, then inverting and thresholding it to leave the "bad" pixels as white against a black background, so that jpeghotp could create deadpixels.txt. Some hand-tweaking of the exact size of the now white spots was necessary for the best corrective effect. It then becomes a simple matter of looping through all your MR 1200x1200 image source files and running jpegpixi on them, e.g.:


Fast, and lossless (other than the corrected pixels, obviously!). Adjust contents of deadpixels.txt as necessary for other image sizes etc.

Airbag

Great Airbag - Thankyou! Its allways nice if you can do things quickly on the command line

Airbag, thanks for this pointer. Just wanted to let people know that this package is also available in Mac OSX as a Mac Ports.

Paolo

How goes this and this (or this) together?

This still puzzles me - below you see

The Bright - The Aligned - The Dark.
Click to view attachment

Come on ! This is just nothing than a difference of exposure I don't why this is still puzzling you…

- I'm simply still not sure how bright the surface should be when I work on the images ... also contrast is an issue.

For illustration I hijacked one of your nice images and "worked" on it:
Click to view attachment

The autoexposure is just trying to get the histogram to fill the dynamic range. When there's a bright piece of rover structure in the image, the exposure is shorter so as not to saturate the rover, so the ground is inevitably darker.

To make an accurate mosaic, one would decompand the image to 12 bits linear and then scale all images by their relative exposure times, and then convert all of the images to 8 bits using one's favorite gamma scheme for final display. Usually one doesn't go to that much trouble and just scales in 8-bit space in an ad hoc manner.

As to how bright it is, I could figure that out in radiometric terms, but I'm not sure that would mean much from a practical standpoint.

Doing it the scientific way is far beyond my technical and mathematical horizon ... just from the images (with just some years experience in doing manual exposures in photography) I would tend to the darker variant though it is a little bit too dark. The outer right part of Cargo Cults pan above is pretty much it. There is still a big difference between official MER and MSL images. The dark and gloomy on the one side and the shiny dessert at the other side

They're different parts of the planet. Look at them from orbit - one is dark (Sinus Meridiani is a renown dark feature from astronomy) and one is much brighter with dark dunes. The Washington Scab Lands don't look the same as the Gobe Desert

Compare Gusev and Gale and they're really not that different.
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpegMod/PIA16101_modest.jpg
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpegMod/PIA16441_modest.jpg

What does "a little bit too dark" mean? Feel free to tweak the color however you wish, just don't claim you're doing something other than making the image fit your subjective taste, because you're not.

Radiometrically, I think the surface is more brown than pink. I suspect the MSL mosaic that Doug shows has been punched up and looks garishly colored to me. Photoshop white balance isn't radiometrically accurate.

I'm sorry to beat this dead horse again, and I'll quit if people just stop asking about it

Oh - I agree - I was just showing that MastCam data can be made to look just like PanCam data if one so chooses.

I'm also totally in agreement on the color. The best words I think to describe Mars are ochre and butterscotch.

Yes, quite. The term used in JGR reports during the Viking mission to describe the color of the Martian surface was "yellowish brown"

Yeah - the same words were used by Maki et.al. in their 1999 Pathfinder paper
"Although Mars has long been called the "red" planet, quantitative measurements of the
surface color from telescopic and surface observations indicate a light to moderate
yellowish brown color. The Pathfinder camera measurements presented here support the
claim that the red planet is not red but indeed yellowish brown. "

As a photographer I would made the exposure a little bit longer - like this:
Click to view attachment

As for Pancam data - I can see no constant either in brightness nor in color.

But yeah - lets leave this dead horse alone for some time now ...

Can someone please explain to me how to decipher the file names for the MastCams? I've looked everywhere and I can't find anything.

For example - with 0138MR0819050000E1_DXXX.jpg

I understand "0138" is the Sol, "MR" is "MastCam Right", and "50000" is the 50th (or sometimes 51st) image in the sequence for a mosaic or a panorama.

What does E1, E2, E3 mean? Also, if someone could explain the part after "MR" where is says "08190" and perhaps the "DXXX"?

Thank you in advance.

E = Product type. E = 'normal', I = Thumbnail, + a whole load of others for uncompressed, focus stacks, etc.

Number is a version number, i.e. if more data arrived for a procuct a new version is made.



That is the sequence ID, all images taken together as part of one sequence share the same number.

ADMIN NOTE: Apologies. I was moving two members panoramas from this topic over into the Glenelg thread where they should have been.
Somehow though the transfer didn't happen as it should and the files/posts disappeared. If you know who you are, can you please repost these pans to the Glenelg topic.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Why aren't Mastcam images white-balanced like the MAHLI ones? Is it to do with science or techincal issues? I love MAHLI images for how natural and pleasing to the eye they look. Would be great if Mastcam images came like this, instead of being tweaked on the ground with not always the best results.

I don't know what you are reacting to. None of the cameras do any kind of white balance processing internally. There may be some minor color differences because of the different glasses in the optics and the slightly different bandpass filter between Mastcam and MAHLI.

Who the heck would want the images white-balanced by default anyways? Besides, a raw image isn't called a "raw image" for nothing.

From what I've read, MAHLI's images are white-balanced internally. It uses a calibration target mounted on the rover for this.

http://msl-scicorner.jpl.nasa.gov/Instruments/MAHLI/

"MSL carries the MAHLI Flight Calibration Target for color/white balance, resolution and focus checks, and verification of UV LED functionality. The target will be mounted in a vertical position on the rover (i.e., vertical when the rover is on a surface with a slope of 0°) to help prevent dust accumulation."

Looking at the raw images, it's also obvious that MAHLI images come already white-balanced, in contrast to Mastcam images. A good example is the white surface of the rover; on Mastcam images it has an ever-present yellow/orange cast, while in MAHLI images it's white.

Examples:
Mastcam http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/ra..._DXXX&s=106
MAHLI: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/ra...1_DXXX&s=85

I'm on the team that built MAHLI, and I can assure you there is no internal white-balancing. The cal target can be used to do white balance, or it could be if it wasn't covered with dust from the landing.

If there's a perceptible difference in white balance between the cameras (I just looked at a few images, and it's hard to say for sure since the imaging geometries aren't very similar), it probably has to do with the slightly different cut-on wavelength of the bandpass filter.

For the multi-spectral sequences, does anyone know the probable order of filters used?

This document lists the filters in a certain order:

MASTCAM MULTISPECTRAL IMAGING

...which might be taken to be the preferred order, but how about the sequences where only 4 or 6 filters are used? for example, this ML sequence of four from sol 173:

Sol 173 ML

It's interesting how the mast shadow essentially disappears for the two later frames--which would be logical if those filters were toward the infrared?

You could possibly figure it out from the time stamps; it takes twice as long to go from filter N to N+2 as from filter N to N+1.

As I've noted previously, the thumbnail tint can be used for any filter with different visible throughput, and the infrareds can maybe be told apart from timing or the amount of dark current, as the exposure times go up as you get farther into the IR.

Then perhaps patterns would emerge as to how they're using the filters; as you observe, there seems to have been some evolution in which ones are used.

We're very close to the date of the first expected PDS release. If patterns aren't obvious from the raws, comparisons between raws and PDS-released images might provide clues that you could generalize from, going forward.

That's good to hear.

Can we expect to find the release at the Analyst's Notebook?

Per http://pds-geosciences.wustl.edu/missions/msl/index.htm - "MSL Analyst's Notebook - Coming with Release 1. Provides search, display, and download tools for MSL data sets."

Subsequent releases will be every 90 days after Feb 27th initial release of sols 0-90.

The imaging node release dates are here: http://pds-imaging.jpl.nasa.gov/schedules/msl_release.html - Release 1 EDRs on same date as above, RDRs on Mar 20th.

Answered from a question in this thread...


In general, I usually do the following for the big anaglyphs....

~ First, I run raw MC100's and MC34's through the appropriate (manually recorded preset for image size in question) Photoshop automation to carefully remove all the lens "schmutz" from each set (MC100 has 2 big ones and MC34 has now developed 3 smaller ones) so there aren't any distracting "floaters" in the final anaglyph. They're very distracting and break the immersion.

~ I then mosaic each separately with as close to the same projection as possible (varies depending on the pano).

~ Aligning them is done manually by eye in Photoshop by dragging the left channel over the right, and resizing and aligning it by eye with transparency set at 50%. Before splitting the channel colors I usually tweak the levels for an bit brighter illumination without saturating the whites. Some anaglyphs tend come out rather dark otherwise.

~ The crucial (and tricky) part is getting all the matching L & R objects in the matching channels to align along the same horizontal plane for the least eye strain. Even with a near identical initial projection for each, it usually requires a bit of careful warping in several areas. That's the most time (& CPU) consuming part.

~ And lastly, by aligning the horizontal offset so the focal point (where the channels have little to no offset) is more biased to the immediate foreground rather than the distance, it keeps eye strain in check because the eye seems to naturally prefer that the left channel falls to the left of the right channel. Below that focal point the channels reverse, which is harder on the eye. That said, the reason not to have the focal point at the bottom of the frame is that in doing so the top offsets often become far too wide to pull together at high zooms so a compromise focal point must be determined. This will vary depending on the field depth between top and bottom of course.

If all works right... it comes out looking good!

Do you really have evidence that the 34mm has defects that weren't there before? I don't but I haven't been looking very hard for several weeks.

Mike, I first noticed the three 34mm spots a few weeks ago when proofing a large anaglyph. They're hard to see in 2D against the surface because of the jumbled noise in the terrain but pop out subtly as 'floaters" when viewed in stereo if not cleaned before anaglyphing. The four frame animated GIF below (from the raw Sol 184 set) points these three culprits against the relative smoothness of an out of focus robotic arm...



Your post made me curious as to how long they've actually been there, and to my surprise it looks like they've been present since the first good 34mm shots came down on Sol 3. You can see them in the same positions (as in the GIF above) at the center of this full frame series from Sol 3: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/ms...5000E1_DXXX.jpg. Now knowing now where to look for these - especially easy to spot if one flips rapidly in an image viewer at any large 34mm set - and yup, they're there.

This fits my expectations. These are not on the lens but on the focal plane and have been there since we buttoned up the optics during final assembly.

There are many more than three visible on MC34 - in a quick count I found at least ten on the sol 24 images. They're easiest to see in the sky shots, but their visibility depends strongly on the filter. For example, compare these two filtered sky frames:
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/ms...2000D1_DXXX.jpg
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/ms...1000D1_DXXX.jpg
I think that makes sense, since the visibility in a filtered image will depend on the position of the speck with respect to the Bayer pattern. So their visibility in a filtered sky image could be greater than in a full-colour sky image, which is some weighted average over the four subpixels.

Do you about the schedule for MARDI images release ? I mean, the raw images, not the lossy-compressed ones.
And could you tell me if the EDL sensor suite raw data (IMU, radar, etc...) that were stored onboard have been downloaded and, if yes, are they available to the public ?

Thanks.

Just a thought.. Saw this picture today http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/ra..._DXXX&s=293

MAHLI took that at night with its LED's if I'm not mistaken... which brought up the thought.. How cool would it be for Curiosity to take a self portrait at night! (like this at night http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/mult...;/pia16239.html)

Is this possible?

The LEDs become very dim at distances of more than a few centimeters (inverse-square law). You could potentially take an image of something like the RSM with the LEDs and a long-enough exposure, but I question if it would be that interesting.

Yeah - it would take some very long exposures ( and thus pretty noisy images probably ) - and also there's the energy penalty of heating the actuators at night to do it as well.

It also might get a little creepy

Click to view attachment

A comparison of the Mastcam 100 and MAHLI images of the newly-drilled hole at 'Cumberland' site, taken on the same day (Sol 279).

Click to view attachment

Further to my posts earlier in this thread, I'd like to draw attention to the difference in colour balance between these two images. The Mastcam image has a noticeable yellow/orange cast to it, while the MAHLI image seems to be closer to the true (white-balanced) colours. People have been insisting that there is no difference between the two cameras, yet the difference in the resulting images is apparent to me.

Original images: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/ms...0000E1_DXXX.jpg
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/ms...1000E1_DXXX.jpg

Who's insisting that? Not me, see post #270 in this thread. There are (IMHO, minor) differences in color and I have explained why.

Those images are probably not the best comparison, since the turret will be blocking part of the sky in the MH images. That should shift those images towards the blue (sky is redder than sun). Still, I'd say this likely won't account for all of the difference.

A better comparison would be views of the distant landscape with MH and mastcam, from the same location and close to the same time of day, if you could find such a pair.

Curiosity's self-portraits (taken with MAHLI) provide a good view of the surrounding terrain. For example, see the raw images from s85. MAHLI: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/ra...mp;camera=MAHLI and Mastcam: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/ra...mp;camera=MAST_
MAHLI shows a gentle light-brown terrain, and the white surfaces of the rover as white.

Comparison of the view of the distant Mt Sharp, from Mastcam (s271) and MAHLI (s85):
Click to view attachment

Almost 200 sols apart - 1/3rd of a martian year - we know there to be dramatic differences in the Tau - those images SHOULDN'T look the same.

Quite. Also, we acknowledge that the uncorrected color between MAHLI and Mastcam is slightly different. wildespace, you can stop making this point. The PDS delivery will have color-corrected versions of all images, and then you can argue about those if you wish.

But at the end, of what are we arguing about ? Some little variations of white balance ? Saturation ? What else ?

This is exactly the same as bring a groupe of personn to visit the Great Canyon, taking some pictures, and view their picture on the Internet later when they share it to each other. Some will look a little bit too blue-ish or too yellow-ish. But at the end, this will be the same landscape to be pictured, and that's all that count.

According to this LPSC 2012 paper Mastcam is more sensitive to red near 676nm than MAHLI according to this MSL Science Corner article.
If you compare the two camera sensitivity spectra to red with the human L type cone monochromatic spectral stimulus (human eye red sensors), you may see, that it's closer to the MAHLI sensitivity for red (no peak near 676nm). Therefore the closer similarity of MAHLI raw images to natural colors.
This as a hopefully plausible and detailed explanation for the color shift, besides different observation conditions.

A possible benefit by differencing the two images to simulate a far red filter can be retrieved more easily by applying the L4 filter, to my eyes.

This is why I never do anything with color!

Phil

What makes you say MH is closer to natural? What does that even mean? Is your monitor carefully calibrated? Do we know what to expect, given the red sky illumination - i.e., shouldn't white parts of the rover appear yellow/redish? Etc, etc.

All we can do is look at the calibrated MER colour imagery, and wait for corrected MSL images...

I'm a coauthor on the LPSC abstract and you can't really get that level of detail out of those figures IMHO.

There's no debate that there are slight color differences between the cameras. They are not intentional. We didn't do anything to explicitly balance the colors; the raw images are just what's coming out of the camera. The differences are caused by the spectral transmissions of the lenses and the slightly different bandpasses of the IR cut filters. I spent quite a bit of time on the color-corrected archive products, which have been delivered to PDS, but I don't know when they will be released. And there will still be some uncertainty about what "color-corrected" means; I tried to be explicit in the documentation about exactly what the processing entailed, but radiometry is complicated and these instruments are cameras, not colorimeters or spectrometers.

Sorry if I upset or aggravated anyone here. My main intent behind this discussion is what would Mars appear like to the human eye. I know that our eyes get adjusted to any prevalent colouration, doing a sort of "white-balancing" themselves. If you take a RAW image in incandescent lighting using a DSLR, the image will come out unnaturally red because, unlike our eyes, the camera didn't adjust itself to the scene. Likewise, the raw Mastcam images come out with the prevalent yellow/orange cast to them (also affecting the white surfaces of the rover and the grey exposed rock), because of the dusty atmosphere. Which is why I was pleasantly surprised to see that MAHLI images show the (more or less) white rover, grey exposed rock, and much more subdued hues of the landscape and the sky. Call my conclusion unbased, but like Gerald I think that MAHLI images are closer to what the human eye would see on Mars.

Anyhoo, looking forward to the PDS.