SRTM Image Processing Page 12

SRTM_Elevation

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Now comes the cleaning up part that I talked about earlier.

Change your brush size again to a very small brush as shown in the image below.

Click on the image for a larger view.

Now you will zoom in again and remove the white pixels that are floating around the boarders.

Set your primary color to pure black using the color selector in the floating toolbar. Again make sure you are using the "Pencil Tool" and not the "Paint Brush".

Only remove the white noise that is floating at sea level. There is also noise at elevation, or buried in the elevation data itself.

Usually this is from higher elevation lakes ponds or rivers. We have a special procedure for fixing this which we will go over after this. So go in and remove only the white noise that is against the black, or right at sea level. Don't do that areas that are against very dark grey. This is the same as lakes/ponds/rivers that are at elevation, and we can use the same procedure that we will cover in a few minutes to deal with them.

Notice in the image below there are two areas in this image that look like noise, but are not. Can you guess what they really are? I'll give you a hint, look at the geographic location of those two items. One of them needs to be cleaned up, again we will use the procedure for that one that we will cover in a few minutes. The one that does need to be cleaned up is the one on the left. The one on the right is actually not an error....it's real data, and correct. Do you know what it is yet? Give up? I'll tell you. The one on the right is the radar reflection from the roof-tops of the sky scrapers in down town San Francisco. The one on the left, is the radio signal beacon being picked up by the radar from the radio tower atop radio tower hill in San Francisco. You'll note there are some other reflections from the tops of the massive hangers and ATC - Air Traffic Control Tower at San Francisco International Airport.

Click on the image for a larger view.

Now you can see all the white noise from the boundaries is cleaned up. All that remains now is the land locked noise.

Switch layers in the floating "Layers" tool window. Just click on the other layer, it will turn blue when selected.

Click on the image for a larger view.

Actually you can do this step at any point in this page of the tutorial. I just had you save it till now just incase there are problems with the mask, there is still a chance you can fix it before you do the following. After this there is no going back.

On the floating "Layers" tool window, in the far upper right corner of that floating window there is a little tinny icon. It's a circle with an arrow inside it pointing to the right. When you click on it, you get the following floating popup menu.

Navigate and select "Flatten Image". This squashes both layers into a single flat image based on what you have set for blending options, and the little paints that you did over the white noise. The two layers have been coexisting within the same image all this time. Now they are combined.

Now it's time to make sure your "Photoshop Actions LandSAT Toolkit" is installed.

If you don't have the actions installed yet, you better save this file as a bmp, skip to the end of this tutorial for tips on that, then come back here and link to the tutorial on how to install the "Photoshop Actions LandSAT Toolkit".

Now that your "Photoshop Actions LandSAT Toolkit" is properly installed. Select the "Magic Wand Tool" from the floating toolbar.

Zoom in and navigate the image to find the land locked lake.

Click the "Magic Wand Tool" on the lake. An animated boarder should appear snaking its way around the region indicating the area is now selected.

You should be able to run the macro "LakesMinimize" by either selecting the action from the floating "Actions" tool window and pressing the little "Play" button at the bottom of that window. There is a round record button, and a square stop button adjacent to it. The "LakesMinimize" action should also have a set keyboard shortcut. I've found this is the fastest way to process these little buggers.

The shortcut key for "LakesMinimize" should be "F3" on the keyboard.

The shortcut key for "LakesMaximize" should be "F4" on the keyboard.

The "LakesMinimize" pre-recorded macro only minimizes on a 1 pixel boarder around the selected area. So for larger regions like the one shown here, you will need to press "F3" several times before the area is completely gone. For smaller areas, or single pixels. It works with just one press, as long as you have properly selected that pixel to run the macro on. Zoom in further if you are having trouble selecting the smallest areas or pixels.

Do this for all the land locked glitches, with the exception of the radar reflections from the top of the sky scrapers in down town San Francisco.

Make sure you also get that radio beacon signal on radio tower hill.

When you are done, the image will finally be cleaned up and look just like the image below.

Click on the image for a larger view.

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