[gdal-dev] Amusing use of GDAL API : a GIMP plugin

Matt Wilkie matt.wilkie at gov.yk.ca
Tue Sep 2 17:37:53 EDT 2008


Hi Even,

While this particular implementation may only be a toy, there are many 
times when it would be very useful to use an application like gimp for 
editing spatial imagery. Case in point, Avenza Systems sells a plugin 
for photoshop called Geographic Imager to do this for $700usd.

Aside from the all-in-ram limitation you already noted another 
significant problem with using gimp for spatial image processing is the 
fact that it only understands 8bit channels.

My personal research in this area, needing to find a method for fuzzy 
selection and merging of portions of co-incident digital elevation 
models, has led me to VIPS 
(http://www.vips.ecs.soton.ac.uk/index.php?title=VIPS), though as yet 
I've not had the time to explore the possibility.

cheers,

matt wilkie
--------------------------------------------
Geographic Information,
Information Management and Technology,
Yukon Department of Environment
10 Burns Road * Whitehorse, Yukon * Y1A 4Y9
867-667-8133 Tel * 867-393-7003 Fax
http://environmentyukon.gov.yk.ca/geomatics/
--------------------------------------------


Even Rouault wrote:
> At http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/attachment/wiki/CodeSnippets/gimp-gdal.c, you'll 
> find the source for a GIMP plugin that can open GDAL datasets.
> 
> Instructions how to build (on Unix), install and use are in the header of the 
> file.
> 
> More fun than really usefull though, as (to the extent of my knowledge) GIMP 
> must open entirely the dataset into memory at loading. So unless you have 
> much RAM and patience, you won't be able to open big datasets.
> 
> Enjoy.
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