Colour Tables

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JakeWi
Posts: 9
Joined: Fri Apr 11, 2014 12:30 am
Location: Michigan City, Indiana

Colour Tables

Post by JakeWi »

Hi guys;

I was wondering what your preferred colour table is for the GOES Visible Channel, I've found the NDVI colour table to separate clouds and ground well.

Also how do I apply the Funktop enhancement to channel four IR?
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bobc
Posts: 988
Joined: Mon Nov 15, 2010 5:57 pm

Re: Colour Tables

Post by bobc »

Hi JakeWi -

Perhaps others who use McIDAS-V in a more operational environment would have a better opinion of the best enhancement for GOES visible imagery, but I generally use the default 'System > Gray scale' enhancement. For brightness, this defaults to a range of 0-255. I find that you can look at the Histogram tab in the Layer Controls to get a better idea of the actual data values, and from this information you can adjust the enhancement range to better match the data which might lead to a better image.

As far as the funktop enhancement, I'm not seeing this included with McIDAS-V (at least nothing with that name). Here are a couple of options for you:
1. In the Plugin Manager, there are a variety of available Color Tables plugins. Add these plugins and restart McIDAS-V. Here are a couple enhancements you can give a look at to see if any are close enough to funktop:
- Gempak > Group 2 > sabir (this one looks to be very close to funktop color-wise, but I don't know if the breakpoints are at the right place)
- Gempak > Group 1 > ir_grb
- Satellite > Legacy > Convection 1
- Satellite > Longwave Infrared Deep Convection
- AWIPS > Sat > Precip Water > Precip Water Polar
- AWIPS > Sat > IR > CIRA IR Default
2. If you know the breakpoint values of the funktop enhancement, you can create your own funktop enhancement using the Color Table Editor
3. You can import color tables through the Color Table Editor in the form of *.xml, *.tbl (GEMPAK), *.ascii (3-column RGB), and *.et (McIDAS-X). If you are able to find the funktop enhancement somewhere online in one of these formats, you should be able to import and save it.

Thanks -
Bob Carp
McIDAS Help Desk
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joleenf
Posts: 1123
Joined: Mon Jan 19, 2009 7:16 pm

Re: Colour Tables

Post by joleenf »

Hi Jake,

A variation on the inverse gray scale which works well for visible albedo is in Satellite>Group 2>Square Root Visible Enhancement

I believe this is standard in the McIDAS-V library, but if it isn't, I can post it.

See image below.

Screen Shot 2014-06-24 at 9.34.20 AM.png
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timsmith101
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Joined: Fri Sep 12, 2014 5:01 pm
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Re: Colour Tables

Post by timsmith101 »

joleenf wrote:Hi Jake,

A variation on the inverse gray scale which works well for visible albedo is in Satellite>Group 2>Square Root Visible Enhancement

I believe this is standard in the McIDAS-V library, but if it isn't, I can post it.

See image below.

Screen Shot 2014-06-24 at 9.34.20 AM.png



Thats great thanks, I had been looking for some kind of variation. (new to all this)
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stormchasing101
Posts: 37
Joined: Sun Sep 06, 2015 6:24 am

Re: Colour Tables

Post by stormchasing101 »

Hello all,
I'm new to the forums and was hoping I could receive some assistance. I really enjoy the McIDAS-V software, particularly the satellite displays and was hoping that maybe someone could help me out with some table conversions and creation. I will include the list of AWIPS II cmap color tables in hopes that someone can make heads or tails of them and post the working tables. I will include a screenshot from the Understanding Weather and Climate course showing the IR enhancement I am interested in. Thank you all in advance for any help.

--Carl
SkyWarn Spotter# AS 051
Attachments
GOES-8 Color enhanced.PNG
GOES-8 Color enhanced2.PNG
AWIPS II cmap tables.zip
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Rick
Posts: 404
Joined: Fri Jan 16, 2009 8:20 pm

Re: Colour Tables

Post by Rick »

Hi Carl,

You'll need to convert your .cmap xml formatted file before they can imported into McIDAS-V. You might consider converting the file into an ascii file where each line contains RGB values.

Code: Select all

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>                                                                   
<colorMap>                                                                                                               
    <color r="0.0" g="0.0" b="0.0" a="1.0"/>                                                                             
    <color r="0.0" g="0.0" b="0.0" a="1.0"/>                                                                             
    <color r="0.0" g="0.0" b="0.0" a="1.0"/>                                                                             
    <color r="0.0" g="0.0" b="0.0" a="1.0"/>                                                                             
    <color r="0.0" g="0.0" b="0.0" a="1.0"/>                                                                             
    <color r="0.0" g="0.0" b="0.0" a="1.0"/>                                                                             
    <color r="0.0" g="0.0" b="0.0" a="1.0"/>                                                                             
    <color r="0.0" g="0.0" b="0.0" a="1.0"/>                                                                             
    <color r="0.0" g="0.0" b="0.0" a="1.0"/>                                                                             
    <color r="0.0" g="0.0" b="0.0" a="1.0"/>                                                                             
    <color r="0.0" g="0.0" b="0.0" a="1.0"/>                                                                             
    <color r="0.078431375" g="0.078431375" b="0.078431375" a="1.0"/>                                                     
    <color r="0.09411765" g="0.09411765" b="0.09411765" a="1.0"/>                                                         
    <color r="0.1254902" g="0.1254902" b="0.1254902" a="1.0"/>                                                           
    <color r="0.15686275" g="0.15686275" b="0.15686275" a="1.0"/>   


I did note that some of your files have 64 lines and others 128. I'm not sure how that number of lines correlates with the expected 256 lines using the McIDAS-V importing tool. You could possible write a script that converts the files, obtain a program that does the conversion or as I did, open with the file with Excel.

I have created Inquiry 2161 to request this enhancement.

Rick
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