Perhaps I am asking too much, but, I am looking for an image viewer that will load very large (5000x5000px) images without batting an eye, zoom in very close, and when I get it zoomed in (this is the important part,) it needs to clarify the image to some degree so that I can see what I am looking at. Basically I am looking for a software package like you see in the movies, where you can take like a satellite image and use it to read license plates. If anyone knows of a package that meets all of these criteria, and is free, or reasonably priced, let me know.

Thanks alot

Ian

just a shameless bump

Anyone?

(One last bump, then I'll let it die)

Well there really is no such thing, that I know of.

If you have a 5000x5000 image, then you are going to need a hella lot of RAM to keep your machine from swapping out most of the image or choking on it. The Gimp can handle very large images pretty well. On par with photoshop.

As far as clarifying the image, you could run a sharpness filter or something but you can't just make an image clearer. You can't get something from nothing. If the pixel information isn't there, then nothing you do will put it there. The best you can do is interpolate and play with the discrete functions described by the pixels. This is what filters do. It won't take a blurry image and make it clear, but it will take an image and sharpen the feature lines.


/geek


Note: I did image processing in college, and we studied this a lot. The professor who taught the class wrote the C++ libraries which the US armed forces designated as the official api for image processing in military hardware. He knew what he was talking about, and we were fortunate enough to have him teach us.

Aww, nuts.

Thanks for the info.

Ian