What's New in ENVI 5.5.1

What's New in ENVI 5.5, Service Pack 1

This software release includes the new and enhanced features listed below.

See the following sections:

Supported Data Types
ArcGIS Integration
Data Processing
Tutorials
Programming

Supported Data Types

ENVI supports the following sensors and data types:

AlSat-1B
FormoSat-5
MIE4NITF
PlanetScope reflectance imagery
Updates to Sentinel-2 metadata

When saving an image to Compressed ARC Digitized Raster Graphics (CADRG) format, you can specify the Originating Station ID and Originator's Name from the associated NITF metadata. Color quantization has also been improved in CADRG output.

ArcGIS Integration

ENVI 5.5, Service Pack 1 now supports ArcGIS® version 10.6.

ENVI Py 1.1 provides support for the following data types in ArcGIS: ENVIRASTERARRAY, ENVIROI, ENVIROIARRAY, and ENVIURIARRAY. As a result, the following ENVITasks can be deployed as standalone tools in ArcMap and ArcGIS Pro. See the Running ENVI Analytics in ArcGIS Pro tutorial to learn more:

ENVIBuildMosaicRasterTask
ENVIDiceRasterByDistanceTask
ENVIDiceRasterByPixelTask
ENVIDiceRasterByTileCountTask
ENVIDiceRasterByVectorTask
ENVIROIMaskRasterTask
ENVIROIToClassificationTask
ENVIVectorAttributeToROIsTask
ENVIVectorRecordsToROITask
ENVIVectorRecordsToSeparateROITask

Data Processing

The following are new data processing tools and features:

Topographic Shading Tool

Use the Topographic Shading Tool to blend a color representation of a digital elevation model (DEM) with a topographic feature. Examples of topographic features include shaded relief, slope, aspect, and derivatives of slope and aspect. The result is an image that provides a better visual representation of the shape and texture of topographic features than using the DEM alone. A common use is to blend a colored DEM with a shaded relief image to produce a hillshade image that emphasizes terrain relief.

You can preview the resulting image as you adjust settings for the DEM, topographic features, and the level of blending. Then you can save the result to an ENVI-format image with the same spatial resolution as the input DEM. The resulting image can be used for visualization and presentation.

See the Topographic Shading help topic for details.

Contour Lines

Use the New Contour Layer menu option to display contour lines on a single-band image. This option provides a quick way to display contour lines in the current view, using a reduced-resolution version of the image to approximate the contour lines. Or, use the Generate Contour Lines tool (available in the ENVI Toolbox) to create a shapefile of contour lines from a full-resolution image. See the Overlay Contour Lines and Generate Full-Resolution Contour Lines help topics for details.

Download OpenStreetMap^® Vectors

Download, open, and display OpenStreetMap vectors within ENVI. A common use is to overlay the vectors on an image or other dataset. To get started, open an image and select File > Open World Data > Download OpenStreetMap Vectors from the ENVI menu bar. Or, use the Alt+O keyboard shortcut. See the Download OpenStreetMap Vectors help topic for details.

ENVI Modeler Updates

Connect parameters that produce arrays of rasters or vectors to View and Data Manager nodes.

Search for tasks by category using the new Filter by Tag button. Similarly, right-click on any task in the search result list and select Find Similar Tasks. The list updates to show tasks that are in the same category. When publishing a task, you can enter a comma-separated list of tags to categorize the task by function.

The Input Parameters node provides additional options to set the display name, description, and order of individual parameters.

RPC Orthorectification Updates

You can choose the output projection of orthorectified images in the RPC Orthorectification workflow and in the RPC Orthorectification Using DSM from Dense Image Matching tool. Similarly, the following ENVITasks have a new OUTPUT_COORDINATE_SYSTEM property where you can specify the output projection of orthorectified images:

ENVIRPCOrthorectificationTask
ENVIRPCOrthorectificationUsingDSMFromDenseImageMatchingTask
ENVIRPCOrthorectificationUsingReferenceImageTask

Save Vector Symbology

If you modify the display properties of a vector layer, you can save the symbology settings for later use. Each time you reopen the vector file, ENVI applies the styles defined in the associated symbology file (if it is present). See the Work with Vectors help topic for more information.

Tutorials

New ENVI tutorials are available:

The Image Change Detection Tutorial was updated to use Sentinel-2 imagery of a flooding event in Peru in 2017.

Programming

New ENVITasks

Task	Description
ENVIBufferZoneTask	Create a buffer zone image from a classification raster.
ENVIDownloadOSMVectorsTask	Download OpenStreetMap vectors.
ENVIExportRasterToCADRGTask	Export a three-band byte raster to CADRG format. A NITF/NSIF Module license is required to write to CADRG format.
ENVIFlatFieldCorrectionTask	Apply Flat Field atmospheric correction to a raster.
ENVIGenerateContourLinesTask	Generate contour lines from an input raster and convert them to a shapefile.
ENVIGenerateIndexArrayTask	Create an array of numbers (typically used with contour lines).
ENVIGetColorTableTask	Get an array of red/green/blue (RGB) values from a specified IDL color table name.
ENVIIARReflectanceCorrectionTask	Apply Internal Average Relative Reflectance (IARR) correction to a raster.
ENVITopographicShadingUsingHLSTask	Blend an HLS (hue/lightness/saturation) color representation of a DEM with a topographic feature such as shaded relief.
ENVITopographicShadingUsingHSVTask	Blend an HSV (hue/saturation/value) color representation of a DEM with a topographic feature such as shaded relief.
ENVITopographicShadingUsingRGBTask	Blend an RGB color representation of a DEM with a topographic feature such as shaded relief.

New Routines

Routine	Description
ENVINITFQuerySensorModels	Get a list of available CSM sensor models from the Mensuration Services Program (MSP), given a valid NITF input file and image segment. This routine is only available with the ENVI Department of Defense (DoD) plug-in. This is a separate package that provides additional support in ENVI for data formats and sensor models that are commonly used by customers in the U.S. defense and intelligence community. Contact your sales representative for more information.
ENVIStretchParameters	Define the stretch type to apply to a single-band raster, along with its minimum and maximum values and percentages. This object is currently only used with the topographic shading ENVITasks listed above in New ENVITasks.

Other Updates

The ENVI API version was updated to 3.3.

Task templates include a new tags key that is used to categorize tasks. As a result, the task schema version was updated to 3.3.

ENVI_CAL_DOIT now supports the use of masks. On output, masked pixels are set to a data-ignore value of 10^-34.

The following are new user interface elements:

ENVIColorTable_UI: Select a predefined or custom color table.
IDLSubRect_UI: Enter X and Y pixel or map coordinates that define a spatial subset.