ProRaster Help – Component Properties
On this page, you will find general help for the ProRaster product family including links to documentation, instructional videos, and training videos.
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Component Properties
Access the component properties by clicking on the component item in the tree control. The component property sheet will be displayed containing the Component, Color, and Shadow property pages. Properties can be one of four different types – local, default, override and propagated.
What property pages and the properties presented in those pages depends upon the product tier, the product licensing and the layer and component type.
Component Page
Name: The component name is reflected in the tree. Components are named by default when you first connect a raster source.
Description: A short, optional, description of the component.
Enable: Enable or disable the component from the tree or from this property. If you disable a component, then it will not contribute to the rendering of a layer. For a layer to render you must enable at least one component, and that cannot be Opacity.
Coordinate system (default): This is a propagated property and is acquired from rasters used in the component. It may be propagated up to the layer and algorithm. If you override the coordinate system (see next item), this setting will change to reflect that.
Coordinate system (override): To specify the coordinate system and to override the default coordinate system, select a recently used coordinate system from the drop-list or hit the button to select a coordinate system using the Projection Selection dialog. By doing so, you are telling ProRaster what the coordinate system of the rasters is in the raster source used by the component.
Raster Source: Drop down the raster source list to select a raster source for this component. If you have not yet created a raster source, you can hit the Browse button to browse to a raster file.
Field : Band: Once you have defined the raster source, you will be presented with a list of fields and a list of bands for that field. Select a field and band.
Time Range: Once you have defined the raster source and the field, you will be presented with a list of time points (events) in the raster. Select the time range that you want to display from beginning to end inclusive.
Data Conditioning: Select a data conditioning filter, if desired, from the list of filters you have prepared with the Data Conditioning Filter Editor. This filter will be applied to the raster data during rendering.
Color Page
Data Transform Type: To transform from data to color space, you can select from a wide variety of system defined transforms, data transforms you have hand crafted in the Data Transform Editor, or data transforms in color tables, maps, and legends. Firstly, select the data transform category shown in this list, and then select the required transform (below).
Data Transform: For any data transform category there may be multiple data transforms defined. For system transforms, these allow you to vary clipping ranges and other parameters. The categories and transforms available are listed below.
Local Transforms: If you have loaded an MRD and the data transforms in that MRD are not standard or matching a known transform, then they will be listed here.
No Transform (Pass Scaled, Pass Index, Pass Value, Rotate Index): A variety of restricted transforms that you can use when the data is already partially transformed. Pass Scaled can be used if your data is already scaled between zero and one. Pass Index can be used if your data is already a zero-based integer index matching the number of colors in the color table. Pass value can be used if your data is already a color. Rotate index can be used if your data is a set of zero-based integers. From a set of N colors (matching the number of colors in the color table), it uses the modulus function to assign a color index from each integer index.
Color transform (Color bits): A linear transform with minimum at zero and maximum at 2^N-1. Enter the number of bits of color resolution.
Linear Transform (Linear, 1% clip, 5% clip, 10% clip, 0.5%Q clip, 2%Q clip, 5%Q clip, Manual Clip): A linear transform where the minimum and maximum are established from data statistics, or input manually. The percentage clip options clip the bottom N% and top N% of data range. The percentile clip options clip the bottom N%Q and top N%Q of the data distribution.
Whenever a manual clip option is selected, you must enter the minimum and maximum values of the transform range. You can hit the “Fit” button to automatically set the minimum and maximum values to the statistical range of the data displayed in the map. This option allows you to stretch the color over the visible data range rather than the entire data range and create a more visually appealing local rendering.
Logarithmic Transform (Various options + Manual Clip): A logarithmic transform where the minimum and maximum are established from data statistics, or input manually. Log base 10 is used in all cases. The transform will be linear between a specified (+/-) range about zero. These ranges are selectable – 1, 10, 100, 1000, 0.1, 0.01, 0.001, 0.0001.
Equal Area Transform (Equal Area, 1% clip, 5% clip, 10% clip, 0.5%Q clip, 2%Q clip, 5%Q clip, Manual Clip): An equal area transform, stretching color evenly over the data distribution, where the minimum and maximum are established from data statistics, or input manually. You can control the transform using the “Linear to Equal Area” option which ranges from 0 to 100. At zero the transform is a linear transform, and it transitions to a full equal area transform at 100.
Stable Equal Area Transform (Stable Equal Area, 1% clip, 5% clip, 10% clip, 0.5%Q clip, 2%Q clip, 5%Q clip, Manual Clip): An equal area transform, stretching color evenly over the data distribution, where the minimum and maximum are established from data statistics, or input manually. The transform uses a equal frequency histogram instead of a equal width histogram. These histograms are resistant to outliers and highly skewed data distributions.
Sigmoid Lightening Transform (Lighten, 1% clip, 5% clip, 10% clip, 0.5%Q clip, 2%Q clip, 5%Q clip, Manual Clip): A sigmoid function where the minimum and maximum are established from data statistics, or input manually.
Sigmoid Darkening Transform (Darken, 1% clip, 5% clip, 10% clip, 0.5%Q clip, 2%Q clip, 5%Q clip, Manual Clip): A sigmoid function where the minimum and maximum are established from data statistics, or input manually.
Ranges (Ranges, Manual Clip, Quantile, About Mean, About Median, About Mode, Deviations, Jenks): A specified number of ranges where the minimum and maximum are established from data statistics, or input manually. Ranges are based on equal width data ranges, between the minimum and maximum data values or the clipping limits entered manually. Quantile ranges are based on data distribution. Ranges about the mean, median, and mode are centred on those statistical values and half the ranges are above and half are below. The range width is based on statistics. Deviations about the mean are centred on the mean and range widths are one standard deviation. Jenks natural breaks uses a statistical algorithm to determine the best distribution of ranges for the dataset.
Stored Transforms: In this category are listed all the transforms that you have created manually using the Data Transform Editor dialog.
System color maps: Lists all the color maps in the C:\ProgramData\RGE\ColorTables\SystemMaps directory. You can specify a clipping range for these maps, even though this does not affect the color mapping.
User defined color tables: Lists all the color maps in the C:\ProgramData\RGE\ColorTables\UserTables directory. You can specify a clipping range for these maps, even though this does not affect the color mapping.
External folder: Every external color table folder that you have connected to ProRaster will be listed as a separate category. All the color maps in that folder will be listed. You can specify a clipping range for these maps, even though this does not affect the color mapping.
Color Table: This control shows a preview of the currently selected color table. Click on the control to drop down a list of all color tables. Recently selected tables are shown at the top, and then all the color tables connected to ProRaster. Double click to select a color table.
Invalid beyond clip limits: Data values that outside of the clipping limits of the transform are normally assigned the bottom and top colors in the color table. This option enables you to prevent rendering pixels that are outside the data transform clipping range. You can clip beyond the limits or within the limits in a variety of combinations.
Reverse color table: Reverse the color table. This is particularly useful for Opacity components and can be a convenient alternative to reversing the data transform.
Transform Raster Source: Most transforms rely on some statistics derived from a raster. You can choose to acquire those statistics from a different raster to the one you are rendering. Select a raster source or browse to a raster or select <None> to disable this feature.
Field : Band: If you choose a transform raster source, you must also choose a field and band from which to acquire statistics.
Interpolation: If this property has not been overridden at the layer or algorithms levels, you can set the interpolation method used to generate underview tiles for color and opacity components. Select from the drop-list. The following methods are available – Nearest neighbour, Linear, Local cubic spline, Global cubic spline, and Default.
Nearest: If this property has not been overridden at the layer or algorithms levels, you can direct the system to use nearest neighbour interpolation when interpolating from tile to pixel grid centres. Otherwise, the default is bi-linear unless this is not supported by the field type and band data type.
Shadow Page
This property can be controlled from the algorithm. If so, the controls will be disabled. Otherwise, you can control the shadow and specular highlighting for the layer from here.
The appearance of the shadow and specular highlight is determined by the azimuth and altitude of an artificial sun. You can set these parameters for the shadow and for the highlight independently. You can enable one or both features at the same time.
A graphical control shows the position of the sun as a filled yellow circle, and the position of the specular highlight sun as a star. You can drag the sun around the control by left clicking, holding, and dragging. When you release the button, the properties will be updated. You can drag the highlight sun around the control by right clicking, holding, and dragging. In both cases the preview graphic is updated to show what the effect looks like.
In addition to moving the sun angle, you can change the scaling, or depth, of the shadow and highlight. To ensure that shadow is approximately uniform, regardless of the scale or units of the raster values, the scaling factor depends on a statistic computed from the raster. If this is unsuitable, you can manually override this value. Specifying a suitable value is largely guess work and trial and error.
Enable shadow: Check this box to enable hill-shading with artificial shadow.
Azimuth (shadow): The sun azimuth can be varied between 0 and 360 degrees.
Altitude (shadow): The sun altitude can be varied between 0 and 90 degrees.
Scale (shadow): The shadow depth can be varied between 0 and 100.
Enable highlight: Check this box to enable specular highlights.
Azimuth (highlight): The sun azimuth can be varied between 0 and 360 degrees.
Altitude (highlight): The sun altitude can be varied between 0 and 90 degrees.
Scale (highlight): The highlight scaling can be varied between 0 and 100.
Manual statistics: Enable this option and define the average cell-to-cell difference to set scaling manually.