After developing the film, the photographs will be scanned into digital image data. A variety of software, including MatLab and Photoshop, will be used to correct any image flaws that are found. Some of these flaws may include atmospheric interference and distortion, color differences, decreased resolution, and image rotation. Custom software will be developed by the team to specifically address the problem of pixel registration by aligning the images using translation, rotation, and scaling. The software may also be used to correct the problems of color calibration.
Atmospheric effects can brighten, dull, fuzz, blur, or otherwise distort color values.
Actual color correction will be accomplished by the use of color references that appear in every photo, near enough to the lens to be clearly visible without color fading, with a corresponding color reference on the ground. The ultimate goal of this project is that when given an arbitrary set of photos, taken in pairs at the same altitudes, despite differing camera positions and film types, the software will be able to align and obtain a combination of usable area from the pair of photographs. The data combined from the pairs of photographs may be used in any of a variety of things that researchers can think of that uses data of this type. We will be using the results of previous teams, studying their methods and improving them as we see fit. We will use an incremental approach towards the final goal of improved high altitude image acquisition, adjusting our methods as we gain a better understanding of the nuances of high altitude imaging.