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<!DOCTYPE doctype PUBLIC "-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 transitional//en">
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    <title>How</title>
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  <body vlink="#551a8b" text="#000000" link="#0000ee" bgcolor="#ffffff"
    alink="#ff0000">
    <h3><img alt="" src="../sun.gif" width="100" height="98"
        align="middle"> How it Works</h3>
    <blockquote>
      <p><b>Table of Contents</b></p>
      <a href="#How">How DS9 Renders an Image</a><br>
      <a href="#Scales">Scales</a><br>
      <a href="#Smoothing">Smoothing</a><br>
      <a href="#Contours">Contours</a><br>
      <a href="#LargeFiles">Large Files</a><br>
      <p><b><a name="How"></a>How DS9 renders an image</b></p>
      <p>Here is a short description on how DS9 decides to paint a pixel
        a color on the the screen, give an data value... you need a
        color scale, a contrast/bias pair for the colorscale, clip
        values for the data, a scale distribution, and finally, the
        value of the pixel in question.</p>
      <blockquote>
        <p>Step 1. Select a color scale. A color scale is defined as a
          number of colors (RGB triplets). The number of RGB triplets
          can vary from just a few to over 200. DS9 contains a number of
          predefined color scales (Gray, A, B, I8, ...) or the user may
          load his own color scale.</p>
        <p>Step 2. Apply a contrast/bias pair. This step takes the
          result of step 1 and creates a new array with the
          contrast/bias applied. The length of the new array will
          between 200 (for pseudocolor) and 4096 (for truecolor).</p>
        <p>Step 3. Calculate the data clip values (low/high data
          values). The min/max data values may be used or an algorithm
          may be used to determine the clip data values.</p>
        <p>Step 4. Apply the scale distribution. This involves taking
          the result of step 2, and creating yet another array, this
          time of size 16384, redistributing the colors, based on the
          scale algorithm selected (see <a href="Scales">Scales</a>).</p>
        <p>Step 5. Based on your data clip values, and the value of the
          pixel you have, index into the result of step 4, and you have
          an index into lookup table (for pseudocolor) and an RGB pair
          (for truecolor and postscript).</p>
      </blockquote>
      <p><b><a name="Scales"></a>Scales</b></p>
      <p>The <tt>log</tt> function is defined as the following:</p>
      <blockquote>
        <p><b><img src="img/log.png" alt="log equation" width="78"
              height="32"></b></p>
      </blockquote>
      <p>as <i>x</i> goes from 0 to 1. The user may specify an exponent
        <i>a</i> to change the distribution of colors within the
        colorbar. The default value of <i>a</i> is 1000. Typically,
        optical images respond well at 1000, IR images as low as 100,
        and high energy bin tables up to 10000. A value of 10000 closely
        matches the <b><tt>log</tt></b> function of SAOImage as defined
        as the following:</p>
      <blockquote>
        <p><b><img src="img/saolog.png" alt="SAOImage log equation"
              width="65" height="34"></b></p>
      </blockquote>
      <p>The <tt>pow</tt> function is defined as the following:</p>
      <blockquote>
        <p><b><img src="img/pow.png" alt="pow equation" width="51"
              height="30"></b></p>
      </blockquote>
      <p>as <i>x</i> goes from 0 to 1. The user may specify an exponent
        <i>a</i> to change the distribution of colors within the
        colorbar. The default value of <i>a</i> is 1000.</p>
      <p>The <tt>sqrt</tt> scale function is defined as the following:</p>
      <blockquote><img src="img/sqrt.png" alt="sqrt equation" width="42"
          height="21"><br>
      </blockquote>
      <p>as <i>x</i> goes from 0 to 1. </p>
      <p>The <tt>square</tt> scale function is defined as the
        following:</p>
      <blockquote><img src="img/square.png" alt="square equation"
          width="35" height="21"><br>
      </blockquote>
      <p>as <i>x</i> goes from 0 to 1.<br>
      </p>
      <p>The <tt>asinh</tt> scale function is defined as the following:</p>
      <blockquote><img alt="asinh" src="img/asinh.png" width="80"
          height="29"><br>
      </blockquote>
      <p>as <i>x</i> goes from 0 to 1. </p>
      <p>The <tt>sinh</tt> scale function is defined as the following:</p>
      <blockquote><img alt="sinh" src="img/sinh.png" width="69"
          height="29"><br>
      </blockquote>
      <p>as <i>x</i> goes from 0 to 1. </p>
      <p>The <tt>histogram equalization</tt> scale function distributes
        colors based on the frequency of each data value.</p>
      <p><b><a name="Smoothing"></a>Smoothing</b></p>
      <p>The user may select one of three types of smoothing kernels.
        The parameter, <i>r</i> or <tt>kernel radius</tt>, is defined
        as the following:</p>
      <blockquote> Boxcar function, where the width = 2<i>r</i>+1<br>
        Tophat function, where the radius = <i>r</i> and the diameter
        of kernel is 2<i>r</i>+1<br>
        Gaussian function, defined as:
        <blockquote><img src="img/gauss.png" alt="Gaussian Equation"
            width="173" height="38"><br>
        </blockquote>
        where the mean = 0 and sigma =<i> r</i>/2, and the diameter of
        kernel is 2<i>r</i>+1 </blockquote>
      <p><b><a name="Contours"></a>Contours</b></p>
      <p>The contour algorithm is from an unknown author and originally
        came from FV. The difference between the two modes are:<tt><br>
        </tt></p>
      <blockquote><tt>block</tt> : the image is blocked down before the
        contour is generated <br>
        <tt>smooth</tt> : the image is smoothed via a Gaussian kernel
        before the contour is generated. </blockquote>
      <p><tt>block</tt> mode is faster as the smoothing parameter
        increases. Inversely, <tt>smooth</tt> mode is much slower as
        the smoothing parameter increases.</p>
      <p><b><a name="LargeFiles"></a>Large Files</b></p>
      There are several factors that determine if DS9 will be able to
      load a large file.<br>
      <p>32 bit OS vs 64 bit OS : to address very large files, you may
        need to use an 64 bit OS with a 64bit version of DS9. 32bit apps
        can address up to 4Gb of address space. However, depending on
        the OS, this limit may be less. Linux for example, the limit
        appears to be ~3GB (the OS and shared libs eat up a lot of
        address space). Under 64bit Solaris, 32bit ds9 has a full 4Gb of
        space. MacOSX appears to have a limit ~3Gb. Under windows, ~2Gb.</p>
      <p>Large File Support: is the ability to sequence thru files
        larger than 4Gb. DS9 is compiled with LFS.</p>
      <p>File system: the OS file system must be able to support files
        larger than 4Gb. Most recent file systems fully support 4GB&gt;.</p>
      <p>Memory Management: There are a number of memory management
        techniques supported in DS9 that will greatly affect the ability
        and speed of loading large files:</p>
      <blockquote> <tt>$ ds9 foo.fits # uses mmap</tt><br>
        <tt>$ cat foo.fits | ds9 - # allocates memory</tt> <br>
        <tt>$ xpaset -p ds9 file foo.fits # uses mmap</tt> <br>
        <tt>$ xpaset -p ds9 fits foo.fits # allocates memory</tt><br>
      </blockquote>
      <p>Memory Map (<tt>mmap</tt>) is very fast, limit is memory
        address space (see above). Allocate is very slow, limit is
        amount of physical memory + swap partition.</p>
      <p>Scanning Data: DS9 needs to determine the min and max data
        values to correctly display your image. For large files, such as
        Mosaics and Data Cubes,&nbsp; this can take time. You have the
        option of using using the FITS keywords DATAMIN/MAX or
        IRAFMIN/MAX - great if present, bad because they are always
        wrong. Another option is to specify the low and high clip values
        via the command line or Scale dialogbox.<br>
      </p>
      <blockquote> <br>
      </blockquote>
    </blockquote>
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