Optimized Visual Rendering

Optimized Visual Rendering (OVR) is the latest option for radiometric enhancement of Pleiades
imagery. OVR is an option perfectly suited to display the imagery within applications and direct
integration into GIS. The OVR process includes:

Radiometric adjustment: color stretching and contrast enhancement

Atmospheric offset subtraction

Process and Encoding:

The process is done for each individual product for optimum results (the continuity of visual
rendering is not ensured between separate products). For tiled products, OVR rendering is
homogeneous on all tiles.
For JPEG 2000 12-bit / GeoTIFF 16-bit products without OVR, the dynamic range
corresponds to the dynamic range at acquisition (12-bit contains 4096 values).
With OVR option, images are encoded in 16 bits with 16-bit depth dynamic range (65536
values).

The pixel values of images delivered with no OVR are raw digital counts as imaged and coded at the
satellite sensor. These values are useful for customers whose applications require detailed
knowledge of the sensor. In contrast to a visual application, their proper rendering on the screen can
be difficult to achieve with standard display software. OVR formats the image with immediate visual
rendering for customers who do not want to, or cannot, carry out elaborate display adjustments. The
main goals of OVR are to:
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Standardize the display color rendering in consistency with its spectral band characteristics.
Simplify the user's final brightness/contrast adjustment via a simple, standard tool such as a
cursor.
Distribute the values of the whole display range used by customer software (256 values per
channel for 8-bit, 65535 values per channel for > 8-bit) and thus use all the colors available in
this range.
Enhance the image brightness and contrast for an initially balanced direct display.
Minimize some of the atmosphere content related effects to lend towards ground visual
rendering.

OVR uses the radiometric calibration of each band, in other words, OVR is based on the spectral
response in the visible spectrum (R, G, B) and near infrared (NIR) spectrum. This calibration is not
strictly the colorimetry seen on the ground, as the characteristics of the atmosphere are not known at
the time the acquisition is taken (the calibration is known as Top of Atmosphere). The atmosphere is a
major contributor to the colorimetry seen on the ground as it acts as a filter that can disrupt light
radiation. As OVR also performs dynamic matching to optimize visual rendering, the pixel values no
longer have any meaning for conversion into a lighting brightness or color physical unit (radiance,
luminance, etc.). Some radiometric information thus becomes obsolete after OVR application and it is
no longer provided in the DIMAP file (i.e. Radiometric_Calibration, Histogram_Band_List).
One aim of OVR is to use the full display range of software. This avoids manual adjustments. Since
commercial off-the-shelf software handles bits coded internally as bytes, this range is a binary power
which is a multiple of 8: whence 256= 2^8, 65536=2^16, 16777216=2^24, etc. If we had kept the 12bit dynamic range, we would have only used the first 1/16th of the useful range (65536/4096) and
thus only the dark shades of a standard Look Up Tables (LUT) would have been displayed. By
distributing these over 16 bits, the whole display range is used and thus all the shades of a standard
LUT, from dark to light. There is no change for 8-bit products as they already use the full available
range.
The native characteristics are altered with a nonlinear correction, which depends on the image. This
correction cannot be characterized and the original digital number values cannot be recovered. For
this reason, OVR option is not recommended for radiometric measurement and/or processing for
applications such as agriculture, forestry, hydrology, automatic change detection, automatic
classification and feature extraction.

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