Catalyst Professional

Developed by PCI Geomatics, Catalyst Professional is an analysis application dedicated to earth observation data. It enables professionals and enthusiasts alike to open satellite and aerial images, in order to investigate details using advanced techniques. In the industrial sector, the tool is used for petroleum exploration, country-wide mapping, and crop monitoring.

The installation may take a while since third-party utilities are required for the remote sensing program's proper functioning. Wrapped in a feature-rich interface that hides its options and configuration settings under menus and toolbars, Catalyst Professional has tools that facilitate geometric correction, mosaicking, orthorectification, and DEM extraction.

Files with an extensive range of types can be opened using this application, including common rasters and vectors, Focus project files, ACE and SPANS maps, PCIDSK, PCI multi-file lists, ADRI (Arc Digitized Raster Image), ADS/SOCET SET, ALOS PRISM, ALOS / PALSAR Mosaic Raw images, ArcView Shapefile, and AutoCAD DXF.

It's possible to explore the map resources and files in hierarchical view, enhance areas with linear, root, adaptive, equalize, infrequency, contrast and brightness tools, view the RGB mapper, filter areas using lowpass, highpass and others, inspect numeric values (raw or enhance data), analyze histograms, as well as to check out spectra and scatter plots. More layers can be added with vector, RGB, grayscale, pseudocolor or bitmap items, as well as easily managed.

When it comes to analysis features, you can turn to image classification (supervised, unsupervised, accuracy assessment, aggregation, class editing or labelling), atmospheric correction (top of the atmosphere reflectance, haze removal and cloud masking, ATCOR - ground reflectance or surface temperature), spectra extraction, change detection, buffer, dissolve, or overlay.

As far as additional tools are concerned, you can use an algorithm librarian, EASI modeler, raster calculator, Python scripting, intelligent geofilling, data merging, reprojection, clipping / subsetting, and a representation editor. Maps can be exported to Adobe Illustrator (AI format) or Google Earth (KMZ, KML).

All aspects considered, Catalyst Professional turns out to be a comprehensive remote sensing program that can be used by anyone interested in analyzing earth observation information. It worked smoothly on Windows 10 in our tests.