Images with Log-Linear Aspect Ratios
QUESTION: I wish to display an image with a logarithmic aspect ratio on one axis, and a linear aspect ratio on another axis. This is different from displaying the logarithm of the image values, because what I want is that the image pixels at the bottom on the image be stretched more than the pixels at the top.
I can think of some (tortured) ways to do this, but I keep thinking there must be some sophisticated way to handle this in IDL. Do you have any ideas?
ANSWER: I don't have any ideas, but Ben Tupper does. He suggests that the way to do this would be to use a flat, filled IDLgrSurface object that is projected in the same way one might view an image, but with a log-scaled Y axis. The image data is placed on top of this surface by means of a texture map, using the TEXTURE_MAP keyword of the surface object. He offers the following IDL code as an example.
; Read the data, collect size information. rose = Read_Image(FilePath('rose.jpg',SUBDIRECTORY=['examples','data'])) dim = Size(rose, /DIMENSIONS) nx = dim[1] ny = dim[2] x = Findgen(nx) + 1 y = Findgen(ny) + 1 s = Replicate(1, nx, ny) ; The first surface is a "regular" surface. surf_1 = Obj_New("IDLgrSurface", s, x, y, $ COLOR=[255,255,255], STYLE=2, $ TEXTURE_MAP=Obj_New("IDLgrImage", rose)) model_1 = Obj_New("IDLgrModel") model_1 -> Add, surf_1 model_1 -> Translate, 0, -ny/2. - 10, 0 ; Scale so they take up the same amount of space on display. scale = ny / alog10(ny) ; The second surface is log scale in y. surf_2 = Obj_New("IDLgrSurface", s, x, alog10(y), $ COLOR=[255,255,255], STYLE=2, $ TEXTURE_MAP=Obj_New("IDLgrImage", rose)) model_2 = Obj_New("IDLgrModel") model_2 -> Add, surf_2 model_2 -> Scale, 1, scale, 1 model_2 -> Translate, 0,ny/2. + 10, 0 ; View the two surfaces XObjView, [model_1, model_2] , /BLOCK ; Clean up. Obj_Destroy, [model_1, model_2]
Running the code above results in the output shown in the figure below. The image with a linear aspect ratio is shown at the bottom of the figure, and the image with a logarithmic Y axis is shown at the top of the figure.
The image with logarithmic aspect ratio is at the top. |
Version of IDL used to prepare this article: IDL 7.0.1.
Copyright © 2008 David W. Fanning
Last Updated 02 March 2008