SpatialNews Press Release

ERDAS and LizardTech Announce MrSID Native Encoding Support in ERDAS IMAGINE V8.5

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ESRI 2001 (ERDAS, Booth#517, and LizardTech, Booth#1201) - SAN DIEGO, July 10, 2001 - ERDASā, Inc. and LizardTech, Inc. today announced the native support of LizardTech's MrSID Geo encoder in ERDAS IMAGINE® V8.5, a sophisticated and tightly integrated image processing system that offers users powerful feature enhancements including upgrades to the mosaicking tool and advanced 3D visualization and scene creation capabilities. This integration now allows ERDAS IMAGINE users the ability to quickly create MrSID image files and dramatically reduce the time and costs associated with using high-resolution geospatial imagery.

MrSID, the image format standard for geospatial professionals, reduces high-resolution images to less than five percent of their original file size while maintaining the quality of the original image.

"By offering the MrSID wavelet compression capabilities within the ERDAS environment, we're giving customers the ability to further streamline their workflow," said ERDAS President Lawrie Jordan, III. "The customer can now convert any image format that ERDAS IMAGINE can read and compress directly into LizardTech's MrSID image format, all while maintaining the quality of the image."

John Grizz Deal, founder of LizardTech said, "With the many enhancements in the latest ERDAS IMAGINE 8.5 release, ERDAS continues to show that it leads the industry in providing premier geographic imaging software tools. We are happy to be able to provide native MrSID encoding capabilities directly inside the ERDAS IMAGINE environment so users can immediately leverage our technology to benefit their high-end imaging requirements."

The MrSID Encoder is available in two options: as a free-of-charge, standard component of ERDAS IMAGINE 8.5 allowing customers to compress images of up to 50 million pixels in size free of charge, and as add-on modules that allow customers to compress images larger than 50 million pixels. In the add-on modules, the IMAGINE MrSID Desktop Encoder processes input files between 50 and 500 million pixels, while the IMAGINE MrSID Workstation Encoder handles files larger than 500 million pixels.

The IMAGINE MrSID Encoder includes the following functionalities:

· Faster regeneration, allowing for rapid decompression on-the-fly.

· Image auto-adjustments, through a lookup table or statistical contrast adjustments prior to compression.

· Compression of mosaicked images.

· Selection of a multi-band image and definition of which band, or combination of three bands, to compress.

· Retention of all projection and geometric transformation information via the creation of an AUX file alongside the output MrSID file. This ensures that ESRI's ArcGIS, ArcView Image Analysis, and ERDAS IMAGINE will not lose georeferencing information.

Production of these compressed MrSID image files also facilitates ERDAS customers' being able to serve imagery over the Internet using image servers such as LizardTech(tm) Content Server. ERDAS IMAGINE and LizardTech software users such as the Grand Canyon Monitoring Research Center will continue to experience success using the two companies' combined technology.

Raul Campos-Marquettti, Senior Scientist, EnerQuest Systems, LLC, said, "For the Grand Canyon Monitoring Research Center, we developed a series of detailed flyovers of the canyon using both the ERDAS IMAGINE and LizardTech software. Due to the fact that we used MrSID for this project, we were able to reduce the one-foot color infrared orthophotos from 500MB to just 22MB while keeping the quality of the imagery intact. MrSID has dramatically increased the processing and graphics efficiency in both the ERDAS IMAGINE and Virtual GIS environments."

For more information about ERDAS' geographic imaging products and services, including the MrSID Encoder upgrade information and ordering, contact ERDAS at: tel.: +1 404-248-9000, toll free: +1 877-GO ERDAS (463-7327), or visit www.erdas.com.

For additional information about LizardTech's leading imaging solutions, contact LizardTech at 1-877-580-5588, or visit www.lizardtech.com

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Jul 11, 2001 Jun 26, 2002