Color in photogrammetric remote sensing

A photogrammetric process using color as a physical measurement of topographic objects of interest May be denoted as photogrammetric remote sensing, where the photogrammetric determination of the "where" and "how large" merges with the remote sensing ideology of automatically classifying the "what" of topographic objects. As digital cameras are beginning to enter into photogrammetric practice, a dimension of complexity is being added to photogrammetry that has been a main concept in remote sensing for a long time. While color aerial photography simply is being produced with three perfectly co-registered emulsion layers, digital images can be obtained in a variety of different approaches. High-resolution panchromatic imagery May be combined with lower resolution color images. Color May also get created by sequentially producing its components, thereby introducing a need to eliminate geometric differences. The use of color in analyzing terrain has been a traditional topic in remote sensing. In photogrammetry the digital sensors present a new need to understand the coloration alternatives. We therefore present the various alternatives to sense color at the intersection of photogrammetry and remote sensing. We then proceed to address the different coloration schemes combining high resolution black-and-white pixels with the lower resolution color pixels and we take a look at the differences between the color images obtained from various approaches. The geometric resolution of the resulting pan-sharpened color images is of interest.