Welcome to OTB CookBook’s documentation!

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The ORFEO Toolbox is not a black box.

Orfeo ToolBox (OTB) is an open-source set of tools for remote sensing images processing, distributed under the CeCILL-v2 license. It has been initiated and funded by CNES (French space agency) in the frame of a program named ORFEO to prepare, accompany and promote the use and the exploitation of the images derived from Pléiades satellites (PHR). Orfeo ToolBox aims at enabling large images state-of-the-art processing even on limited resources laptops, and is shipped with a set of extensible ready-to-use tools for classical remote sensing tasks, as well as a fully integrated, end-users oriented software called Monteverdi.

Since its begining in 2006, Orfeo ToolBox has become a rich library used in many remote sensing context: from research work to operational systems. The OTB applications and more recently Monteverdi have helped to broaden the audience of the library, giving access to its functionalities to non-developers.

Meanwhile, the OTB Software Guide has grown to more than 700 pages of documented code examples, which, combined with the class documentation with the Doxygen, allows developer users to find their way through the Orfeo ToolBox so as to write code suiting their needs.

Yet, the documentation available for non-developers users, using Monteverdi and OTB Applications to perform everyday remote sensing tasks, has been almost inexistent for all these years, and these users had to learn the software by themselves or ask for help from more experienced users. This cookbook aims at fulfilling the need for an appropriate documentation of the applications built upon the Orfeo ToolBox: Monteverdi, and OTB Applications, which are now integrated into the main Orfeo ToolBox package and provide several access mode (command-line, QT interface, QGis plugins, other languages ...).

A general introduction to these tools is first presented, along with installation instructions. Rather than describing all modules and applications in an exhaustive way, we then decided to focus on very common remote sensing tasks, detailing how they can be achieved with either Monteverdi or an application.

For more information on the Orfeo ToolBox, please feel free to visit the Orfeo ToolBox website.

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