The cartographic processing of planetary image data has a long history within the Astrogeology Program. The software used in the processing has evolved numerous times since the early 1970's to keep up with the steady advances made in computing technology. In the latest version (Isis 3), applications have graphical user interfaces (GUIs) in addition to running on the command line, increasing user-friendliness while maintaining batch processing and scripting functionalities. The fully documented API (application program interface) allows developers to quickly write new applications without needing to learn GUI programming or know the mechanics of reading and writing various file formats.

GLIMSView is a cross platform application intended to aid the process of glacier digitization for the GLIMS project. GLIMSView reads Aster data, has basic on-screen image manipulation to assist in visually isolating glaciers, gives the user digitization tools for drawing outlines and identifying glaciers, and exports digitized glacier information to shapefiles that can be imported into GIS packages.

The following packages are no longer supported and maintained, but are still in use. Documentation is provided below for our legacy software users.