More than one image can show data from the same table, including from the same tile field.
Consider an image that shows terrain elevations in a region of Florida, as shown in the Style: Palettes topic:
We can make multiple copies of that image and change the style applied to each. In the Project pane we Copy the Florida image component and then Paste it a few times to create additional Florida 2, Florida 3 and Florida 4 images. Being copies of the original Florida image these all will also take their data from the same table.
We can then open each image in turn and launch the Edit - Style dialog to change the palette used by that image. Doing that only changes the style of display, a property of the image and not the data. We make no changes to the data in the table.
Above we see all four images open in undocked windows in our Manifold desktop, each one using different Style settings. They all show the same data from the same field in the same table, but present it in different ways.
To repeat, images contain no data themselves. They only contain properties that specify from which table and field they should take data to display, and they contain properties that specify how to display that data. We can exploit that capability to create images that can have Style or other characteristics that are editable even if the image takes its data from a read-only table. For a detailed example, see the Example: Style Applied to an Image Server Image topic.
Example: How Images use Tiles from Tables - An example showing how an image is made up from data stored in a table in tiles.
Example: An Image using Computed Fields in a Table - How an image can be created from tiles where the data for the tiles is taken from a field that is computed on the fly.
Example: Change the Contrast of an Image - In this example we use the Edit - Style dialog to change the contrast of an image.
Example: Use the BGR Button to Assign Channels - The BGR button in the Edit - Style dialog for images allows us to assign channels in the data to B, G and R outputs that create the displayed image, using BGR, RGB or Grayscale ordering.
Example: Assign Channels using Source - The Source control in the Style dialog for images assigns channels to display outputs such as R, G, B or A. . This topic shows examples of using Source and the visual results.
Example: Set Image Transparency using Alpha - The A row in the Style dialog allows us to specify what transparency we want to apply to the image, either by applying the same value for A for all pixels or by using one of the other channels to also control the A value.
Example: Autocontrast and Hill Shading Images using Style - This example shows how the Edit - Style dialog can hill shade an image using the values of pixels as heights and generating shadows as if the Sun were located at the specified azimuth and altitude. This capability is used most frequently with raster images to give an impression of three dimensionality in cases where the values of pixels represent terrain elevations.
Example: Style Applied to an Image Server Image - Because the Edit - Style dialog simply changes the way an image is displayed and not the data, it can operate on read-only data served by various web servers such as WMS REST servers. In this example we look at every detail of creating a data source using an image server and then manipulating the appearance of the display with Style. We will connect to a WMS server that provides LiDAR data in various forms, including as terrain elevation.