Multi-directional Analytical Hill-Shading for Enhanced Cartographic Relief Presentation

Multi-Directional Hill-Shading (MDHS) methods are able to restore lost or incomplete relief information from artifacts and weaknesses of usual, one source, ideally diffused Hill-Shading (HS), in order to illustrate most information possible of the shape of earth's surface.On the other hand, a dominant illumination with strong tonal contrast is responsible for the familiar, realistic character of hill-shading method, which should be properly chosen to depict most of the terrain formations.To compose these two needs and achieve maximum performance without critical discounts in the visual effect of hill-shading, the proposed framework of actions is based on three axes: