This tutorial describes the steps that should be performed in Agisoft Metashape Professional in order to apply the realistic colors from the photographs to the uncolored point cloud for the same area acquired from the different source.


In the example below, we will consider the case when the images and point cloud were georeferenced in the same coordinate system. If your data with difference coordinate systems so before starting the colorize point cloud procedure, it would be required to georeferencing data to the same coordinate system (for example, you can use markers in this case).


We are grateful to YellowScan for providing the dataset for this tutorial.


The procedure will consist of the following main steps:



Add photos

1. Select Workflow Menu > Add Photos command to load the image set to the project. 


2. Click OK button and images will be loaded to the project.


Align photos

1. Select Workflow Menu > Align Photos command. 


2. Choose the parameters to the align process in the Align Photos dialog window.



3. The progress dialog box will appear, displaying the current processing status. The tie point cloud with the results of the camera alignment will be displayed in the Model view after the operation is completed:




In this example, no geotags were available in the image EXIF meta data and we imported coordinates for cameras from *.txt file. For this, use Import Reference button on the Reference pane:



Import point cloud from the external source

1. Select File Menu > Import > Import Point Cloud command.


2. Select the file with the point cloud data for import in the desired format and confirm the coordinate system from the list in the coordinate system selection field. 



3. The uncolored point cloud would appear shortly in the Model view (in Point Cloud view mode):



The red color indicates the Point cloud bounding box. In Metashape available to change the color for it (Tools > Preferences > Appearance tab). 
You can also left-click on the Workspace pane (for example, click on the name of the chunk) and the red bounding box will not be visible in the Model view. If you double-click on point cloud, it will appear again.

Colorize point cloud 

After camera alignment is properly referenced to the external point cloud proceed to the final colorization step.


1. Select Tools Menu > Point Cloud > Colorize Point Cloud command. 


2. Select the Source data for the point cloud colorization (we select Images as Source data):



Point cloud colors can be sampled from the orthomosaic. 


This option is typically faster than the image-based method but can produce ghosting artifacts in shadowed regions. For Orthomosaic based colorization, it is required to generate orthomosaic first or import it from the external source, providing that it is georeferenced in the same coordinate system.



The point cloud will be colorized according to the selected source data (switch to the Poin Cloud display mode in the Model view): 



Export colorized point cloud

The colorized point cloud can be exported using File Menu > Export > Export Point Cloud command: