You can reproduce some of the image processing described here with software today. For example, in Figure 3, the histogram at the top right is a "periodogram"

You can reproduce some of the image processing described here with software today. For example, in Figure 3, the histogram at the top right is a "periodogram" of the original image data. It shows that the original image is skewed towards the high end of the frequency spectrum. They apply a high-pass filter (discard the lowest frequencies) so the processed image shows higher details than the original. If you had the original photograph as an image file, let's say an image of the surface of Mars, [0] you could filter out the lowest ten frequency components with a Python script: [1] pip install avena avena filter high 10 pia19676-fig1_ml_mcam04403coloradjusted24bwscale.jpg The result: http://imgur.com/a/ASusx http://imgur.com/a/ASusx Notice the details are more visible. [0] http://www.nasa.gov/jpl/msl/pia19676/geological-contact-zone-near-marias-pass-on-mars http://www.nasa.gov/jpl/msl/pia19676/geological-contact-zone... [1] (shameless plug) https://github.com/eliteraspberries/avena https://github.com/eliteraspberries/avena