Downloading and installing Bilko

Bilko is an image processing system developed for educational use, and comes wtih lessons and images chosen to demonstrate the marine and coastal management applications of remote sensing. Howeve, the software routines and education principles may be applied to any application area, and to the analysis of any image in an appropriate format.

About Bilko

The UNESCO Bilko Project began in 1987. Since then it has produced a number of computer-based lessons and distributed copies to over 500 marine science laboratories and educational establishments and more than 2000 individual users in over 70 countries around the world. The software and teaching materials (including the images) are free to registered users, and may be freely distributed for educational use, with only one proviso - that it must not be sold.

Downloading the Bilko software

The Bilko software is available from download area of the Bilko website at www.unesco.bilko.org.

To download the software, you must first register, by following the link on the top menu bar. Fill in the on-line registration form. You will be asked to check your details; do this and then press 'SUBMIT'. An e-mail with a username and password will automatically be sent to the e-mail address you have given on the registration form.

Use the username and password to log in to the registered user area of the site, and follow the link to DOWNLOADS. There are several versions of the software; each can be downloaded by clicking on the link given in the software table.

This tutorial is written for Bilko v3, which is designed for PCs running Windows 2000 and Windows XP, but will also run on Windows 95, Windows 98 or Windows NT 4.0 or later. It is still possible to download earlier versions of the software, so please ensure that you select Bilko v3 to work with this tutorial.

Installing Bilko

1. Opening the zip file
The software is supplied as a zip file. You can open this with any one of many different sofware packages that may be downloaded from the Internet. Below are links to some of websites that supply free software to open zip files (there are many more):

• PK ZIP reader
• 7-Zip
• QuickZip

2. Running setup
Inside the zip-file you will find a file called setup.exe. Running this file will automatically install Bilko in the programs folder on your computer, and create a shortcut to the software on the desktop and in the start-up menu. Just follow the instructions in the setup dialogue until the installation is complete.

3. Selecting the destination folder
Setup will normally install the software in a folder called Bilko, in the program folder on your computer hard drive. If you want to install the software in a different drive and/or folder, change the destination folder when prompted to do so by the Setup program.

Note: If you already have an earlier version of Bilko v3 the Setup program will first remove this. To install the new version you may have to run Setup a second time.

Customising Windows to work with Bilko

1. File extensions
On most Windows systems the default settings for Windows Explorer (My Computer/My Documents) are set so that file extensions are hidden. To distinguish the different file types used in Bilko, you need to see the file extensions (see figure (13K)). You can reveal the file extensions by changing the Folder Options in Windows Explorer / My Computer.

1. Open My Computer / Windows Explorer
2. From the Tools menu (or View menu in some versions of Windows) choose Folder Options
3. Select the View tab
4. Make sure the check-box for 'Hide extensions for known file types' is unchecked (see figure (13K)).

Being able to see the file extensions is particularly helpful if you want to save an image in different data formats using the same file name for all the different versions.

2. Selecting and opening files
In the 'Folder Options' dialogue you can also set how the mouse is used to select and open files. Select the General tab and customise the settings by making sure the option for ' Double-click to open an item (single-click to select) is selected. This will make it easier to work with multichannel image files in Bilko.