Leaderboard

You cannot compare two software bluntly. ERDAS Imagine has it's own user group in commercial resource management and exploration sector. ENVI also has it's loyal customers in universities and private research groups. The reason ERDAS is so popular in Asia and other places because they have a very good marketing department set in these places. The reason why ENVI can't get out of the wish list is most of the American and EU graduates can't give up using IDL for so many engineering and technical studies. IDL is awfully interesting for geeks, sometime as powerful as Matlab. ITT corp has their money flow steady by its global network of big scale industries, ie. aerospace, transportation, defense, energy and industrial markets. Now ITT is one of 100 top contractor in USA. Intergraph corp is more focused in engineering and geospatial solution since it's beginning (may be that's why they are good at selling their products). ERDAS Imagine, being an adopted son for so many parents over time (starting from the universities of America and Canada) ended up with Intergraph after touching many big names in its path. During its journey the software inherits codes and ideas from many experts, started its algorithms written in Fortran and later rewritten to C, sometimes Python. Being closely tied with a robust Fortran-derived interactive language, ENVI is a cross-platform image processing monster hugely popular among academicians, engineers, geospatial analysts, modelers and programmers. If you are a novice image analyst, ENVI is your thing. If you are a power user, application builder, environmental model maker/ tester, medical scientist, even a rocket scientist you will find ENVI sitting in you pc. But remember, great power comes with great responsibilities. If you are a white-collar GIS analyst, ERDAS Imagine is your thing. This software has it's charm in doing small things quickly and in a stereotyped way. In Imagine, things are easy once you learn the names of the buttons. Every function has only one wizard so learning curve is flatter. If you are a hobbyist, professional with little or no geospatial background, lousy professor then Imagine is your tool. Consider taking a peek to the other big names attached (ie. GeoMedia) to know how Intergraph deals the 'other-part' of geospatial industry. As you can see, every one has their own vice and virtues. Choose wisely.