This image of Washington, D.C. was taken by a scanning sensor with visible and "near infrared" channels onboard a LANDSAT environmental satellite. The land use patterns are enhanced in this image by combining the channel information to identify multi-channel radiation "signatures" for each of many land use types. Each picture element so identified is then given an identifying (visible) color value so that the image can be rendered for human eyes.

There are many methods of translating sophisticated radiation signal information into a visible color code for the purpose of satellite data visualizations. Images prepared by such techniques are said to be "false color" or "pseudo color" images.