How do you make THEMIS "true color" VIS images?

The five color filters of the THEMIS VIS camera do not span the full range of colors available to the human eye, so extensive processing, and an artistic touch, is applied to convert a raw image into an approximately "true color" image. Several of the THEMIS Team members are experts in VIS spectroscopy and have used their experience with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) observations of Mars to generate a limited number of VIS color images. Their multi-step process, described here, is now used to generate Special VIS-RGB projected products.

Note: that the long edges of THEMIS VIS images commonly contain color artifacts that do not represent true surface variations and may cause the overall color variation of the scene to become slightly exaggerated.