YOU DON'T NEED TO BE A PICASSO!

Are you still describing your cores by hand for facies analysis and report? That's so like in the 90s! But why should I assume that you haven't gone digital already? Scanning and converting your sedimentological log into a PDF, and preserving it for eternity, by the way, is not 'going digital' (Figure 1).

Such preservation definitely has a qualitative value for understanding despositonal environments. But it provides no convenient way to transfer the data to a format (say, excel) that allows statistical operations or cross-plots with other reservoir data for quantitative analyses. For that, one will need to read out all the values from the PDF and manually transfer that information to excel. Cumbersome? Well, imagine the added horror of working with 'previous reports' of dead geologists. If there is no record of the amount of 'core-shift' that had been applied to the document in order to match the core depth to open-hole log depth(which is often the case), -you are practically fracked up! Goes without saying, the original geologist who had drawn the log, our venerable sedimentologist Dr. John Doe, has kicked the buck already, taking to his grave the deep dark secret of that core-shift. He may be smoking cigar in heaven right now, while you get to explore the purgatory... in redoing the whole description from scratch. God forbids!! But if you don't want to be cursed by posterity like John, leave your pencil already, take up the stylus and use some good software to record your core description digitally on your tablet or laptop.

To the best of my knowledge, digital description of cores started with a software called the AppleCore, created by Dr. Mike Ranger of Alberta, Canada (my best knowledge is not infallible, so correct me if I am wrong). It has been in use around the world for over 15 years. But for many years it remained a pretty much a 'Canadian thingy', gaining popularity mostly within the ichnology cartel  of Pemberton et al. The reason for its popularity among the ichnologists is obvious: it gave them an easy way to show bioturbation intensity and diversity on the log along with providing nice templates for all the basic trace fossils. Moreover, once the input was made, it could easily generate tables of those trace fossils with their respective depths. But I think it did not catch a wider fire among geologists despite being a powerful tool was probably because of the the graphical quality of those computer generated logs. To put it simply, for most hard-core sedimentologists who take intense passion in drawing their logs by hand, the rigid 'robotic' displays of AppleCore were not aesthetically appealing (Figure-2). I have not seen any recent version of Apple Core. Hence I can't judge on its latest avatar AppleCore10.1. I am almost certain that they have better graphics and many more advanced features.

But while few were watching, as early as in 1993, a smart company called Advanced Logic Technology (ALT) registered in Luxembourg hatched another egg of the same idea and named it WellCAD. Their WellCAD/ CoreCAD module for digital core description has come a long way since then. This PC-based software now runs on tablets too. I have been personally using WellCAD since 2006 for all of my reservoir characterization projects (Figure-3). Creating my own personal 'dictionaries' of symbols in wellCAD, I have been able to digitally describe my cores without losing much of the traditional 'flavor' of core-description. It may not be quite the Picasso of logs(Figure-3). But my purpose is after all, to extract data and interpret it through a visual interface, not make an artwork. What makes WellCAD my favorite is not just the fact that it let's you draw your log with your own customized symbols, but also the fact you can smoothly bring in your all other relevant information in the same interactive panel including core-photos, CT-scan images, image-logs, XRD, and Multimin, as well as any imaginable well-log. In WellCAD, there is an exportable database lurking behind every picture. Cofe-shift is a cakewalk that automatically generates a 'shift-table'. Every incy-wincy bug is depth registered.  In other words, your core-description panel is a live database in itself!

 But this story would not be quite complete without mentioning yet another digital core description software -the EasyCore. The main strength of this software comes from its sister-concern EasyCopy, rooted in a Danish company born in 1989 as AGI, dedicated to develop tools and solutions that could turn the task of using images for documenting and sharing ideas and work processes into the driving force of communication. Recently, EasyCore was kind enough to provide me a free copy of their software for testing. I found it to be a very intuitive and flexible interface for digital core description with many neat features to make the life of a sedimentologist easy, particularly when it comes to creating/manipulating document headers, legends, title-boxes etc. (Figure-4).

All symbols can be easily generated in EasyCopy and smoothly transferred to EasyCore, without the hassle of a third-party software. In short, the features aptly justifying its EasyCore appellation.

I predict that there will be fierce competition among WellCAD,  EasyCore and AppleCore in the near future to capture the niche market of core description. Which software choose is up to you, depending upon the purpose. But this competition is definitely good for us, the end users in reservoir characterization. We are eagerly waiting to see many more cool features for digital core description.