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Manage preprocessed orthophotos

Preprocessed orthophotos (or orthomosaics) are images with map-like accuracy, generated from satellite, aerial, or drone imagery, that have been orthorectified and mosaicked together for a single project. An orthophoto collection may include imagery from a single date, or (for larger projects) imagery may be collected over the course of a year. They are often color-corrected and may be cut into a set of regular tiles (NAIP imagery is a common example). Tiles may overlap but are typically edge matched, often to cover large extents in which the data is in multiple projections. Orthomosaics from drone imagery will often have areas of dark NoData around the edge of the project.

Organizations often manage large collections of orthophotos with different dates, locations, projections, or resolutions, which can be challenging.

Using a mosaic dataset configured to manage orthophotos makes it easier to visualize, query, and analyze large collections of orthophotos. It also makes it easier to share them with end users and applications. Orthophotos managed with mosaic datasets can be shared in the following ways:

  • Share orthophotos as a three-band, 8-bit raster tile cache (such as Esri basemaps). The cache can be created in ArcGIS Pro, and uploaded to ArcGIS Online for hosting and sharing.
  • Share orthophotos as tiled imagery. This option is applicable when the data source has more than 3 bands or 8 bits per band, but is in a single projection. The images are streamed to the client applications that can then render and project the image.
  • If end users need dynamic access to the imagery (if there are more than three bands, for example, or you want to use raster functions to include NIR, RGB, and NDVI views), orthophotos can be shared as dynamic image services using ArcGIS Image Server

Note:
To create and edit mosaic datasets or raster tile cache, you'll need ArcGIS Pro (Standard or Advanced). To serve mosaic datasets as dynamic image services, you'll need ArcGIS Image Server. To host raster tile cache, you can use ArcGIS Online or ArcGIS Server, ArcGIS Image for ArcGIS Online, and ArcGIS Image Dedicated.

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Training and tutorials

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Developer resources

Review the following resources and support for automating and customizing workflows:

  • Visit the MDCS GitHub repository to download a Python script to help automate the creation and configuration of mosaic datasets.
  • If you plan to manage satellite imagery in the cloud or want to optimize the data format for faster access, visit the OptimizeRasters GitHub repository for scripts and tools for data transfer and management.

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