Adding satellite imagery to an image service definition

Satellite imagery is raster data collected from sensors (not unlike a digital camera) that are housed on satellites orbiting the earth. There are many systems in orbit, owned and operated by a variety of governments and private companies. Each of these systems provides data to users in their own formats with metadata specific to the sensor. ArcGIS Image Server has raster types that read the data in the formats provided by the companies, not the raw data collected directly from the satellites.

Some satellite products that users receive exist in differently processed states, and they can be displayed as georeferenced raster data or orthorectified raster data. Therefore, they have been organized into these two groups, and there may be more than one raster type within either the georeferenced or orthorectified folder.

Presently ArcGIS Image Server supports the following:

Raster type	Raster type group
IKONOS	Orthorectification
Landsat-7 Level 1G Fast Format	Georeferenced Imagery
Landsat-7 Level 1G	Georeferenced Imagery
QuickBird Basic	Orthorectification
QuickBird Standard	Georeferenced Imagery
QuickBird Standard Orthoready	Orthorectification
SPOT 2A	Georeferenced Imagery
SPOTView	Georeferenced Imagery

Supported satellite raster types

When you add data using any of these raster types, a dialog box appears with two or three tabs: a General and an Enhancement tab for all types and an additional Orthorectification tab for the orthorectification raster types. Each of these tabs contains the parameters specific to the raster type you are adding, except the Enhancement tab. This tab is the same for almost all raster types. To learn about the parameters on this tab, see Applying an enhancement to data added to an image service definition.

The General tab typically contains parameters about the band combination for the image service, whether to use pan sharpening and if you want to apply a sharpening filter to the imagery displayed by the image service. These parameters are not identical for each raster type because they vary depending on the kind of raster data available in that satellite data. For example, not all satellite image raster types contain a higher resolution panchromatic band; therefore, pan sharpening will not be an option, and some sensors have more bands than others. The Orthorectification tab contains parameters specific to orthorectifying imagery, such as using an average elevation value or specifying a digital elevation model, and these parameters are consistent for each of the satellite imagery raster types. To learn about each of the parameters, see Using the Ortho process.

In all cases of adding raster data to an image service definition, you can use a wizard or the Add Raster Dataset option. Using the Add Raster Dataset option often presents several additional options that have defaults defined for them when a wizard is used.