Last week’s Imagery Blog was about combining all your imagery bands into one raster. Putting all your bands into one raster means it is easier to manage and use. This week’s blog will discuss the ways to composite your bands together.
There are a two main ways to achieve the composite bands task:
- Composite Bands button on the Image Analysis window
- Composite Bands Geoprocessing tool
Image Analysis window
The Composite Bands button on the Image Analysis window allows you to merge all the layers with the click on a button. This composite is create immediately on-the-fly, since it is created as a virtual layer using the Composite Bands raster function.
1) In the Table of Contents, arrange the order of the bands, as you want them ordered in your output, where the top raster is band 1.
2) In the Image Analysis the layer list, select all the rasters that you want merged together.
3) Click on the Composite Bands button. A new raster layer is created with all the rasters that were selected.
Composite bands Geoprocessing tool
The Composite Bands Geoprocessing tool will create a new raster dataset that is persisted on disk. Although this processing takes longer, you will have the output in a file format of your choice, which can easily be shared.
1) Open the Composite Bands geoprocessing tool.
2) Add the bands you want to combine into the input
3) Re-order the bands if necessary. The top band will be band 1.
4) Choose an output path and file name for your output raster dataset.
5) Click OK to run the tool.
