Taking classification image from ENVI and using it in ArcMap?

Question

Loading ENVI file into ArcGIS Desktop? is a question similar to this but used a slightly different way of going about things so it made it not fit my situation so here's my situation.

I ran an isodata unsupervised classification. I have 8 relevant classes and all I need is to have all these classes editable in Arcmap. Unfortunately, the classification file is in an ENVI format and cannot be opened in Arcmap. I've looked at various answers to similar questions and they suggested using the ENVI Raster to Vector and then after that using a Vector to raster tool to make it editable in Arcmap. Which is fine and dandy but this image is huge and the process is incredibly time consuming. On iteration 4 of 8, a total of 2 hours of processing has passed and class 5 has twice as many points as 4.

So is there another way of doing this? Or is this going to be as fast as I can get this done? I've also toyed with the idea of using Arcmap's classification tool, but I don't know the processing on that.

If I am doing the most efficient method then I can wait... I would just like to know if there is a better way to do this before I have this process for 10 hours.

Answer 1

One possible solution to open an ENVI format classified image in ArcGIS is to rename the ENVI file and add the extension .dat. ArcCatalog cannot see/recognize ENVI format image without .dat extension. But before renaming the ENVI image file to add .dat, make sure to have a backup of the image first.

Another possible solutions can be found at ENVI and ArcGIS Frequently Asked Questions.