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New to GIS and trying to learn.

I'm trying to take a blue marble raster, overlay a countries .shp file, and save an image with the original blue marble image and the country outlines "burned into" the image using ArcGIS Desktop.

I know I can place both layers on the map and then save the map, but the resolution is modified to that of the screen. Ex. original raster was 5400x2700, but output raster is 1564x978.

I don't see a way to modify the output files resolution either?

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  • Would ArcGIS's Extract by Mask (Spatial Analyst) meet your needs? Or Clip Raster?
    – Aaron ♦
    Commented Mar 28, 2014 at 15:21
  • I've tried the SpatialAnalyst->Extraction->Extract by Mask tool, but it receives a "serious" error and is unable to continue. The files I am using are simple BlueMarble*.jpg files and the natural earth countries and lakes shape file. I'll look at the clip raster and see if that helps. Thanks.
    – user25839
    Commented Mar 28, 2014 at 15:54
  • Your .jpg needs to have a spatial reference. Unless it is in JPEG2000 (.jp2) format, you will need to georectify the image in a GIS, before you can apply spatial operations.
    – Aaron ♦
    Commented Mar 28, 2014 at 15:59
  • My apologies for being incorrect on the file extension. The files are .jp2 files with their correct spatial and coordinate system info (WGS84 I believe).
    – user25839
    Commented Mar 28, 2014 at 16:05
  • In ArcGIS, you can check the spatial reference by right-clicking the layer name > Properties... > Source > Spatial Reference
    – Aaron ♦
    Commented Mar 28, 2014 at 16:05

1 Answer 1

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This answer is for ArcGIS. You'll have to convert your polygon (country,etc outlines) to a raster, keeping resolution and cell properties the same as your raster (jpg) (something like snap raster environment setting should work). Then using raster calculator you could make a conditional statement to keep the polygon cells, where polygon values exist, and jpg cells where polygon values do not.

Something like:

Con(IsNull("polygon_raster"), "BlueMarble_jpg", "polygon_raster")

This will give you a georeferenced raster with polygons "burned" into the image. Also, I would mosaic your rasters before hand, just to make things easier.

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  • OK, I guess I need some help with "the basics" on this. If I choose my countries layer and use the Polygon To Raster tool, it requires the "Value" field to be filled in. My attribute table contains a column called "Shape*" with every row containing "Polygon". I assume this would be the data I need, but this is the ONLY column not showing up in the Value field??
    – user25839
    Commented Mar 28, 2014 at 16:38
  • FID should work fine. This will just tell the tool what values to assign to the output raster. It is unimportant for what you are trying to accomplish.
    – Barbarossa
    Commented Mar 28, 2014 at 16:51
  • Ok, well, it kind of worked. After creating the polygon outlines as a raster, I used the Raster Calculator to combine the two. Problem is, it removed all of the "color" from the original BlueMarble and the lines came out kind of "white to gray". Did I miss a step?
    – user25839
    Commented Mar 28, 2014 at 18:34
  • what raster format did you convert your polygon to? how is your combined rasters symbolized?
    – Barbarossa
    Commented Mar 28, 2014 at 20:13
  • OK, finally got it to work using your suggestions. Thanks very much. Sorry for the delayed response, but I got pulled onto another issue before getting back to this one.
    – user25839
    Commented Apr 3, 2014 at 14:00

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