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(*disclaimer, I don't know any Python/scripting) Ok, so I have clipped several layers in the past using Arcmap 10.+, but I am having a hard time wrapping my head around how hard it can be at times.

I used to own a photography/design business, so I'm used to manipulating crops via Photoshop. I think because of this, I have issues with simple clipping when composing a map.

For this current clip/crop, I would like to freehand a polygon around several connected streams and "crop" out everything around that polygon. Within the polygon, there are several layers having many polylines and points, and a Ortho_tile_tiff catalog layer aerial view. I believe it's this Ortho_tile geodatabase that's throwing me here. If someone could break it down for a semi_green GISer I would be much appreciative. Thanks!

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  • Are you clipping the layers to export them or just for viewing /visual purposes?
    – GISHuman
    Commented Jul 15, 2014 at 14:47
  • To both export and print.
    – MrJoshua
    Commented Jul 15, 2014 at 15:15
  • Maybe this will help: The layer I am trying to clip is a File Geodatabase Raster Catalog. Basically it's a county-wide aerial tile. I essentially want to freehand a polygon around some streams, and clip everything outside that polygon, including the geodatabase raster catalog.
    – MrJoshua
    Commented Jul 15, 2014 at 15:27
  • See my answer, specifically the blog post
    – GISHuman
    Commented Jul 15, 2014 at 15:29

2 Answers 2

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Here are a few options for clipping in ArcGIS:

  1. Clipping the DataFrame This allows you to draw a shape with the draw tools and "Clip to shape" which may be more what you're looking for. You should be able to draw a shape like a polygon and clip to it using this option.
  2. Using the Editor to clip. This is a quick and dirty way to clip your existing dataset, however, again, no rasters.
  3. What your most familiar with no doubt is using the tool Clip you could always create a separate shapefile with your polygon area and clip everything to that. However, this won't work with raster files. You need to use a separate tool to clip rasters. You could always design a simple model builder with these clip tools in order achieve this faster.

This blog post highlights different ways to clip a raster which you may also find useful. If you don't find this answer sufficient please update your post as to what exactly you're having difficulty with or what isn't working.

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If you have access to the Spatial Analyst extension, you can also use the extract by mask tool.

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  • The problem I am continuing to run into is any clipping work I try to do with this catalog gives me the error, "One or more droped items were invalid and will not be added to the control". I tried running the Raster Catalog to Raster Dataset, but if gave me a fail with no reason or error code.
    – MrJoshua
    Commented Jul 15, 2014 at 17:16
  • I take that back... it did give me the error code [999999: This is a generic error for which the cause does not have a specific error ID.] Sooo... basically no, no error code.
    – MrJoshua
    Commented Jul 15, 2014 at 17:18

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