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I used the graphic software program GIMP to manipulate a geoTIFF image (GIMP cannot handle geoTIFFs, so after manipulating the image in GIMP the geospatial information is lost).

When I now try to import the manipulated TIFF into ArcGIS 10.3.1, for some strange reason Arc displays the original TIFF image without any of the alterations I made in GIMP (outside ArcGIS, I see the manipulated version though)

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    Using software that is not cognizant of the data format is a very risky endeavor, for it will continually generate problems like this. Best practice is to avoid unsupported/partially unsupported formats. Failing that, you must thoroughly review your procedures to understand every possible failure mode to prevent non-standard failures.
    – Vince
    Commented May 1, 2016 at 12:13
  • Save the manipulated version with another name. If it still shows as before on ArcGIS it feels strange. I rather believe that ArcGIS is using something cached like the overviews as mentioned.
    – user30184
    Commented May 1, 2016 at 15:31
  • Whatever manipulations you give the .tif, you could generate the world file for the original, and copy that and rename it for the manipulated file, and that way retain geographic information. See webhelp.esri.com/arcims/9.3/General/topics/…
    – Paulo Raposo
    Commented May 1, 2016 at 20:29
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    What kind of manipulations are you doing in GIMP? I've had success doing things to GeoTiff in Python (e.g., converting them to numpy arrays first) and then saving the output to a new GeoTiff with the previous one's georeferencing information. Maybe that workflow could work for you.
    – Paulo Raposo
    Commented May 1, 2016 at 20:32

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ArcGIS displays raster images from Pyramids if they are present, and these are not automatically updated if you modify the image in a separate application (like your GIMP program).

To make your edited image visible in ArcMap again you need to remove all existing pyramids and then load the image into ArcMap. You can then generate your pyramids again if you require them, based on the updated image.

See Checking if pyramids have been created and Raster pyramids for more info.

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