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I have geotiff. How to understand if pixel value is brightness or height?
I am downloading SRTM data from https://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/
And trying to open them on ArcScene, but when I am trying to make them look as 3d I am getting some crap, like pixels do not have height, but just color value.
My image become look like column.
I use SRTM data a lot and the value range you show for that tile is correct and is height data (meters above sea level). The value of the pixel is the height.
Your data should look like the image below if you open it in ArcGIS (I'm using QGIS but it shouldn't matter).
If you can't open your image in ArcGIS or it doesn't look like this, then your download was probably corrupted (my file size is 12.3MB, so yours should be similar allowing for differences in the way operating systems measure size).
If you can open it and it looks OK in ArcGIS, then you should assume your setup in ArcScene is incorrect (and that would be the subject of a different question).
As an aside, unless this area has some very strange land forms, interestingly this tile does not look like 'bare_Earth'. I can see what appear to be outlines of woodlands (i.s. including tree heights). Just be aware of that and careful what you download if you need bare-Earth for your use-case.
