Array is visualized differently in matplotlib than QGIS

Question

I am getting different resutls when plotting a np.array with matplotlib than when doing it in an external software - QGIS. Here is what I have:

    print(wiw[0].shape)
(1, 8433, 9254)

    print(wiw[0].min())
nan

    print(wiw[0].max())
nan

    print(wiw[0].dtype)
float64
    print(np.nanmin(wiw[0]))
1.0
    print(np.nanmax(wiw[0]))
1.0

This is how it looks like when I plot it with matplotlib:

fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize = (20,20))
ax.imshow(wiw[0][0,:,:], cmap='Greys_r');

Next, I save it with rasterio using the following code:

with rasterio.open(output_path + 'WIW_TEST.tif', 'w', **ras_meta) as dst:
    dst.write(wiw[0])

Where ras_meta is:

{'driver': 'GTiff', 'dtype': 'float64', 'nodata': 0, 'width': 9254, 'height': 8433, 'count': 1, 'crs': CRS.from_epsg(32633), 'transform': Affine(20.0, 0.0, 300000.0,
       0.0, -20.0, 1600020.0), 'blockxsize': 640, 'blockysize': 640, 'tiled': True}

If I open this geotiff in QGIS, its appearence is differnet:

But surprisingly, if I open the saved geotiff again with rasterio and plot it with matplotlib, the visualization is correct. What is going on? Is it a dtype issue, a nodata problem?

Answer 1

I suspect this has to do with the styling when drawing on the QGIS canvas, not with any data differences. Have you tried changing your resampling options in the symbology panel of QGIS? For example, change from nearest neighbor to bilinear and tinker with the oversampling to see if that matches what you expect more closely.

You can also try plotting the histogram of the raster when you have it in QGIS to verify the underlying data is being read correctly. If the problem is purely how the raster looks in the QGIS canvas, and you can verify the underlying data is the same, I would not sweat it too much.