Adding Projection Data to jpegs

Adding Projection Data to jpegs


Often you will have data of an area of interest that has been scanned. It may have geographic location information, but this information is not part of the digital file, it is only on paper. How do you add this information to the jpg so that you can use it with other GIS files and have it related spatially? That is what you will learn in this exercise.

 

Download the data from the this link: Data
It should include the following coverages: Rio, Sao, Espiritosanto, as well as cntry02.shp, Wintershall.jpg, and block14.jpg. Save them to your directory on the hard drive. You will not need any of these files after this exercise, so you can delete them after you finish.

You have a file called Block14.jpg and we would like to give it real coordinates. We will do this through a process called Georectification.

 

Open ArcCatalog  and drag and drop all of the files into ArcMap. Drag the cntry02 or any of the coverages first so that the numbers in the window in the lower right show latitude and longitude in decimal degrees. Then drag the block14.jpg.

 

The cntry is a shapefile of the world and is only for you to see where the coverages fall. They are provinces in Brazil. If you read these four together and zoom in, you will notice that the country shapefile has less detail that the coverages. You can un-check it now and proceed with the shapefiles of the provinces Rio, Espirito Santo and Sao (for Sao Paulo).

 

Now add the jpeg Block 14.jpg You will notice that they are in different areas spatially. We have to give the jpeg geographic coordinates in order for the files to share the same space spatially.

 

To access the Georeferencing toolbar, we must make it active.

Go to the View icon and then down to Toolbars/Georeferencing – click and it will make it active and put in the View frame. You will be zooming in and out going between the world map in Lat. and Long. and the jpeg that has no coordinates. When you add them all to the window, you should see the world up in the left hand corner and quite small. The Block14 jpeg will be large. Pick an area that you can recognize on both the jpeg and the map. Now on the georeferencing toolbar, select the tool that has a green and red (x). You will select a point on the Block14 jpeg and then locate the same point on the polygons. After about 2 points, it will automatically fall in place. Two to three points is usually enough, but you can select several points until you are statisfied that the fit is a good one. If you do not like any of the points selected, you can click on the icon on the far right which is the table icon and select the last point added and click on the delete button. An example of how it should look, add the following to a new View window: Wintershall.jpg (Save your project as a map document (.mxd) so you can come back to it).

This method is not the most accurate, but it will allow you to view data with spatial reference to other layers.
To complete the process, once you have the Block14.jpg in the right geographic space, go back to the Georeferencing Toolbar and click on Rectify. A window will pop up that will allow you to see the pixel size and the re-sampling method. Go with the default. The pixel size, unless you know exactly what you want that to be, should be left alone. You can experiment and see how it changes the image. The re-sample method is a mathematical algorithm that processes the image to acquire the geographic information. Nearest neighbor is commonly used. In the last box, you can browse to a location where you want the new file to reside and give it a unique name, or go with the default.

 

To finish the lab, open a new window or view, add the newly rectified Block14 and either the world map or the shapefiles of the Brazilian provinces. The new Block14 should fit fairly well with the world map or the province boundaries and you should see decimal degrees in the window at the bottom right.  I want you to create a map with a north arrow, scale bar, title (Label it Lab 7) and name. Export the map and send it as an attachment.