Using arcpy.mapping.AddLayer to import raster in RGB instead of single-band stretched symbology

Question

Hi, I am working with a simple script that imports geo-referenced rasters corresponding to selected polygons in a featureclass layer. The rasters import just fine, but the issue is that they import as single band streched rasters and I have to go into the layer symbology tab under properties and then change the imported rasters to RGB composite individually. Does anyone have any idea how I could skip that manual step and code for this to happen automatically? The relevant code snippet looks like this:

* #Fetch selected rasters and add to current map document, first data frame  
* mxd = arcpy.mapping.MapDocument("CURRENT")  
* df = arcpy.mapping.ListDataFrames(mxd, "*")[0]  
* arcpy.AddMessage(len(docs))#DEBUG#  
* for i, page in enumerate(docs):  
*         arcpy.AddMessage(i)  
*         newlayer = arcpy.mapping.Layer(page)  
*         arcpy.mapping.AddLayer(df,newlayer, "TOP")

Thank you!

DanPatterson_Retired · Answer

Symbology—ArcPy | ArcGIS Desktop

mp in ArcGIS Pro, example 2 gives an example or changing a raster's classification field, and color ramp. I doubt that this is new to Pro, so the equivalent might exist in the 'mapping' model

HannesZiegler2 · Answer

Thank you, this worked!

It's really disappointing that arcpy.mapping doesn't let you edit layer properties directly in script though 😕

Ystad1 · Answer

To do this you need to first set the RGB composite manually on one raster and save it as a lyr file. You can then use the lyr file to update the symbology of the raster that you have added with arcpy.mapping.Updatelyr. Here is a script that i wrote to add all of the .tif files in a folder to a mxd and set the symbology as RGB. #-*- coding: utf-8 -*- import glob import os import arcpy #Count number of files added to mxd count = 0 #Paths path = r"V:/Path/to/raster/folder" MXD = r"V:/Path/to/arcmapdocument/mymap.mxd" sourceLayer = arcpy.mapping.Layer(r"V:/path/to/layerfile/rgb.lyr") mxd = arcpy.mapping.MapDocument(MXD) df = arcpy.mapping.ListDataFrames(mxd)[0] for file in os.listdir(path): if file.endswith(".tif"): name = file.split('.')[0] print name rasterPath =os.path.join(path, file) updatelyr = arcpy.mapping.Layer(rasterPath) arcpy.mapping.UpdateLayer(df, updatelyr, sourceLayer, True) arcpy.mapping.AddLayer(df, updatelyr, "BOTTOM") count = count + 1 print count mxd.save() ‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍ Hope this helps!