Georeferencing creates giant file sizes / slow export

Question

Hi there - we've run into issues with georeferencing in Pro where it will export rasters at a huge file size. Some are in the tens of gigabytes.  Is there any reason this might be happening or any way around it? It's happening regardless of whether we save to a local drive or a shared server.  For now we've just been doing georeferences in Desktop.

Thanks

David_ECGA · Answer

Typically we work with .tif files. One example I'm looking at now has an uncompressed size of 24mb, so not very large, but the export for this one was going over 500mb before I cancelled the operation.

jskinner · Answer

Hi @David_ECGA,

What type of imagery are you georeferencing?  It may be a highly compressed image format, such as a SID.  Take a look at the properties of the raster by right-clicking on it in the Catalog pane > Properties.  It will list the uncompressed size there:

ArcMap/Pro cannot write to all output types, so it will uncompress the image.