No templates to show in "Create features" : how to access freehand tool ?

MatMol

Hello,

I need to edit GeoTIFF image masks with the freehand tool, but it is not available for some reason. I have been searching ArcGIS 10.1 help and this forum, but haven't found out yet how to do that. I know how to use the Raster cleanup function, but this is not what I need here.

To my understanding the freehand tool is available with the feature editor function. Adding the GeoTIFF through + Add Data, I checked that the data projection is correct and the layer is in the same coordinate system. Then I go to Editor > Editing windows : Create features, but there are no templates to show.

This from ArcGIS help does not happen :

If you start editing and no feature templates are present for a particular layer, they are created automatically for you.

In Organize feature templates the "Create template" is empty, even when clicking "Select all".

Needless to say, I am lost. Could anybody help with this ?

Thank you

MatMol

The answer must be obvious to the ArcGIS community, but it is not to newcomers like me. In case anybody ends up being stuck like I was, here is the solution I found after reading a couple of ArcGIS tutorials.

In order to use the freehand tool in Arcgis 10.1, you need to create a shapefile (.shp) first. This can be done in ArcCatalog : browse to the folder containing your data, right click on the folder (from the Catalog tree) then select New >  Shapefile from the contextual menu.

The "Create New Shapefile" dialog box opens. The freehand tool will generate polygons, so choose Feature type : Polygon. Define the spatial reference with Edit, when all set press OK.

Go to ArcMap, add the newly created shapefile to the layer. Then you can start Editing (Editor toolbar, accessible from Customize > Toolbars > Editor). Click Editor > Start Editing then again Editor > Editing windows (second to last in the contextual menu) > Create features. A Windows will pop-up with a list of editable layers. Select the layer corresponding to the shapefile you want to edit, then the Construction tools appear down in the Create Features windows. Pick the Freehand tool and voilà !

Suggestion to ESRI
The learning curve for ArcGIS is pretty steep, I guess it puts off a number of potential users to actually consider ArcGIS as a solution. There could be a wizard to make things easier and faster for the user in cases like this. For example, let us assume the user wants to edit a raster image with the freehand tool. A single button could do the following operations automatically :
- create a SHP file associated to the raster image
- get the same spatial reference as the raster image and the correct Feature type
- start editing windows and Feature creation