Creating a Basemap With Custom Imagery

Question

The city I work for has commissioned 3-inch resolution aerial photography for our city. The photography arrived yesterday and is in MrSid format. I have loaded it all into ArcGIS Pro and it is amazing. But now I have the task of publishing it for use as a basemap in all of our ArcGIS Online maps.

I am totally at a loss as to how to effectively and efficiently doing this. Even though our city doesn't cover a large area, I am very concerned that at first glance it looks like the tiles will take upwards of 70 TB of space, even though it doesn't take even close to that on my PC.

fischer45 · Answer

Hi Norm, I'm reviving this old thread to ask how/if you were able to accomplish this.

NormBetland · Answer

Having had a few days to play around here are a few issues I've run into. Trying to publish the layer as tiles has been a huge nightmare. To generate them at all the appropriate zoom levels has caused problems. If I try to do so locally, it fails to stage. If I try to publish generate them online, I am projected to drain nearly all my credits.

So I published them as a tile package locally at only the most detailed level and then uploaded that tile package. The plan was then to use the layer generated from that tile package to then generate the tiles at the zoomed out scales. However, only 99% of the tiles publish and then it seems to stall, and with the publishing incomplete, the option to generate more tiles and other scales is not available.

Hillary_E · Answer

Hi @NormBetland ,

It is possible to use your aerial photography as a basemap.

1. Simply add the raster to a new map and remove all other basemaps and layers.

2. Open the View tab from the main ribbon of ArcGIS Pro

3. On the far left side of the ribbon, select the drop-down of the "Convert" button and choose "To Basemap"

.... Now that your map (your raster) is converted to a basemap, you can publish this to ArcGIS Online for use as a basemap (more instructions to come).

As soon as you have converted your content to a basemap, it is now available as a basemap for other maps in ArcGIS Pro. You can find it in the main list of basemaps (along with the Esri default basemaps). When you have a map open:

1. Select the Map tab in main ribbon

2. Choose the drop-down of the Basemap button

3. Scroll to the end of the list and you should see your newly created basemap(s) available for use in any map

Finally, to publish your basemap to ArcGIS Online:

1. Open your newly created basemap (if you closed it from earlier, you can open it at any time from the Catalog pane --> Expand "Maps" --> Right-click the basemap --> Select "open")

2. With the basemap open, click on the Share tab from main ribbon in ArcGIS Pro

3. Select the "Web Layer" button

4. Choose "Publish Web Layer"

5. Fill in the name, summary, tags, etc. as you wish

6. Under Layer Type choose "Tile"

7. Now, Publish!

You should see in your ArcGIS Online account it has been published as a Tile layer.

If you would like to add this basemap to current or future WebMaps, simply:

1. Open the WebMap in  MapViewer

2. Open the Basemap tab (left-hand pane)

3. Select the > arrow where it says the current basemap

4. Click "Add"

5. You should see your newly published basemap (if not, you may search for it -- either in your content, favourites, groups, organization, or ArcGIS Online, depending on the sharing level you set)

I hope this helps!

Cheers