change default rendering option for raster with 2 bands from rgb to grey

nadja — Tue, 21 Jan 2025 13:44:14 GMT

Current Situation

When adding rasters these are the default:

- 1 band: Stretch, grey

- 2 bands: RGB

- 3 bands: RGB

- 4 bands: RGB

The options for 1, 3 and 4 bands are fine.

Problem:

However, I encountered many situations where the raster had 2 bands, where the RGB symbology was horrible - it turned the raster blue and white.

Workarounds:

In my experience rasters with 2 bands usually have one band containing the actual data and the second band being a mask. Thus I just switch Raster Layer >> Symbology from RGB to Stretch and it's all good. It's not a difficult workaround, it's just cumbersome to do this if you work often with rasters with 2 bands. Plus the current default just doesn't make any sense.

...or just use QGIS, as QGIS also uses stretch and grey for rasters with 2 bands as default and it works much better, I never encountered a situation in which this didn't work (so far). No need to change anything there.

idea change default rendering option for raster with 2 bands from rgb to grey in ArcGIS Pro Ideas

change default rendering option for raster with 2 bands from rgb to grey