Store and access multiple rasters.

[AndrewWalker3]

Hello.

I'm sure this is a pretty basic question so please excuse my ignorance, I have searched and go round in circles looking for a definitive answer.

I have around 20 raster files of bathymetric data and 4 or 5 large drone orthos. All seperarted by distance (20miles) not overlapping or of the same area.

What is the best way to organise, store, share and view this data.

I'm going round in circles of geodatabase, raster catalog, raster mosaics etc.

Can anyone steer me in the direction of a workflow for this.

Thats my main question. If anyone can help a bit further then my next issue is I have thousands of related georeferenced images I would love to add to a map or storyboard to help easily group and access via a map.. is this possible. And can I bring all of the above into a single structure/ geodatabase that doesn't need to rely on external links to local stored data?

Thanks 

[DavidPike]

I would definitely recommend a Mosaic Dataset for this. Mosaic datasets—ArcGIS Pro | Documentation

It essentially references the original raster tiles, but allows various operations such as colour balancing, statistics, overviews and raster functions to name a few.

[AndrewWalker3]

Ok thanks for your advise.

should I add all the original rasters to a geodatabase first? 

They are all over the place just now.

[DavidPike]

I wouldn't.  Definitely rationalise them into some sort of folder structure though, and performance will be reduced if they're all on different servers etc (depending on your situation).  

I'd have something like - C:\MyGeoStuff\Bathymetry\PutAllYourBathyRastersHere,C:\MyGeoStuff\DroneOrthos\PutAllYourOrthoRastersHere

Create a File Geodatabase (FGDB), Create a Mosaic dataset (right click on the FGDB, new -> Mosaic Dataset - specify a coordinate system for all the data to be stored in it), Right-lcik on the Mosaic Dataset and 'Add Rasters'.  Then just specify the folder containing the rasters using the 'Workspace' option, you can also sspecify to include sub-folders if the directory is nested.