Hello
I am new to ArcGIS and am trying to clip an aerial using either a JPEG (rectangular area - 500MB) or a SID file (whole city-3GB). Basically I want to draw a polygon shape the way I want to clip the aerial and clip it and save it so that the file is not too large. I have played around with ArcMap a little bit but not too familiar with the tools. A detailed step by step process will be appreciated.
Thank you
Use the clip tool Clip—Help | ArcGIS for Desktop
Look here:
Clipping an image or raster in ArcGIS | ArcGIS Blog
This has a list of tools you could use
To draw a polygon, do I need to create a new layer? If so how do I need to create a layer?
I figured out how to create a layer.
After I draw a polygon, how do I put that in the layer I just created?
There a whole load of tutorials built into the help files, you might want to have a look at some of the fundamental ones first
ie. Introduction to the Editing tutorial—Help | ArcGIS for Desktop