How to create spatial index for Aerial Photos

[JessiecarEsguerra]

Hi Guys, I need help in building a spatial index of Aerial photos and have the Image Service project on the fly. Appreciate any ideas or inputs from anyone who has knowledge about this.

Thanks in advance.

- Jessiecar

[AdrianWelsh]

Jessiecar,

Have you tried the Add Spatial Index geoprocessing tool?

Add Spatial Index—Help | ArcGIS for Desktop 

[JessiecarEsguerra]

I didn't tried it yet just like what Xander mentioned, it says that "Add Spatial Index" is for shape file, file geodatabase, or enterprise geodatabase feature class.

But thanks, I might try exploring it too to see if there's something I could use it for.

[XanderBakker]

Spatial indexes are for featureclasses (see An overview of spatial indexes in the geodatabase—ArcGIS Help | ArcGIS for Desktop ). 

If you have an image service, your raster data will probably be in a mosaic dataset. In a mosaic dataset you will create overviews (Build Overviews—Help | ArcGIS for Desktop ) and there are other tools available to enhance the performance of the mosaic dataset (see also Add Rasters To Mosaic Dataset—Help | ArcGIS for Desktop and other tools in the Mosaic Dataset toolset. You can load the raster and they will be projected to the configured spatial reference. 

[JessiecarEsguerra]

Hi Xander, thank you, I will try this and you are correct that I have Mosaic Dataset but it only contains those georef images.

So if I will be adding those non-georef images on my mosaic dataset, there is a way I could have those projected on the fly? I have a metadata for all Aerial photos that I have - both georef & non georef images.

Thank you so much for your time.

[DanPatterson_Retired]

non-georeferenced images still need georeferencing, otherwise their place is space will remain unknown and cannot be appropriately integrated with georeferenced data

[JessiecarEsguerra]

Thanks Dan.

Do you know any way to georeference by batch? Doing it one by one will take forever and that is not feasible to the project I am working with.

Much appreciated. Thanks!

[XanderBakker]

Assuming that the aerial photos cover different areas and if they really do have any spatial reference, you will not be able to georeference them if you do not have any additional information. In case you have a file with the location of each photo there are ways to georeference them in batch (using for instance some Python code), but it seems very strange that the photo came without any georeference information. There are algorithms that search for matching points in overlapping photos and can mosaic them together (like for instance is done in Drone2Map). Is it possible to add a screenshot of the properties of a photo or share one of those photos to see if this is really the case?

[Anonymous User]

Hello,

If you Aerial images are well processed(georeferenced , orthorectified ) then you are able to create spspatia lndexes and view to use in further analysis.

In ArcMAP not seen or use batch Georeferencing tool.

Thanks.

[JessiecarEsguerra]

Hi Avinash, unfortunately, I have Aerial images that are not georeferenced.