Pyramids for Imagery - "Arbitrary" meaning?

[JM32]

When reviewing imagery in ArcGIS Pro though the Properties Pane, I have some TIFF files that say "level: arbitrary" for Pyramids. What exactly does this mean?

Usually if an image has no pyramids, it'll specifically state "no pyramids" or "none". So, I'm thinking this indicates the image has pyramids but there aren't very many levels present.

[RCorcoranAdams]

Hi! A few questions:

1. Can you provide more screenshots of the image properties? Specifically the raster properties?
2. Also, is this specific to this TIFF or is it happening with others as well? 
3. When you look at the TIFF in windows explorer do you see an .ovr file?

Thanks so much

[JM32]

@RCorcoranAdams 

Attached is a screenshot of the image properties. The isn't specific to this individual TIFF, it's actually present in the full dataset (composed of about 100 images).

In windows explorer, there is no .ovr file and it's only the TIFF. I thought maybe this is how a TIFF would appear in Pro and windows explorer if it has internal pyramids built into the TIFF, but I'm not sure how I would check for that.

Thank you,

Jon

[RCorcoranAdams · Accepted solution]

Hi Jon,

Thanks so much for sending that. I have a feeling the images may have insufficient or internal pyramids. I believe it is like adjusting speed when driving, it doesn't have 1 level, 2 level, 3 level..., but you can adjust the speed to whatever you want, in other words it has unlimited levels. Are you having any specific issues with visualization?

[JM32]

Ah, that makes a lot of sense! I was having issues visually which prompted me to look at the pyramids for the imagery. The issue I had was that edges in the imagery (parking lot lines, building edges, detailed objects) were becoming blurry once you zoomed out and weren't looking at the full resolution imagery tiles. The pyramids for most of the imagery was resampled with nearest neighbor, which I believe was causing the blurry effect. To fix this, I ended up building new pyramids for the TIFFs using bilinear resampling and all of the issues I had visually cleared up. ArcGIS Pro seems to read the new pyramids I built instead of the internal ones that are in the TIFFs. 

Thank you for your help on this question!