Latest Contributions by CodyBenkelman

I should have offered that as an additional option - if you have an existing ortho base, you can load that into Drone2Map and then use it to extract control points.   This works for horizontal control.  A simillar process works for vertical control but you'd load in your own DEM... Cody B ... View more

Brian sorry I didn't see your message sooner. Are you using ground control points?  Without ground control, your mosaic may be off by many meters. You get the best accuracy if you can survey points that are visible in the imagery using a high quality GPS receiver, then import the control points into D2M, "link" the control points to the images, and re-run your orthomosaic. If you don't have independent GPS control points you can extract control from the Esri imagery basemap.  This will ensure your mosaic will align with the basemap but be aware that our basemap comes from many sources and Esri can't provide a stated accuracy for the basemap. A third option (if inside the USA) is to use the NAIP image service to extract control. Cody B  ... View more

First, note you're looking at Help for ArcMap 10.3.  That is very old; are you using 10.3?   Second, I'd recommend you look at this resource which is newer and should have very similar advice (and should be applicable to 10.x although most of us now use ArcGIS Pro.) Introduction—Managing Preprocessed Orthophotos_Overview | ArcGIS  Third, re: the specific question, that doc was probably not quite clear enough but the intent was "you MAY want to use an image service from ArcGIS Online for low resolution views INSTEAD of creating your own overviews..." but it is optional.  You can create overviews from your imagery.    I've advised switching to a different data source for low res views in the past for several reasons: air photos often do not look very good when you create overviews and zoom way out... small scale satellite images typically just look better if you have 2+ years, do you really need overviews of each year?  if only one year is needed, which do you use?  Does your imagery have much value when viewing at ~100 m/pixel or lower resolution?  --> my feeling is "the overview is needed so the user can see context - mountains, rivers, etc. and navigate to the proper area - but the content of your specific imagery is (often) not highly relevant until you zoom into higher resolution..." If you disagree with the judgment that "your unique content is not relevant at 100m" then by all means ignore this option.  This is just an alternative to provide imagery that is appropriate for low resolution views, but you can ignore the "use a service" option and use your own imagery to generate overviews ... View more

George (and David) Thanks, that looks pretty good but the black "nodata" at the edges hasn't been completely removed.  I am guessing you have compressed data (JPG, JP2000, MrSid etc.) and where NoData was originally 0 it has been changed to a value of 1 or 2 due to the compression, and these nonzero values confuse the Build Footprints tool.  Note that tool includes an option to "shrink" footprints, so presuming your data has plenty of overlap, adding a value (in map units like meters, not pixels) to reduce the footprint extent should eliminate the remaining NoData.   You can also add Seamlines which can improve the visual appearance.  Further you can consider running color correction but note if you are merging 8 bit preprocessed orthos that have already been processed for color correction, matching datasets from different years/seasons (or if clouds/shadows are present) may be challenging. Cody B.  ... View more