[Gdal-dev] The perfect raster format - which is it?

[Simon Perkins]

To throw in my 2c, the answer is of course: it all depends...

For instance, you don't say if you need data types other than byte, or a 
number of bands other than 1 or 3, or whether lossy compression is 
acceptable, or whether your images are targeted at a particular 
community, or whether you want to do random access updates, or whether 
you need to store images larger than 4GB, or whether you need 
georeferencing support, or arbitrary metadata support, or...

Generically though, GeoTIFF is perhaps the most complete non-proprietary 
format supported by GDAL. However it suffers from the severe problem 
that standard TIFF files have a 4GB file size limit (you can create 
BIGTIFF files with unlimited file size, but not all readers will read 
them). Also, multi-band and non-byte support is not part of the core 
spec so different applications may or may not support it. Also, not all 
readers support the deflate compression method, which is the only decent 
lossless compression TIFF offers.

You might also consider JPEG2000, which supports a wide variety of 
storage formats, including lossy or lossless compression.

I'm surprised that HFA doesn't support NODATA though.

Cheers,

Sy


Tim Sutton wrote:
> Hi All
>
> OK I know its a loaded question, but which format and format options
> are the 'best' in terms of:
>
> - produce the most compact file size
> - supports byte output
> - support nodata
> - is writeable by gdal
> - and (for special bonus points) is readable by ArcView 3.x and ArcMap >=8
>
> Previously we've been using HFA but lack of nodata support is an issue
> and it does not seem to work well under both ArcMap and ArcGIS.
>
> Any tips on the subject will be greatly appreciated.
>
> Regards
>
>