Rasters, TileIndex and Shapefiles - Oh My! Really Confused

Thu Sep 27 10:15:13 PDT 2007

K.  Thought I put the mapserver-users email address in the reply.  It should be in there this time.  

Hmmmm - to clarify how I got these images:
1.) http://www.uiuc.edu/
2.) There are some white links in the top left corner.  Click on Maps.
3.) Now a big map should be displayed.  This isn't the one.  Click anywhere on that big map.
4.) The tile where you clicked will be displayed, but that's not how I get the tiles.  If you notice there's no way to tell how long a tile is or how to line them up.  Ok.  There's a little map to the right of that tile being displayed that says "click to jump" underneath it.
5.) Click in that box anywhere and it will show tiles in the big box to the left that are evenly spaced apart (except the far right and very bottom).  If you click on a few places within the small box, you see how the white rectangle with red borders inside the small box moves at the same interval for every tile.  So, from there I right-click on the big tile image being displayed and select Save Image.
6.) This is where I got my pics from.  I also assembled them last night anyway for amusement, and they fit perfectly.  Just the very bottom row and the far right column overlap.  But, I know now that the overall mosiac's width is 2602 and the height is 2800.

Ideally, I would like the world file to be in lat/lon (that's funny about people on the web thinking the Earth is flat - brings an old Bugs Bunny cartoon to mind), being as I have to convert a lat/lon point someone sends me to UTM as of right now.  I would love to not have to convert - just less code is always better to me.

Yeah.  I know it's in Zone 16.  I looked that up a while back on a UTM grid I found online.

Ok.  So, my current world file (in UTM):
1
0.0000000000
0.0000000000
-1
393898.00
4441379.00

So..... for lat/lon I could say...........:
1
0.0000000000
0.0000000000
-1
-88.248281
40.117268

(This would put the Top Left coordinate in an area called West Side Park.  I took that assembled map pic and then grabbed a screen shot of the current window I was in and made that into an image and aligned them via layering and opacity levels in The GIMP (Like Photoshop but in Ubuntu Linux)).

I'll double check the math, but I don't know if what I described earlier with all the steps could be screwing things up.

And lastly, in the world file, 1 would represent 1 decimal degree/pixel or 1 meter/pixel in the X direction (depending on UTM or lat/lon)?

I checked out Topozone.  It looks like it has a ton of features.  I'll play around with it some more.  

Thanks!!!!

 - Chris
Subject: RE: [UMN_MAPSERVER-USERS] Rasters, TileIndex and Shapefiles - Oh My!  Really Confused
Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2007 18:25:52 -0400
From: ed at topozone.com
To: docterrobert at msn.com; MAPSERVER-USERS at LISTS.UMN.EDU

Chris –

(I added the list back to the reply line –
please always reply to the whole list – thanks)

A world file is in the units of the image’s
projection, not the other way around.  Having a world file does not mean
the image is in UTM projection.  The UTM projection is a popular one, but
it’s certainly not the only one.  For a map in Illinois UTM is
certainly a possibility, but an Illinois State Plane Coordinate System
projection is also a possibility – especially if the original imagery
came from the State of Illinois.  And geographic lat/lon coordinates are
also a possibility due to the increasing number of people in the world who seem
to think the Earth is flat (at least on the Web).

I don’t know which campus you’re
using, but if you’re at UIUC then the UTM coordinates will be in UTM Zone
16 with values of around 395000 (X or Easting)  4440000 (Y or Northing). 
If your numbers don’t look like those, they’re not UTM.

Oh, sorry – I started answering
before reading all the questions, and you later seem to confirm that your
coordinates are indeed UTM.  But you got the formulas backwards, and X
should be positive while Y should be negative- not the other way around. 
And the measurements in your world file are indeed in meters, but that’s
because those are the native units of the UTM projection being used. 
There’s nothing that requires them to be in meters; many US state plane
coordinate systems use units of feet, and those would appear in the world file,
too.

Now it is highly unlikely that your pixel
resolution is different in each dimension.  You could average those two
numbers, or double-check your coordinate values (you didn’t say what
source you used to get them).  If you got this image from a GIS source, I
would say that if you think the dimensions are different you’re wrong,
but who knows what the University did to munge the image into a pretty
picture.  So maybe the dimensions ARE different; that’s not
impossible, just odd.  I still would double-check your measurements and
math, but if you get the same answer that’s OK.

Once you do that you just have to crank
out those world files!

-         
Ed

Ed McNierney

TopoZone.com

From: Christopher
Harris [mailto:docterrobert at msn.com] 

Sent: Wednesday, September 26,
2007 1:13 PM

To: Ed McNierney

Subject: RE: [UMN_MAPSERVER-USERS]
Rasters, TileIndex and Shapefiles - Oh My! Really Confused

Wow.  Thanks Ed.  You went to a lot of
trouble.  Most of this stuff you've explained I have a handle on.  I
wikipedia'd how to make a world file when I did that previous app.  And
yes, it's the same app with the image that's in UTM projection.  I
actually have one last question about that, but I'll do a separate post for
that.  This is a modification of that app.  See, I've been using this
"Parking Lot" map for the University
 of Illinois, because I
couldn't find a better looking one.  Well, yesterday, I noticed that you
could go their full campus map and right click on each individual tile and save
it as a .gif.  I had tried this before but was apparently clicking on
certain, wrong areas of each tile every time where I guess the javascript was
blocking me.  The javascript that they use displays info on certain
buildings when you click on them.  If you happen to right-click on or
around a building and try to save, you can't.  You have to click somewhere
else on the tile that's on or around a building.  Anywho - my boss now
wants me to take what I've done with that one pic of  the "Parking
Lot" and now apply it to a big tiled image of the entire campus (enter the
tiles I've saved).  That's the back story as to what's going on.

I have 3 questions now.

#1 You asked if the image is in UTM.  I'm basing the image projection on
the world file.  I remember you (or maybe this one other guy on this list
serv) telling me before that you can't distinguish what projection a world file
is in - that that's one of the cons to world files.  Every example I've
ever seen after typing in "World File" in Google shows a world file
that is in meters and says that it's using UTM projection.  That's still
the case right?

Oh, the lat/lon has to do with me reprojecting.  See, someone passes me a
lat/lon coordinate (a center point).  I then take that, and convert it to
UTM, because the map's projection is in UTM due to the world file being in UTM.

Thanks for your time and patience by the way.  You've been a huge help.

#2 The one thing I'm hazy on in regard to the world file is: 

the 1st and 4th line - pixel size in the x-direction
and y-direction in map units/pixel

I understand why x is positive and y is almost always negative.  But, does
that mean, for example, 

if I type 2 for the 1st line and -2 for the fourth line, then there will be 2
meters per pixel going both directions?  For that I could never find an
example of what they meant.  I just assumed that.  I usually work
best with seeing an example, and one was never provided on any of the pages I
visited.

#3 "The X pixel dimension will be (maxx
– minx) / xpixels, and the Y will be (miny – maxy) / ypixels. 
You should find that the X number is -1 times the Y number."

Is pixel dimension related to question #2?  For instance (in meters):

TL - 393898 4441379 BR - 396253 4438945

maxx=393898, maxy=4441379

minx=396253, miny=4438945

DeltaX=-2355, DeltaY=2434

Say the mosaic's dimensions in pixels are.........: X=1500, Y=2000

X pixel dimension = -2355/1500 = -1.57 meters/pixel

Y pixel dimension = 2434/2000 = 1.217 meters/pixel

That right?

 - Chris

Subject: RE: [UMN_MAPSERVER-USERS]
Rasters, TileIndex and Shapefiles - Oh My! Really Confused

Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2007 14:45:54 -0400

From: ed at topozone.com

To: docterrobert at MSN.COM; MAPSERVER-USERS at LISTS.UMN.EDU

Chris –

OK – it’s not as bad as all
that – don’t fire up Photoshop yet.  If you have a set of
tiles which together create a seamless large image, and those tiles are of a
regular size and shape, don’t bother pasting them together.

Each world file has six numbers in it, two
of which will be 0.  For each image tile you need a world file that
contains the X/Y coordinates of the upper left pixel of the image (two
numbers), and the dimension (size) of each pixel in X (one number) and Y (one
number) units.  In the vast majority of cases the last two numbers will be
identical except for sign (the Y value is normally a negative number since Y
values decrease as you go from the top to the bottom of the image).

If your images make a rectangle when
pasted together, just treat them as one.  Find the X/Y coordinates of the
upper left corner of the entire image area, and the X/Y coordinates of the
lower right corner of the entire image area.  Find the size of the entire
mosaiced rectangle in X and Y pixels.  The X pixel dimension will be (maxx
– minx) / xpixels, and the Y will be (miny – maxy) / ypixels. 
You should find that the X number is -1 times the Y number.

For all your world files, these two X and
Y extent values (the first and fourth lines) will be constants.  The last
two lines are the upper left X and Y coordinates of each tile.  Your tiles
will all have the same Y value across each row, and the same X value down each
column.  You know what the upper-left corner of the upper-left tile is,
because you measured it.  You know the number of X pixels in each tile and
the number of Y pixels in each tile, and you now know the size in X and Y units
of each pixel, so you know the extent of each image tile in X and Y units, so
you can calculate the upper-left corner coordinate of the image to the right
and the image below.  Repeat until complete.

All your measurements need to be done in
the units of the image’s coordinate system.  Is this the image you
were asking about earlier that’s in UTM projection?  If so, you need
UTM coordinates, NOT lat/lon.  I wouldn’t recommend Google Earth as
a very accurate way to do that, but if it’s close enough for you and easy
that’s OK.  If you can easily find the corners of your image area on
a topo map you can do it on TopoZone and get UTM coordinates accurate to within
a few meters just by clicking on the spots that match the corner points of your
image.

If there isn’t an obvious landmark
at the corner, you can pick a prominent location NEAR the corner and just
measure the number of pixels away from the corner it is.  It’s just
a bit more bookkeeping but does the same thing.

-         
Ed

Ed McNierney

TopoZone.com

From: UMN MapServer
Users List [mailto:MAPSERVER-USERS at LISTS.UMN.EDU] On Behalf Of Christopher Harris

Sent: Wednesday, September 26,
2007 11:15 AM

To: MAPSERVER-USERS at LISTS.UMN.EDU

Subject: Re: [UMN_MAPSERVER-USERS]
Rasters, TileIndex and Shapefiles - Oh My! Really Confused

Thanks again, Ed.  I need to clear up some things that
I guess I didn't make clear.

I know that a world file provides georeferencing.  I meant to say that I
had a .gif that had no georeferencing info associated with it, and then added
one.  From there I got my initial app to work (displaying the big map).

One thing I omitted was that the little .gifs (tiles), when assembled, make up
a different big map pic then the one where mentioned :

“it uses one .gif
(the big map pic), attaches the big map to the globe via a world file. 
That big map .gif had no georeferencing info attached to it."

Before I had a pic of a large section of a college
campus.  Now I have a pic of the entire campus, but in little tiles.

I know Mapserver makes maps and not pics too.  I probably
just worded something wrong.

"So – what do you know about
these images?  Do you really have a world file that correctly describes
your big GIF image?  Do you know exactly how the little images were
created from the big image?  If so, you should be able to figure out how
to generate world files for each individual image.  If not, you’ll
need to get that information for your big image."

Yes, I have a world file, but it's for the pic
that shows a large section of the campus - not for the big pic that is the sum
of the little pics.

Ok, so then I have to have a world file for every little tile, but before that
I need to correctly set up the world file for the big pic, which I guess I'll
need to assemble in Photoshop.  Does that sound right?  I can do it,
it's just a bit tedious lining up the tiles and such.  Also, how do you
correctly align a pic of some map on the globe.  I've been using Google
Maps to do it.  I'll sit there and study where the pic's corners should
approximately be, then get the lat/lon from that (clicking directions to or
from will yield the lat/lons).

Thank you.

 - Chris  

Subject: RE: [UMN_MAPSERVER-USERS]
Rasters, TileIndex and Shapefiles - Oh My! Really Confused

Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2007 13:36:42 -0400

From: ed at topozone.com

To: docterrobert at MSN.COM; MAPSERVER-USERS at LISTS.UMN.EDU

Chris –

Let me suggest you try to get unconfused
just one step at a time!

“it uses one .gif
(the big map pic), attaches the big map to the globe via a world file.  That
big map .gif had no georeferencing info attached to it.”

That’s a bit of a
contradiction.  A world file is one way of providing georeferencing. 
If you’ve got an image “attached” to the Earth via a world
file, you’ve georeferenced it.

MapServer makes maps, not pictures. 
One of the chief differences is that a map has geographic location information
associated with it.  When you ask MapServer to generate a map for you, you
need to tell it the location of the map you want in some coordinate
system.  In order for MapServer to know which of your GIF images to use in
making the output map, it needs to know the geographic location of each of
those images.  Otherwise it couldn’t figure out which ones to use.

A TILEINDEX is step two in the
process.  Once you have a set of more than 1 properly georeferenced images
that you’d like to use like a single logical image, you can create a
TILEINDEX to do that.  But you have to completely and correctly make it
through step one first.  Once you get the individual images properly
georeferenced, gdaltindex will just work.

So – what do you know about these
images?  Do you really have a world file that correctly describes your big
GIF image?  Do you know exactly how the little images were created from
the big image?  If so, you should be able to figure out how to generate
world files for each individual image.  If not, you’ll need to get
that information for your big image.

If you do have that world file and know
how the tiles were created, let us know (you can post the world file in your
reply – it’s just six lines of text).

-         
Ed

Ed McNierney

TopoZone.com

From: UMN MapServer
Users List [mailto:MAPSERVER-USERS at LISTS.UMN.EDU] On Behalf Of Christopher Harris

Sent: Wednesday, September 26,
2007 10:02 AM

To: MAPSERVER-USERS at LISTS.UMN.EDU

Subject: [UMN_MAPSERVER-USERS]
Rasters, TileIndex and Shapefiles - Oh My! Really Confused

Hi.  I have a map that is
broken up into a bunch of .gif tiles.  I want to display them on a layer
in Mapserver.  I have working version of what I want to accomplish, but it
uses one .gif (the big map pic), attaches the big map to the globe via a world
file.  That big map .gif had no georeferencing info attached to it.

These .gifs have no georeferencing information included or attached as well.

I read Section 4 (and Section 9 too) on the mapserver site page:
http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/docs/howto/raster_data