Generating Highest Resolution Orthomosaic Possible Given File Size Constraints

PIX4Dmapper PIX4Dmapper Questions/Troubleshooting
1

In many cases I like to generate a full resolution (1X GSD) Orthomosaic.  On larger projects (1,000 + photos) this can generate a GeoTIFF 2 or more GB in size which is too large of a file for pretty much most user’s workstations to display.  In the past when using Photoscan (now Metashape) I use the option to generate a JPEG instead as the file size is much smaller than the GeoTIFF (didn’t need the file to be geotagged in many cases.)  

I can’t seem to find a way to output a JPEG in Pix4D mapper and since a GeoTIFF of several GB is too large to load into an image editor, I’m at a loss of how to get a JPEG without exporting at less than full resolution.

Any suggested solutions?

2

Great question, Jeff! Based on our conversations with Pix4D this currently isn’t an option, but is in their pipeline. I’ll be interested to hear if there are any further updates.

3

Hi Jeff,

Larry is right. Unfortunately, we don’t have a feature yet for converting to jpeg. You have to use some third party software like QGIS for the conversion: https://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/26249/how-to-convert-qgis-generated-tiff-images-into-jpg-jpeg-using-gdal-command-line 

4

A $500 Global Mapper license will allow you to do this, and you’ll find about 100 other benefits that you never knew you wanted.  

1 Like
5

I’m having the same problem. I am mapping large areas (500 acres) and the resulting GeoTIFF for example is 2.1GB. I can bring it into QGIS and export the layer but QGIS will not let me go higher than 3000DPI so the exported resolution of the JPEG is like 1/8th the resolution of the GeoTIFF.

Is there a free solution out there that can convert large GeoTIFFs up to 2GB in size (65000 pixels x 50000 pixels) to a JPEG? DroneDeploy and Photoscan (Metashape) both export full resolution JPEGs of even very large size.

6

Hello,

I think this online software can help you. I just converted a 1 GB file to JPG.

https://www.ps2pdf.com/convert-tiff-to-jpg

Regards.

7

Hello,

I downloaded IrfanViewer (mentioned here in Pix4D documentation) and, after waiting a while for the 3.6 GB tif file to appear, I used ‘Save as…’ to generate a jpg file which was 331 MB. Then I realized that I could also use IrfanViewer to generate a 4K resolution jpg file that my client could actually see and download with typical consumer software. I donated through PayPal. Well worth the donation.