Interpretation and Data Type

Interpretation and data type are two related concepts associated with both bands and palettes on a raster.

Data type refers to the fundamental type of the data stored at each cell and is expressed as an enumeration of various floating point or signed or unsigned integer numbers.

Interpretation refers to what the data type is representing. For example, a group of three UInt8 data types in each cell may correspond to an interpretation of RGB24 on a palette, such that each of the three UInt8 values corresponds to red, green, and blue values, respectively.

The data type of a band or palette can be determined from interpretation, but the converse is not true.