GeoTIFF Writer Feature Type Parameters

To access feature type parameters, click the gear icon on a feature type in the workspace. This opens the Feature Type Parameter Editor.

Tip  To always display the editor in FME Workbench, you can select View > Windows > Parameter Editor.

General

All feature types share similar General parameters, which may include Feature Type Name, Reader or Writer information, and Geometry.

In most Writer Feature Type parameter dialogs, you can also control Dynamic Schema Definitions. Some database formats accept Table or Index Qualifier prefixes on the output table feature type.

Raster: Metadata

Generate World File

World files are used to store georeferencing information for rasters. More specifically, they describe the origin, spacing, and rotation of a raster.

When this parameter is set to Yes, the workspace generates a world file with the same prefix as the output filename, but with the suffix .wld.

Generate TAB File

Enables or disables the generation of a TAB file along with the output image.

Compression Method

This option sets the compression to use:

  • None (default)
  • JPEG
  • DEFLATE
  • LZW
  • ZSTD
  • Pack Bits
  • CCITT RLE (CCITT modified Huffman run-length encoding)
  • CCITT FAX3 (CCITT Group 3 fax encoding)
  • CCITT FAX4 (CCITT Group 4 fax encoding)
  • LERC (Limited Error Raster Compression)
  • LERC DEFLATE
  • LERC ZSTD

Additional options can be set for JPEG, DEFLATE/LERC DEFLATE, and ZSTD/LERC ZSTD compression levels.

JPEG Compression Level

This option sets the desired compression level of the output image. This is expressed as a percentage of the original file size. For example, setting a compression level of 75 means that the output image will be approximately 75% smaller (one-quarter of the size) than an uncompressed image.

Note that this value only represents the targeted compression level, and this may not actually be achieved. JPEG supports both lossy and lossless compression. With lossy compression, the compressed image is an approximation of the original. With lossless compression, the compressed image is identical to the original.

Note  Repeatedly reading and saving files may decrease the quality for this format. In addition, FME Workbench may not know which format data comes from, and whether it used lossy compression. If you know that source data comes from files with lossy compression, you should also set the compression level to 0. Although this compression still does not guarantee the exact copy of the source file, the output will be very close to the original.

DEFLATE Compression Level

See Compression: Clearing the Confusion on ZIP, GZIP, Zlib and DEFLATE.

DEFLATE is a lossless data compression algorithm that uses a combination of LZ77 algorithm and Huffman coding on each block of data.

Value – 1 - 9. The default is 6.

ZSTD Compression Level

This option provides a good compression ratio across diverse datasets. ZSTD works well with CHAR and VARCHAR columns that store a wide range of long and short strings, including JSON strings.

Value – 1 - 22

Default – 9

LERC Error Tolerance

LERC is particularly well-suited for high bit-depth and scientific data where controlling error tolerance is critical.

This option sets the maximum allowable deviation for each pixel during compression. The value is expressed in the data's native unit (for example, meters for elevation or degrees for temperature).

Value – 0 (lossless) and above

Default – 0 (lossless)

For additional information, see the Usage Note in Generate Pyramids.

Layout

Select an option:

Number of Columns per Tile, Number of Rows per Tile

When Layout is Tiles or Cloud Optimized Tiles, these options specify the size of tiles to create.

Specifies the number of columns and rows in a tile. (This option only applies when creating a tiled file since strips are required to be the full width of the raster.)

This value is required to be a multiple of 16.

Note that other options may impact this value:

  • If creating a tiled file, this value must be a multiple of 16.
  • If applying JPEG compression, this value must be a multiple of 8.
  • If applying JPEG compression with a photometric interpretation of YCbCr, this must be a multiple of 16.

Number of Levels to Generate

The number of pyramid levels to generate. This setting does not include the original resolution image. Each pyramid level has half the number of rows and columns of the previous level.

Interpolation Type

The interpolation method used to reduce the image size.

  • Nearest Neighbor is the fastest but produces the poorest image quality.
  • Bilinear provides a reasonable intermediate option.
  • Bicubic is the slowest but produces the best image quality.

Number of Rows/Columns per Tile

The tile size used in the reduced-resolution images.

Usage Notes
The File Structure > Layout parameter applies only to the base-level raster. The File Structure > Number of Columns per Tile, Number of Rows per Tile parameter applies only to the reduced-resolution raster levels. Therefore, if a GeoTIFF is written as Strips with pyramids, the base raster would be stripped and reduced-resolution images would be tiled based on the values specified in the Generate Pyramids > Number of Columns per Tile, Number of Rows per Tile parameter.

Byte Order

The byte order used in the file. When writing, valid values are MSB, LSB, and machine (meaning the native byte order of the machine running FME).

Calculate Min/Max TIFF Tags

Specifies whether the writer should calculate the MinSampleValue and MaxSampleValue TIFF tags values from the input raster.

Calculating the min/max values may increase translation time. Note that if this is set to Yes, the calculated values will override any explicit values specified for geotiff_tifftag_minsamplevalue and geotiff_tifftag_maxsamplevalue.

Enable BigTIFF

Enabling this option allows an output GeoTIFF file larger than 4GB.

Interleaving Type

Interleaving refers to the storage of multicomponent interpretations and the order in which the individual cell values are stored together. Bands in FME use Band Sequential (BSQ) interleaving indicating that they are all stored uniquely. Palettes in FME are Band Interleaved by Pixel (BIP) as each palette value is stored together with each key in the palette.

BIP may be less efficient for reading and writing by FME, but is more widely supported by other applications. If not specified, the default interleaving is BSQ.

Note  This option corresponds to the PlanarConfiguration TIFF tag. BIP corresponds to a value of 1 (Chunky), and BSQ corresponds to a value of 2 (Planar).

Number of Bits Per Cell

This option allows writing datasets with any bit depth between 1 and 32.

Photometric Interpretation

The color space of the image data. The available options are:

  • Auto – The photometric interpretation will be implicitly determined from the FME interpretation.
  • MinIsBlack – The minimum value of the raster should be displayed as black. This option only applies to numeric rasters.
  • MinIsWhite – The minimum value of the raster should be displayed as white. This option only applies to numeric rasters.
  • YCbCr – The values should be stored using the YCbCr color space. This option is only valid when using JPEG compression.

See the section Feature Representation for additional information.