[GIS] Saving Geo-Tif from QGIS creates black TIF

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I am attempting to take a Tif file that I received from a company and convert it to a geo-tif using QGIS. The original file(s) I received were the *.tif, *.tfw, and *.prj. I'm fairly new to working with geo-tifs, but have learned that the *.tfw is the world file that contains the points to line up the rasters and the *.prj holds the projection information. So I was able to import the Tif into QGIS, but it was not in the projection I wanted. After some research, I was able to convert the Tif to the right projection and I was ready to save it as a Geo-Tif.

However when I saved the Tif, the *.tif file I get was a solid black picture, not the colored map that I originally imported. I can load the original TIF in GIMP with no problems, but when I try to load the TIF exported from QGIS, I get error messages "Unknown field with tag 33550 (0x830e). I assume GIMP doesn't know what to do with the Geo-tag information and is erroring. However, when it does load the tif, it is a solid black map. It has lost all the colors from the original.

I've searched the site, but have not been able to find anything on this. Any ideas where I could be going wrong? The original files can be found at: Original TIF files zipped

Best Answer

The following worked for me with QGIS 2.18.11:

  1. Make sure that the original .tif and .tfw files are located in the same folder.
  2. Add raster layer -> choose the original TIF file
  3. Set a CRS -> based on the .prj file which comes with the original TIF file choose EPSG:32613 (WGS 84 / UTM Zone 13 N). Depending on your settings you will be asked to choose a CRS when adding the TIF file as raster later or you will have to right click the layer in the layers panel and select "Set Layer CRS"
  4. Right click the layer in the layers panel and "Save As..." -> Format GTiff
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