[GIS] What are the differences between the photometric options for GDAL_merge

colorgdalgdal-merge

I am using GDAL_merge to merge several geotiff tiles into one large tile. One of the creation options I can add is photometric.
There are several options for this.

  • MINISBLACK
  • MINISWHITE
  • RGB
  • CMYK
  • YCBCR
  • CIELAB
  • ICCLAB
  • ITULAB

What are the differences between these different outputs? I understand the MINISBLACK and MINISWHITE options, but the others are less clear.

Thanks in advance.

Best Answer

The chosen value is stored in the PhotometricInterpretation TIFF tag, which defines the color space, i.e. how to interpret the values of the bands. Example for a 3-band GeoTIFF defined as RGB: band 1 = red, band 2 = green, band 3 = blue. CMYK stands for the Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, blacK color space, etc.

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