How to bring photos into ArcGIS

[cthornhi]

Hello, I know that the photos taken by the Mini 2 are georeferenced (I can see in the photo's properties there are Lat/Longs associated with it). I was hoping someone could walk me through how to bring the photos into ArcGIS positioned and oriented correctly according to the coordinates? I have ArcGIS Pro 2.9, and I also still have access to ArcMap 10.6.

 

[brett8883]

Hello, I know that the photos taken by the Mini 2 are georeferenced (I can see in the photo's properties there are Lat/Longs associated with it). I was hoping someone could walk me through how to bring the photos into ArcGIS positioned and oriented correctly according to the coordinates? I have ArcGIS Pro 2.9, and I also still have access to ArcMap 10.6.

Full disclosure, I’m not a ArcGIS expert and it’s been about a year since I went though this but I’m pretty sure you need to stitch the photos together first. They are geolocated but they still need to be oriented and merged together. What I did is I used Drone Deploy to merge the photos and exported a GeoTiff image which can then be imported that into ArcGIS pro which also brought in the elevation data as well if I remember correctly. There was some backend stuff I had to do to make the elevation data smooth and not just a bunch of points but not sure if you are interested in the elevation data or not.

DroneDeploy has a free trial offer so you can try it out without putting up any money. Hopefully this is helpful

 

[brett8883]

I should clarify that the stitched GeoTiff is geolocated so it falls right into place on ArcGIS

 

[JC in New Hampshire]

Your photos are geolocated, that is, the embedded EXIF data in each shot contains the lat/lon of the drone where the pic was shot. Every pixel in a georeferenced GIS layer corresponds with a know point on the surface of the earth.

Converting your geolocated photo into a georeferenced raster requires complex calculation involving focal length, camera angle, and altitude. Basically, the photo is stretched and rotated until every object in the image corresponds with the location of the actual object on the surface of the Earth. This is what applications like Drone Deploy do. If you have a set of georeferenced photos, stitching them together is pretty easy because you know where every pixel goes in the final assembled layer.

 

[JC in New Hampshire]

Drone Deploy https://www.dronedeploy.com/pricing-v2.html at $150/month is pricey if all you want to do is map your back yard.

Maps Made Easy, Maps Made Easy - Pay As You Go charges by the gigapixel and you can do a small project for beer money.

I have used neither, and would be interested to hear back if you use Maps Made Easy.

 

[brett8883]

Drone Deploy https://www.dronedeploy.com/pricing-v2.html at $150/month is pricey if all you want to do is map your back yard.

Maps Made Easy, Maps Made Easy - Pay As You Go charges by the gigapixel and you can do a small project for beer money.

I have used neither, and would be interested to hear back if you use Maps Made Easy.

Thanks I’ll have to try out maps made easy some time.