tcallsen / geotiff2java

Simple Java app that reads GeoTIFF file data with GeoTools.

Read GeoTIFF Data with Java GeoTools

Demonstrates how to read GeoTIFF data using the GeoTools library in Java. Raster data is retrieved for a particular latitude/longitude.

GeoTIFF Compression

GeoTIFF files can be compressed to reduce filesize. I was not able to get the GeoTools library to read GeoTIFF files with LZW compression, and had to uncompress the file with GDAL prior to reading it in Java/GeoTools:

gdal_translate pathtoinput.tif pathforoutput.tif -co COMPRESS=NONE

I was able to read the LZW compressed files directly when using the GDAL Java bindings (sample project).

For more information on GeoTIFF compression, check out: https://kokoalberti.com/articles/geotiff-compression-optimization-guide/

Other Libraries

I experimented with a few other Java libraries for reading GeoTIFF files. The code snippets below show how to read the file into a Raster object. From there, the steps in App.java can be followed.

I also created another sample project that reads GeoTIFF data using the Java GDAL bindings: https://github.com/tcallsen/geotiff2java-gdal

Java Advanced Imaging - no GeoTIFF LZW Compression support

// https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15429011/how-to-convert-tiff-to-jpeg-png-in-java
FileSeekableStream s = new FileSeekableStream(tiffFile);
TIFFDecodeParam param = null;
ImageDecoder dec = ImageCodec.createImageDecoder("tiff", s, param);
RenderedImage op = dec.decodeAsRenderedImage(0);
Raster tiffRaster = op.getData();

ImageIO - no GeoTIFF LZW Compression support

// https://stackoverflow.com/questions/64537498/get-tiff-tag-value-including-non-ascii-characters-from-tiff-images-in-java-11
try (ImageInputStream input = ImageIO.createImageInputStream(tiffFile)) {
  ImageReader reader = ImageIO.getImageReaders(input).next(); // TODO: Handle reader not found
  reader.setInput(input);
  // IIOMetadata metadata = reader.getImageMetadata(0); // 0 is the index of first image
  BufferedImage image = reader.read(0);
  Raster tiffRaster = image.getData();
}

Apache Commons Imaging - support for GeoTiff LZW compression but samples not as accurate

// https://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/119134/looking-for-an-open-source-java-based-geotiff-library
final TiffImagingParameters params = new TiffImagingParameters();
TiffImageParser readerT = new TiffImageParser();
BufferedImage image = readerT.getBufferedImage(tiffFile, params);
Raster tiffRaster = image.getData();

Blog Post

A blog post that discusses this project in more detail is available here: https://taylor.callsen.me/parsing-geotiff-files-in-java/