WriteRaster as Float

Hello,
I am working with R processing Meteosat imagery, which mean a lot of images
every day, and thus a lot of available storage space
It looks like the write raster function of the raster package only allows
to write a Geotiff as integer or as double. I only need float precision, so
I don't need a double as the resulting file gets too big. Is there any way
to store a geotiff with float precision?
Thank you
Zebrat

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Zebrat--
Without example code it is difficult to guess what you tried, and what you
desire.  By "float" do you mean FLT4S 4-byte values?  If so, try
datatype='FLT4S' in your call to writeRaster(), which should be the same as
'Float32' in gdal.  If you mean something else, I guessed wrong, so you
might specify a bit more about what you have, want, and have tried.

Tom 2

On Mon, Nov 10, 2014 at 4:38 AM, diamant zebrat <diamant.zebrat at gmail.com>
wrote:

Hello,
I am working with R processing Meteosat imagery, which mean a lot of
images
every day, and thus a lot of available storage space
It looks like the write raster function of the raster package only allows
to write a Geotiff as integer or as double. I only need float precision,
so
I don't need a double as the resulting file gets too big. Is there any way
to store a geotiff with float precision?
Thank you
Zebrat

        [[alternative HTML version deleted]]

Zebrat--
Without example code it is difficult to guess what you tried, and what 
you desire.  By "float" do you mean FLT4S 4-byte values?  If so, try 
datatype='FLT4S' in your call to writeRaster(), which should be the 
same as 'Float32' in gdal.  If you mean something else, I guessed 
wrong, so you might specify a bit more about what you have, want, and have tried.

Tom 2

On Mon, Nov 10, 2014 at 4:38 AM, diamant zebrat 
<diamant.zebrat at gmail.com>
wrote:

Hello,
I am working with R processing Meteosat imagery, which mean a lot of 
images every day, and thus a lot of available storage space It looks 
like the write raster function of the raster package only allows to 
write a Geotiff as integer or as double. I only need float precision, 
so I don't need a double as the resulting file gets too big. Is there 
any way to store a geotiff with float precision?
Thank you
Zebrat

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Hello Zebrat,

The datatype= argument appears to work well on my system. See if you can
reproduce the example below:

library(raster)
r <- raster(system.file("external/test.grd", package="raster"))

writeRaster(r, filename = 'rasterDefault.tif')
GDALinfo('rasterDefault.tif')
# By default raster writes to Float64

writeRaster(r, filename = 'rasterFloatSingle.tif', datatype = 'FLT4S')
GDALinfo('rasterFloatSingle.tif')
# Float 32

Make sure you do not capitalize the "t" in datatype. datatype is the
writeRaster() argument and dataType is the function to retrieve data type.

Cheers,
Lo?c

-----Original Message-----
From: r-sig-geo-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:
r-sig-geo-bounces at r-project.org] On Behalf Of diamant zebrat
Sent: Tuesday, November 11, 2014 10:13
To: Tom Philippi
Cc: r-sig-geo
Subject: Re: [R-sig-Geo] WriteRaster as Float

Tom, here goes the details
The Meteosat images are composed by a matrix of pixels with values of
surface temperature (or cloud top temperature) in Kelvin, which means
values like 273.15 I wanted to keep the decimals, thus I need a FLT4S
4-byte values. When using
writeRaster(TTemp,filename=nom,format="GTiff",overwrite=T,datatype="FLT4S")
I get a file with a size of 7.495.158 bytes.  My particular image is a
matrix of 1201 lines x 803 columns = 964.403 pixels, with this option
(datatype="FLT4S") it looks like we get an image that uses
8 bytes to store each pixel. In fact, we only need 4 bytes (float) to
store values like 273.15, thus I am getting images which are too big. Keep
in mind there is a Meteosat image each 15 min -> 96 a day, etc. These means
a lot of storage space and I should care about it When opening one of these
GEOTIFF (LTS4S) with a GIS package, it get an image that is "double
precision", confirming that the writeRaster is using
8 bytes to store each pixel when creating the GEOTIFF with the
datatype="FLT4S" option The conclusion is that the writeRaster routine is
not optimized to use the minimum space when writing a geotiff The only
alternative by now is to multiply my kelvins by ten and save it as an
integer, this way I only keep one decimal but I get small size files
writeRaster(TTemp,filename=nom,format="GTiff",overwrite=T,datatype="INT1U")
However, I still want to keep the real values using 4 byte for each
pixel...
thank you
Zebrat

2014-11-11 4:32 GMT+00:00 Tom Philippi <tephilippi at gmail.com>:

Zebrat--
Without example code it is difficult to guess what you tried, and what
you desire.  By "float" do you mean FLT4S 4-byte values?  If so, try
datatype='FLT4S' in your call to writeRaster(), which should be the
same as 'Float32' in gdal.  If you mean something else, I guessed
wrong, so you might specify a bit more about what you have, want, and

have tried.

Tom 2

On Mon, Nov 10, 2014 at 4:38 AM, diamant zebrat
<diamant.zebrat at gmail.com>
wrote:

Hello,
I am working with R processing Meteosat imagery, which mean a lot of
images every day, and thus a lot of available storage space It looks
like the write raster function of the raster package only allows to
write a Geotiff as integer or as double. I only need float precision,
so I don't need a double as the resulting file gets too big. Is there
any way to store a geotiff with float precision?
Thank you
Zebrat

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