Cannot assign spatial reference to raster

[jonathangamble]

Hi,

I have a set of tiff images that are missing a spatial reference.  The images are in a UTM projection (when dragging images into ArcMap, the unknown coordinate systems appear to be UTM). 

When I try to edit the spatial reference within the raster properties window, I can assign a new coordinate system, but when I click 'apply' the spatial reference resets back to <undefined>.  If I try using the 'define projection' gp tool, the tool completes successfully, but the spatial reference still remains <undefined>.

Is this a bug?  How do I assign a spatial reference to my TIFF file?

Thanks
Jon

[FabianBlau]

Did you try it in ArcMap or in ArcCatalog? Try it with the other one.
Export the Raster and try it on the copy (maybe in a different format).

[SachinKanaujia]

Hi,
Do you have the tiff file alone in the folder? or there are other files as well. Sometimes the projection information can be stored outside in an external file (aux.xml) as well. If you have only this tiff file alone then maybe you can inspect the tags to see if it is corrupt using the following tool

http://www.awaresystems.be/imaging/tiff/astifftagviewer.html

[EricRice · Accepted solution]

Hi Jon,

In previous versions I know of some bugs like you're describing.  What version are you using?  Also, one other thing to check is that you have write permission to the data folder.  Is it all raster data that is impacted?  Just one dataset? Just one type of format? 

Best,
Eric

[jonathangamble]

Thanks all for your reply!

@fabl: I have used ArcMap and ArcCatalog, still no luck.  I have not tried exporting the tiffs to another format, but will look into this.  I would rather not go down this route since I have a large collection of images.

@sachin.kanaujia.gis: The tiffs have world files, statistics files and pyramid files that accompany them.  The tagviewer application you suggested does not show any corrupt tags related to the .tif file itself.

@Eric: I am on 10.1.  I have had another team member on 10.1 attempt to assign the projection and still no luck.  We all have the proper premissions on the data files, so I don't believe that is the problem.  This issue applies to all .tif files within this collection of imagery.  I can't remember the last time I've had to assign a projection to an imagery file, so I can't remember if I have performed this operation in 10.1 before.  I will have a look at assigning the projection using a 10.0 machine and see if I have the same results.

[jonathangamble]

Well this is embarrassing - turns out it was a permission issue (sort of).  Apparently all my imagery files were set to 'read only'.  As a result, I couldn't modify any of the files.

To correct the issue: Right click on images -> properties -> uncheck 'read only' box

That was easy 😕

Thanks guys!

[LindsayKosior]

I searched everywhere trying to figure out why the coordinate system kept resetting everytime I tried to define one for my image... turns out I had the image set to read-only too! Thank you so much for posting your solution! it was a huge help!