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In your ArcGIS Server software you may have purpose to perform with adjacent map and image solutions. This really is most often occurs if you wish to display your authoritative data for any tiny place whilst making use of a public services (ArcGIS On-line, Bing Maps,
Office 2007 Professional Key, or Google Maps) for that encompassing area. This can be really common when viewing your providers in ArcGIS Explorer. By way of example, you may have recent aerial photography for your area, and also you wish to blend it together with the basemap imagery obtainable in ArcGIS Explorer. This will current a problem because your service could contain a white collar around the map. The dialogue under focuses regarding how to get rid of this white collar for various support configurations.
Dynamic map services
The instance below is actually a dynamic map services made up of aerial photography for Jefferson County, Kentucky proven in ArcGIS Explorer.
With this dynamic map support, ArcGIS Explorer is requesting a JPEG image since the services contains so many colors. Since JPEG does not support transparency, you get a white collar across the picture. To clip the white area out of a map service for the desktop clients (ArcMap, ArcGIS Explorer, etc.), simply create a feature class that represents the boundary of your information. Then you can use the Information Frame Clipping capability as described under.
In the ArcMap table of contents, right-click the knowledge frame and click Properties. Click the Information Frame tab and then check Enable under Clip to Shape.
Choose Outline of Features and choose your boundary layer.
Click OK to all the dialogs.
After updating your map document you need to restart your map services for your changes to take effect. Then the map service will show in ArcMap or ArcGIS Explorer nicely without a collar as in the illustration below.
Image services
When dealing with image services you could run into the same white collar all around your image. In this case the boundary feature and footprint features need to be clipped to the exact boundary of your imagery. Again, a feature class that contains the exact boundary of your imagery would be quite useful. You could replace the default boundary feature with your boundary feature and then clip all the footprints to the new boundary. Simply start an edit session, delete the existing boundary and copy and paste your existing boundary into the boundary feature class. After you save your edits and stop editing,
Windows 7 Starter Key, right-click on the Footprint layer and click Recompute Footprint > By Clipping to Boundary. You can read about the many other ways to adjust picture service footprints in the online help.
NoData and Web APIs/ADFs
The above two approaches for dynamic map companies and images services use a boundary feature to differentiate between data and NoData. Any areas outside of the boundary features are NoData. The desktop clients like ArcMap and ArcGIS Explorer don’t render the NoData values. However,
Genuine Office 2007, all of the Web APIs (JavaScript, Flex, Silverlight) and ADFs (.Net and Java) do render the NoData values as white if the requested image does not support transparency.
In the aerial photography illustration above, the Web application should request a JPEG image to preserve appropriate quality. Since JPEG does not support transparency, this picture could not be used with another basemap service. In cases where a PNG picture would work, the white collar will not exhibit, but PNG should only be used with providers that contain fewer colors than an aerial photo.
Since your basemaps should be cached anyway for Web applications, the discussion under dealing with cached map companies is more appropriate for Web application basemaps.
Cached map companies that use JPG tiles
Cached map solutions can produce an even larger white collar, as the illustration below illustrates.
This is actually a cached map support utilizing JPEG image format. As has been discussed in another post,
Office Ultimate 2007, JPEG is by far the best picture format for cached map companies that contain aerial photography to be used in a Web software. You can see in this example that the cached map services doesn't operate all that well in ArcGIS Explorer. The larger white boundary is from the empty cache tiles throughout the map. Since the JPEG picture format does not allow for transparency, you get a white collar. There is nothing you can do to get rid of this white collar in ArcGIS Explorer, ArcMap, or any of the Web ADFs or APIs. To mitigate this problem with JPEG solutions in ArcGIS Desktop or ArcGIS Explorer you have three options:
Use layer files to control the visibility of the map support Consist of the bordering data inside your map cache Provide a second dynamic map support for desktop clients Employing layer files to control the visibility of the map service
Using a layer file, you can use scale dependent rendering to make sure the layer only turns on when zoomed way in. To do this follow these steps.
Add the cached map services to ArcMap Zoom in on the data until you can start to see reasonable amounts of detail (that wouldn't otherwise be in ArcGIS On the web or Bing maps). Right-click on the layer and click Zoom to Nearest Cache Resolution. This ensures your layer visibility corresponds to your cache tile level. Open the properties for your layer and set the minimum scale to your current scale. Right-click the layer and click Save As Layer Package.
Now you can share the layer file with all of your desktop users. The white collar will still be visible, but only when zoomed way in. At this larger scale, your users will likely be more interested within your map support than the bordering data.
Including the encompassing knowledge in your map cache
The second option of adding surrounding knowledge to your map cache can also improve the usability of the services by your desktop clients. This could be done for your smaller scales of your map cache with little overall impact to the total size of your cache tiles. For more on map caching see the on the web help. This does mitigate the problem but essentially you have pushed the problem further away from your study area.
Providing a second dynamic map support for desktop clients
The third option is to use two companies: a cached map support for the Web applications, and a dynamic map service for the ArcMap and ArcGIS Explorer users. If you are working with imagery like that in this illustration, an picture support would be preferred to the dynamic map services. Since ArcMap and ArcGIS Explorer have local caching capabilities after the first time an area is drawn, a dynamic picture support would likely perform extremely well. To make this easily consumable by your desktop clients you could simply share a layer file pointing to the picture service for those users. You should also set the minimum scale in the layer as described above to control the number of dynamic requests and only show your basemap when appropriate.
Cached map companies that use PNG tiles
Cached map solutions that use PNG do not display a collar due to the fact PNG supports transparency. That is a good solution for StreetMap-type basemaps, which can use PNG 8 or 32 (you should never use PNG 24 due to IE 6 limitations). Under can be a cached streets basemap service that uses PNG32.
PNG is an acceptable choice in this example because it maintains crisp lines and text even though still keeping the file size low. If this map contained a lot of gradient fills and other shading affects,
Office 2007 Activation Key, JPEG with compression quality 90 would be a better choice. Utilizing JPEG would mean the service would not be very useful with other basemaps but it would give you the best performance and quality in a Web application.
Warning! Be really careful when utilizing PNG 32 to your basemap companies. As the number of colors increase, so does the file size. Making use of PNG 32 for aerial photography, by way of example, can result in tiles being approximately ten times larger than the same support cached employing JPEG. If the tiles are ten times larger, then the map will be ten times slower. Making use of an image format like JPEG 90 would give more consistently sized tiles for all scales, whereas PNG 32 would have much larger tiles at the tiny scales but smaller tiles at the large scales. The best approach is to build a test cache and validate that all scales have acceptable tile sizes.
Summary
With dynamic map support and picture companies you can easily clip the imagery to the extent of your info allowing you to blend multiple adjacent basemaps with your desktop applications like ArcMap or ArcGIS Explorer. You will still have the problem of getting the base maps to look similar in a single application but the published map templates should help in this place. With cached map providers that use JPEG tiles you should consider maintaining two solutions: the JPEG cache and a dynamic map or picture service. The JPEG cache would be used in web applications and the dynamic service would be used in desktop applications like ArcMap or ArcGIS Explorer. Cached map services that use PNG work quite nicely for integrating multiple adjacent solutions but should not be used as an "ultimate" solution as JPEG caches can be much more efficient for map providers with high color variation.
Contributed by Tom Brenneman of the ESRI Technical Sales team.