Fixing Color Infrared Display on Files Exported from Agisoft Metashape and Imported Into ArcGIS Pro

Description

This issue is a result of BUG-000182031: "Imagery exported from Agisoft Metashape that is autogeoreferenced or exported from ArcGIS Pro does not display Color Infrared as expected."

Color infrared (CIR) is a combination of image bands that displays the near infrared (NIR) band as red, the red band as green, and the green band as blue. The primary use of color infrared rendering is for vegetation detection and analysis.

Color Infrared requires imagery with a red, green, blue, and near infrared band to display correctly. 

Typically, a CIR image displays as shown in the image below, with vegetation showing as red and other features displaying as blue/green:

Cause

In this specific case, the bug occurred with 'None' as the raster transform setting used to export an orthomosaic from Agisoft Metashape.

This may occur when data from multiple sensors are combined. Exporting orthoimagery with the None setting can introduce extra or inaccurate bands when imagery is merged.

Workaround

When experiencing issues displaying Color Infrared after importing orthoimagery from Agisoft Metashape, alter the raster transform setting used when exporting an orthomosaic from Agisoft Metashape. The workaround is to change the orthoimagery export setting to Index Value in Agisoft Metashape.

The following orthomosaic export options are available:

• None - the exported orthomosaic contains the same number of bands corresponding to the source data, any transformation formulas are ignored.
• Index Value - allows the option to save the output bands defined by the transformation formulas in the Raster Calculator dialog.
• Index Colors - save the orthomosaic in RGB colors according to the Palette settings in the Raster Calculator dialog. The exported raster image looks identical to the orthomosaic display in the Ortho view mode, providing that Enabled option is checked on in the Transform section of the Raster Calculator dialog.