Importing ACSII Grid into Earthlight is a two stage process.  In the first stage we have to translate the source data into GeoTIFFs. The second stage involves transforming the GeoTIFFs into Earthlight readable raster pyramids. Both stages are performed by StatMap Raster Loader.

Stage I – Translating ASCII Grid into GeoTIFFs

1. Open Raster Loader.
2. Click "Advanced tasks..." in the bottom-left corner of the interface
3. Select "Create shaded relief, aspect and slope map..."
   
4. Change the file filter format from GeoTIFF to ACSII Grid and navigate to the location where your ASC data is located.
   
5. Select all files that you want to process and click 'Open'.
6. Choose the directory where the output datasets should be created.
   

Stage II - Transforming heigh, aspect, slope and hillshade GeoTIFFs into SMPyramids

As a result of the stage I translation process you will get four files: Aspect, Slope, Height and Hillshade. In order to process them you will have to perform the steps 1 to 4 listed below for each of the images.

1. Open RasterLoader
2. Configure the source and destination fields accordingly
3. For Height, Aspect and Slope select any image format and check “Image contains values (not colours)”. Regardless of what format you have chosen these particular datasets will be created as TIFF pyramids. This is the desired behaviour. TIFF allows for much greater precision when representing values as colours.
4. For Hillshade please select Lossless PNG format. You will want the transparency feature of PNG images to overlay the Hillshade on top of other basemaps giving them an appearance of depth.

Configuring height data for viewing in Earthlight

As a result of the transformation process you have four raster pyramids that you should reference in Earthlight via From Existing Table tool. Before height data can be viewed in Earthlight you have to modify the layer properties of three of the four datasets to tell Earthlight that this particular layers should be treated differently from ordinary raster imagery. It is not necessary to modify the Hillshade layer.

Height – configuration

The first layer that we will modify is the height dataset. This is the most configuration intensive dataset from the 4 that we will cover here. In order to change its configuration please follow the steps below:

1. Go to Modify Layer tool, locate the aforementioned datasets and show its properties.
2. Switch to Raster tab and click [Select Raster Data Type]
3. Change the raster data type from the default Custom to Height and click Apply
   
   
   
4. Click the [Gradient…] button to show the Gradient Editor window
5. Click the Palette preview image to display Resource Picker. Here select the Heights palette and click [Apply] to go back to the Gradient Editor.
6. On the Gradient Editor window click the [Apply Palette] button.
   
   
   
7. You may want to amend the values in each band to make the Height dataset look better. Also set the top most colour button to a nice shade of blue as it will represent the water.
   
   
8. Once this is done, please click [Apply] to close the Gradient Editor.
9. Click [Apply] again to save the Layer Properties. Optionally, before you close the properties window, you can check the “Use smooth rescale” box to make the raster render nicer when zoomed in beyond native resolution.

Aspect – configuration

Just like with the height data you need to start by opening the layer via Modify Layer tool. Afterwards please follow these steps:

1. Go to Raster tab and click [Select Raster Data Type].
2. Change the raster data type from the default Custom to Aspect (rendered as vector field) and select a suitable representation for the vectors as well as define the length of the vector (radius) and the spacing between each vector (interval).
   
   
   
3. When you’re finished, click [Apply] to go back to Layer Properties window and [Apply] again to save the configuration.

When Inspected the aspect layer will return values representing the direction of the change in height. These values are counted clockwise from due north.

Slope – configuration

Again you need to open the Layer Properties via Modify Layer tool. Once you have those open please follow the steps below:

1. Go to Raster tab and click [Select Raster Data Type].
2. Change the raster data type from the default Custom to Slope and click Apply.
   
   
   
3. Click the [Gradient…] button to show the Gradient Editor window
4. Click the Palette preview image to display Resource Picker. Here, go to Sequential palettes folder, select the Greys9seq palette and click [Apply] to go back to the Gradient Editor.
5. On the Gradient Editor window click the [Apply Palette] and since there is no need to change anything here please click [Apply] to save the configuration.
   
   
   
6. Change the Opacity to 25 and click [Apply] to save the changes. Optionally, before you close the properties window, you can check the “Use smooth rescale” box to make the raster render nicer when zoomed in beyond native resolution.
   
   

Hillshade – configuration

Again you need to open the Layer Properties via Modify Layer tool. Go to Raster tab and check the “Use smooth rescale” box to make the raster render nicer when zoomed in beyond native resolution.