Once upon a time, LizardTech, the owners of the Multiresolution Seamless Image Database (MRSID) compressed image technology often used with satellite and aerial imagery, had a free stand-alone viewer available on their website. Using this viewer, you could open full MRSID images, and export re-sampled subsets as TIFF images, GeoTiffs if the MRSID file was georeferenced or came with a world file. But LizardTech dropped the link for that stand-alone viewer download from their website some years ago, and now they only offer a browser plug-in that only allows viewing of MRSID images, and command-line utilities that convert the entire MRSID file into what could be an enormous TIFF image file.
But the Internet being what it is, it’s difficult to eliminate a file completely, and there are a couple of locations that still have the stand-alone MRSID viewer available for download. The Library Of Congress has many downloadable maps in MRSID format, and they offer a download link to both the viewer install program and the PDF manual (there’s also a viewer and manual available for Macintosh OS 9.x). The Spatial Analysis Laboratory of the University Of Arkansas at Monticello also has the install program, along with a downloadable PDF lesson on how to subset a georeference MRSID file and export it as a GeoTiff.
You can also use the free TatukGIS Viewer (Windows only) to open, view, and export MRSID files as well.
Other posts in the GIS Tools series
- Converting E00 Vector Data To Shapefiles - A Free And Fairly Painless Approach
- Simplifying Line And Polygon Shapefiles
- Converting US Census TIGER Data Into Shapefiles For Free
- Converting Shapefiles and ArcINFO Coverages To AutoCAD DXF Format
- Converting Point Shapefiles To Text/Spreadsheet Format
- Converting Text/Spreadsheet Files To Point Shapefile Format
- An Easier Way To Convert Shapefiles to Text/Spreadsheet Format
- Converting Text/Spreadsheet Data To Line/Area Shapefiles
- Full Resolution Raster Map Combining, Subsetting And Export With The TatukGIS Viewer
- Viewing Vector Data In The TatukGIS Viewer
- The LizardTech Stand-Alone MRSID Viewer
- Converting Raster Area Images Into Polygon Shapefiles
- SAGA GIS 2.0 Released
- ILWIS GIS Is Now Open Source
- AVHRR Analysis Add-On For ILWIS
- Advanced Image Mosaicking With Regeemy
- A Free GIS Viewer (And Cheap GIS Editor) For Windows Mobile Systems
- Updates For MapWindow And Saga GIS Programs
- Updates For Two Open-Source GIS Programs
- Putting Together A Basic Linux GIS Workstation
- Free Online Courses For Open Source GIS
- GIS-Oriented Linux Distributions
- Tabular Terrain Elevation Data
- Quick Data Gridding With QuikGrid
- A Good Introduction To Geospatial Data Analysis
- Converting Digital Elevation Models To Shapefile/DXF Contours
- Fixing "Broken" Shapefiles
- A Simple DBF Editor
- Two Online Vector GIS/GPS/KML Conversion Utilities
- Another Shapefile Repair Tool
- Quantum GIS (qGIS) Version 0.10 Released
- Online Raster Map Georeferencing/Registration With Map Rectifier
- Using The Demo Version Of Global Mapper As A Raster/Vector Data Viewer
- New Stable Release Of MapWindow GIS
- The Big List Of Free Metadata Software I
- The Big List Of Free Metadata Software II
- GIS On A Stick
The Express View Browser Plug-in (formerly the MrSID browser plug-in) at LizardTech’s website does allow you to view and export both MrSID and JPEG 2000 files to GeoTIFF or TIFF with world files. Additionally, it has some measurement tools as well. It works with Internet Explorer and Firefox for Windows and Safari on OS X.
http://www.lizardtech.com/download/dl_download.php?detail=geo_expressview_plugin&platform=win
So it does; looks like some of those features was added in the recent version 4.0 release (dated 4/2007) that I haven’t seen. The stand-alone might still be good for those who don’t want to work through the browser, or if the “limited-resolution TIFF” export is a serious limitation. Thanks for the update!