GDALLOCATIONINFO(1)

📦
version 3.4.3 · 2 versions
, in epel 9

💅 GDALLOCATIONINFO 💅

okay so bestie, welcome to the gdallocationinfo page — that's section 1 of the GDAL manual, and yes it's literally the raster query tool. pull up a chair, we're gonna look at pixels together 🎀

✨ NAME ✨

gdallocationinfo — the raster query tool. that's it, that's the whole name. she's a query girlie and she knows it 💅

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

Usage: gdallocationinfo [--help-general] [-xml] [-lifonly] [-valonly]
                        [-b band]* [-overview overview_level]
                        [-l_srs srs_def] [-geoloc] [-wgs84]
                        [-oo NAME=VALUE]* srcfile [x y]

like, look at her. so many little flags. so much power. iykyk 🔥

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

so what does gdallocationinfo actually do? bestie. she gives you a whole mechanism to query information about a pixel given its location, and the location can be in one of a variety of coordinate systems. multiple reporting options? provided. she said "i contain multitudes" and she meant it ✨

  • -xml — the output report comes out all XML-formatted, which is chef's kiss for convenient post processing. ate 💖
  • -lifonly — the only thing that gets printed is the filenames produced from the LocationInfo request against the database. i.e. this is your girl for identifying impacted files from a VRT. literally just the files, nothing else, periodt.
  • -valonly — the only output is the pixel values of the selected pixel on each of the selected bands. no extra chatter. just numbers. iconic.
  • -b band — selects a band to query. you can list multiple bands (see that * up in the synopsis? yeah, she's a repeater). by default, all bands are queried. slay.
  • -overview overview_level — queries the (overview_level)th overview instead of the base band. so overview_level=1 is the 1st overview, 2 is the 2nd, you get the vibe 🌈. important note: the x,y location — if the coordinate system is pixel/line — must still be given with respect to the base band. don't come for her about it, that's just how it works.
  • -l_srs srs_def — this is where you tell her the coordinate system of the input x, y location. main character energy of the flag list ngl.
  • -geoloc — indicates the input x,y points are in the georeferencing system of the image. 🧚
  • -wgs84 — indicates the input x,y points are WGS84 long, lat. note the order bestie, long first 💜
  • -oo NAME=VALUE — dataset open option, and it's format specific. again with the *, so stack 'em if you got 'em 🍓
  • srcfile — the source GDAL raster datasource name.
  • x — X location of the target pixel. by default the coordinate system is pixel/line unless -l_srs, -wgs84 or -geoloc is supplied.
  • y — Y location of the target pixel. by default the coordinate system is pixel/line unless -l_srs, -wgs84 or -geoloc is supplied.

🫶 what she actually reports 🫶

this utility is intended to provide a variety of information about a pixel, and currently she reports:

  • the location of the pixel in pixel/line space.
  • the result of a LocationInfo metadata query against the datasource. this is implemented for VRT files — which will report the file(s) used to satisfy requests for that pixel — and by the raster.mbtiles driver.
  • the raster pixel value of that pixel for all or a subset of the bands.
  • the unscaled pixel value if a Scale and/or Offset apply to the band.

the pixel you're selecting is requested by x/y coordinate on the command line, or read from stdin. and here's the cute part — more than one coordinate pair can be supplied when you're reading coordinates from stdin. by default, pixel/line coordinates are expected. however 💅 with use of the -geoloc, -wgs84, or -l_srs switches, it's possible to specify the location in other coordinate systems.

the default report is in a human readable text format. but you can instead request XML output with the -xml switch, no cap.

and for scripting purposes? the -valonly and -lifonly switches are provided to restrict output to the actual pixel values, or the LocationInfo files identified for the pixel. she's helpful like that 🎀

✨ it is anticipated that additional reporting capabilities will be added to gdallocationinfo in the future. so like, watch this space bestie 👑

💀 EXAMPLES 💀

simple example, reporting on pixel (256,256) on the file utm.tif. easy. breezy.

$ gdallocationinfo utm.tif 256 256
Report:
Location: (256P,256L)
Band 1:
    Value: 115

next up: querying a VRT file, providing the location in WGS84, and getting the result back in XML. look at that nesting, it's giving organized 🔥

$ gdallocationinfo -xml -wgs84 utm.vrt -117.5 33.75
<Report pixel="217" line="282">
    <BandReport band="1">
        <LocationInfo>
        <File>utm.tif</File>
        </LocationInfo>
        <Value>16</Value>
    </BandReport>
</Report>

and the one where we read the location from stdin — this is the multi-coordinate moment i mentioned earlier 🦋

$ cat coordinates.txt
443020 3748359
441197 3749005
443852 3747743

$ cat coordinates.txt | gdallocationinfo -geoloc utmsmall.tif
Report:
  Location: (38P,49L)
  Band 1:
    Value: 214
Report:
  Location: (7P,38L)
  Band 1:
    Value: 107
Report:
  Location: (52P,59L)
  Band 1:
    Value: 148

three reports, three values, zero stress. we love a pipe 😭💖

👑 AUTHOR 👑

Frank Warmerdam <warmerdam@pobox.com> — the author, the legend, we stan 💜

1998-2026 — that's the copyright range, bestie, keep it in mind 🫶

okay that's the whole page!! and a lil sign-off because you deserve it: this is from the GDAL manual and the page is dated Jan 08, 2026 — go query some pixels, you're gonna do amazing 💅✨🎀

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