There are multiple ways to open and display supported file types in ENVI. See the following for details:

Open Files

To open files:

  • From the menu bar, select File > Open and browse for a file from the Open dialog. Use Ctrl+click or Shift+ click if you want to select multiple files.
  • From the toolbar, click the Open button and browse for a file. Use Ctrl+click or Shift+ click when you want to select multiple files.
  • From the menu bar, select File > Open As and choose a sensor or file type from the options listed. Opening files through this menu option ensures the correct metadata and ancillary files are read along with the respective image files. See Also provides links to additional topics related to this option.
  • Files that you opened recently are available under File > Open Recent for quicker access in the current or future ENVI sessions.
  • Windows users can drag and drop a file from the Windows File Manager into the view. If multiple views are open, you can drag and drop files to a desired view in the display or to the view icon in the Layer Manager.

To open sample data files, select File > Open World Data from the menu bar and select from the following:

  • OpenStreetMap vectors
  • Shapefiles of world airports, coastlines, countries, geographic lines, lakes, minor islands, populated places, ports, rivers, roads, and states/provinces. Data courtesy of Natural Earth. Free vector and raster map data are available at naturalearthdata.com. Select the All Vectors menu option to open all of these vector layers at once.
  • Shaded Relief: The 1:10 Natural Earth I dataset in JPEG2000 format; it includes a shaded relief raster layer with water bodies.
  • Elevation (GMTED2010): Global Multi-resolution Terrain Elevation Data 2010.

Displaying and Removing Files

ENVI uses information from the image metadata to determine how to automatically load the image. The following items assume the Auto Display Method For Multispectral Files preference is set to True Color.

  • If the image has wavelength information and bands are available for visible red, green, and blue wavelengths, they will be assigned red, green, and blue. ENVI defines true color as the smallest difference in the wavelength values closest to red as 0.64 µm, green as 0.55 µm, and blue as 0.47 µm.
  • If the image has wavelengths, but they are not in the visible region, or the image does not have wavelength information, the following rules apply:
  • If the image has three bands, ENVI assumes that they are red, green, and blue (in that order), and assigns band 1 to red, band 2 to green, and band 3 to blue.
  • If the image has four bands, ENVI assumes that they are blue, green, red, and near infrared (in that order), and assigns band 3 to red, band 2 to green, and band 1 to blue.
  • If the image has more than four bands, ENVI loads band 1 into a grayscale display.
  • If the image is in NITF format and has default bands set, default bands take precedence. See Open NITF and MIE4NITF Files for details.
  • If the image has an associated header file with default bands set, those take precedence upon loading the image.

Additional display information:

  • To dynamically change the band selection from what was automatically loaded, see Change Band Selection.

  • Georeferenced files automatically display with a North arrow if the Show North Arrow preference is set. North arrows are not displayed on geographic lookup table (GLT)-based images.

  • To display data in multiple views, see Views.

To remove files:

  • To remove an image from the view, right-click on the filename in the Layer Manager and select Remove. The file remains open in the Data Manager but is no longer displayed in the view.

  • To close all files, select File > Close All Files from the menu bar. The files are removed from the Data Manager and Layer Manager.

See Also

Open NITF and MIE4NITF Files, Open Scientific Data Formats, Open Suomi NPP VIIRS Data, LAS Format LiDAR Files