Warp Image - Georeferencing a Scanned Map - MapInfo_Pro_Advanced - 2023

Some rasters, such as scanned historical maps, do not contain real-world coordinate information and cannot be displayed in MapInfo Pro in the context of other located data. To display such rasters in their appropriate geographic location, they must first be georeferenced. MapInfo Pro Advanced allows you to georeference rasters using the Warp Image tool.

Georeferencing is the process of mapping each pixel of the raster to real-world coordinates. It can be achieved by manually defining a linear transformation between the pixel and the world coordinates. Mostly, it is achieved by defining a set of ground control points (GCPs) and then analytically determining an appropriate transformation from the GCPs. A ground control point (GCP) is a coordinate pair that links a pixel location in the raster with a real-world coordinate.

The Warp Image tool provides many transformation types – from first-order (Linear) through to third-order (Polynomial), which introduces non-linear warping into the georeferenced raster. To complete the georeferencing process, you must also supply a coordinate system for the georeferenced raster.

The Warp Image tool will perform this transformation and output a new, located raster in one of a variety of supported formats, like MRR and GeoTIFF. This raster can then be consumed in other processing tools or other software packages. Alternatively, the tool can output a MapInfo Virtual Raster (.mvr), which performs the image warping on the fly when it is displayed or used in MapInfo Pro.