Getting raster image as array in Python with ArcGIS Desktop?

http://help.arcgis.com/en/arcgisdesktop/10.0/help/index.html#/RasterToNumPyArray/000v0000012z000000/

ArcGIS 10 has the ability to write and read numPy arrays.

I don't think this is possible with ArcGIS <= 9.3.1

I use the open source GDAL API for tasks such as this.

fmark already answered the question, but here is some example OSGEO Python code that I wrote to read a raster (tif) into a NumPy array, reclass the data and then write it out to a new tif file. You can read and write any gdal supported format.

"""
Example of raster reclassification using OpenSource Geo Python

"""
import numpy, sys
from osgeo import gdal
from osgeo.gdalconst import *


# register all of the GDAL drivers
gdal.AllRegister()

# open the image
inDs = gdal.Open("c:/workshop/examples/raster_reclass/data/cropland_40.tif")
if inDs is None:
  print 'Could not open image file'
  sys.exit(1)

# read in the crop data and get info about it
band1 = inDs.GetRasterBand(1)
rows = inDs.RasterYSize
cols = inDs.RasterXSize

cropData = band1.ReadAsArray(0,0,cols,rows)

listAg = [1,5,6,22,23,24,41,42,28,37]
listNotAg = [111,195,141,181,121,122,190,62]

# create the output image
driver = inDs.GetDriver()
#print driver
outDs = driver.Create("c:/workshop/examples/raster_reclass/output/reclass_40.tif", cols, rows, 1, GDT_Int32)
if outDs is None:
  print 'Could not create reclass_40.tif'
  sys.exit(1)

outBand = outDs.GetRasterBand(1)
outData = numpy.zeros((rows,cols), numpy.int16)


for i in range(0, rows):
  for j in range(0, cols):

    if cropData[i,j] in listAg:
        outData[i,j] = 100
    elif cropData[i,j] in listNotAg:
        outData[i,j] = -100
    else:
        outData[i,j] = 0


# write the data
outBand.WriteArray(outData, 0, 0)

# flush data to disk, set the NoData value and calculate stats
outBand.FlushCache()
outBand.SetNoDataValue(-99)

# georeference the image and set the projection
outDs.SetGeoTransform(inDs.GetGeoTransform())
outDs.SetProjection(inDs.GetProjection())

del outData