Using GDAL to cut a large GeoTIFF raster image to smaller files

Sometimes it may be necessary to cut up a large raster image into smaller tiles so that the dataset can be more manageable. GDAL's command line executable gdal_translate has a projwin option where a bounding window in geographical coordinates can be specified to extract a smaller subset from the input raster image into one or more smaller raster files.


The following steps show how this can be done.

1. Create a DOS batch file with commands of the following syntax.
   
   gdal_translate -projwin xlow yhigh xhigh ylow input.tif output.tif
   
   Note:
   replace xlow with the clipping box's low X geographical coordinate
   replace yhigh with the clipping box's high Y geographical coordinate
   replace xhigh with the clipping box's high X geographical coordinate
   replace ylow with the clipping box's low Y geographical coordinate
   
   
2. Run the clipping batch file.
   
   
   
   The larger image is separated into smaller tiles.