---
title: "Higher resolution images in SEPAL?"
url: "https://openforis.support/questions/2078/higher-resolution-images-in-sepal"
tags: ["sepal"]
status: "answered"
score: 0
answer_count: 3
asked: "2018-12-20T10:52:44"
last_activity: "2018-12-21T09:36:36"
source: "Open Foris Support - Q&A Forum"
license: "Copyright Open Foris, 2026. Some rights reserved under creative commons license."
---

# Higher resolution images in SEPAL?

Asked by SPearce on 2018-12-20

Hello,

I've just started using SEPAL to look at some satellite images over time of forest areas in the Sahel. So far the resolution on the resulting files is very coarse and I wondered if anyone knew how to improve this? The file sizes are around 2MB and I would like them to be more like 200MB if poss.

Thanks!

Sam


## Answer (score 0, by lecrabe on 2018-12-20)

Link: https://openforis.support/questions/2078/higher-resolution-images-in-sepal/2079

Hi Sam,
Thanks for your question, even though it is formulated strangely.
Could you be more precise about which images you are looking at? Are you creating mosaics ?
There are a lot of functionalities in SEPAL and it is difficult to solve your issue without more details
Please explain better
Thanks
Remi


## Answer (score 0, by SPearce on 2018-12-20)

Link: https://openforis.support/questions/2078/higher-resolution-images-in-sepal/2080

Hi Remi,

Good to hear from you. Sorry if my question was unclear - I'm fairly new to this topic. I'm trying to look at small areas of community forest in Burkina Faso, and try to see if there is any difference in tree cover over time. So far I've been creating mosaics to do this.

I have been advised to use data from Sentinel rather than Landsat, as this will give me higher res images. However, when I have downloaded the sentinel images from SEPAL they come out very coarse,  and not useable for analyses of small areas.

Can you help with this? Is there a setting on SEPAL where I can increase the resolution of the images?

Thanks,

Sam


## Answer (score 0, by lecrabe on 2018-12-21)

Link: https://openforis.support/questions/2078/higher-resolution-images-in-sepal/2081

Hi Sam,

Thanks for the clarification.

Sentinel 2 is at 10 m spatial resolution for the visible and NIR bands, and this is what you will get, you can't increase the resolution of the satellite imagery itself. Landsat is ~30m, so the level of details you can catch with Sentinel 2 is indeed higher (you can see objects 9 times smaller). But both levels of resolution are quite adapted for tree cover mapping and forest change detection when you want to process and analyze data automatically and there is a lot of literature on that subject. Those sources of data are free and public and this also explains why they are so widely used. Higher resolution imagery is available for earth observation but not for free, at that stage.

In any case, from your message I understand you want to analyze the change visually rather than through a machine learning process and in this case you could look at other tools provided in the OpenForis suite.

In particular, Collect Earth is a free and open-source image viewing and interpretation tool, suitable for
projects requiring information about land cover and/or land use, where  users can analyze high and very high resolution satellite imagery.

You could use the newly launched online tool (still under development, available here: collect.earth) or the desktop version (fully operational, available here: http://www.openforis.org/tools/collect-earth.html).

Hope it helps.
Remi