What is a .ECW file?
ECW (Enhanced Compression Wavelet) compresses massive aerial and satellite imagery for GIS.
- Did you know
- ECW squeezes enormous aerial photos down while keeping them quick to view.
- ECW was created by Earth Resource Mapping, whose technology passed through ERDAS and Intergraph to Hexagon’s geospatial division.
- ECW relies on wavelet-transform compression to reach far higher ratios than TIFF or JPEG while staying quick to pan and zoom.
- What Analyser reads
- Inspect geospatial and GIS files without a map: TopoJSON, OpenStreetMap XML, Esri Shapefile siblings (SHP/SHX/DBF/PRJ/CPG), world files, GML, NMEA GPS logs, IGC flight logs, MapInfo TAB/MIF, GDAL VRT, PMTiles, DTED terrain, Esri ASCII grids and SRTM .hgt - surfacing CRS/EPSG, feature/record counts, bounding boxes and elevation ranges. GRIB/NetCDF/GeoPackage/MBTiles/MrSID/ECW identified.
- Depth of analysis
- .ECW is an identification-grade format: Analyser recognises it from its bytes and decodes the header metadata it carries, rather than opening it in a full viewer. Formats that do get a full viewer are marked "Full" on the formats page.
- Open a .ECW file
- Drag a .ECW file onto the Analyser home page (or tap to pick one). It is identified entirely in your browser - nothing is uploaded, there is no account, and it works offline once installed.