Many Leaf clients use Planet Labs’ imagery via Leaf’s unified API. Planet constantly upgrades their imagery products and the way this imagery is made available to their clients and, as a result of some recent changes, we have some exciting changes to announce:
Planet is deprecating PSOrthoTile, with an indicated end-of-life date of June 20, 2023. As part of this deprecation, all Planet clients are advised to migrate as soon as possible to Planet’s PSScene. We are here to help you make this transition as smooth as possible and will be in contact with all current clients that use PSOrthoTile in the coming weeks.
PSScene, also known as PlanetScope, is available in two geometry types: Basic and Ortho. Basic Scene is not orthorectified or corrected for terrain distortions. Ortho Scene is orthorectified with additional post processing. By default, both Basic and Ortho products are provided as GeoTIFF images.
PSScene is currently available via Leaf as an 8-Band asset type, offering you more precise and diverse crop monitoring images. The 8 bands include Coastal Blue, Blue, Green I, Green, Yellow, Red, Red Edge, and Near-infrared.
As part of the change to PSScene, we have also made it possible to request multiple asset types when creating a new field. Please note that you cannot mix asset types from the two different planet products (PSScene and PSOrthoTile).
As part of the 8-Band imagery now available via Leaf, we’ve added a few exciting new asset types as well:
- Ortho_analytic_8b_sr - PlanetScope atmospherically corrected surface reflectance
- Ortho_udm2 - Usable data mask (Cloud 2.0)
- Ortho_analytic_8b - Radiometrically-calibrated analytic image stored as 16-bit scaled radiance
- Ortho_analytic_8b_xml - Radiometrically-calibrated analytic image metadata
So what does this mean for you?
1: You’ll have more imagery bands available, which leads to more precise and diverse crop monitoring images for your customers.
2: You are able to request multiple asset types in the same field, giving your customers more options.
3: You have more asset types available, enabling you to create new and novel value-added products and services for your customers.
4: Because PSOrthoTile will be discontinued by Planet from June 20, we recommend you start the necessary preparations to move to PSScene if you currently use PSOrthoTile; we will send you a detailed migration plan, and assist you where needed. Historical records will continue to be available in Leaf, however you will need to migrate to PSScene for future orders.
If you have any questions about what this means for you or how you can start benefiting from the new asset types available in PSScene’s 8-band asset, please don’t hesitate to contact myself or Jace Klein - we look forward to helping you make this transition as smooth as possible!
