Technical Explainer
Satellite image outputs and their applications
Colour is just how our eyes interpret light — and satellites can sense far more than we can see. By assigning invisible wavelengths like infrared to visible colours, remote-sensing professionals turn raw bands into images that reveal vegetation health, water, urban change, and more.
Here are the most common satellite image outputs and what each is used for.
The basis
From spectral bands to readable images
Multispectral sensors collect data across visible and invisible bands. Combining those bands in different ways — or calculating indices from them — produces outputs tuned to specific questions, from plant health to flood mapping.
Sensors record bands beyond human vision, then map them to colour.
Reference
Outputs and their applications
Each output combines bands — or derives an index from them — to answer a specific kind of question.
Pick the right output for your project
Outputs are one of the choices you make when ordering — see how they fit into the wider workflow in the ultimate satellite imagery guide, then start exploring imagery to choose your output in EXPLORE.