These are some of the most popular raster data formats used for geographical information today:

• ECW (Enhanced Compressed Wavelet): ECW is a compressed image format typically for aerial and satellite imagery. This GIS file type is known for its high compression ratios while still maintaining quality contrast in images.
• Esri grid: A file format for adding attribute data to a raster file. Esri grid files are available as integer and floating point grids.
• GeoTIFF (Geographic Tagged Image File Format): An industry image standard file for GIS and satellite remote sensing applications. Almost all GIS and image processing software packages have GeoTIFF compatibility.
• JPEG 2000: An open source compressed raster format that allows both lossy and lossless compression. JPEG 2000 typically have a JP2 file extension. JPEG 2000 can achieve a compression ratio of 20:1, which is similar to the MrSID format.
• MrSID (Multi-Resolution Seamless Image Database): A compressed wavelet format that allows for both lossy and lossless compression. LizardTech's proprietary MrSID format is commonly used for orthoimages in need of compression. MrSID images have an extension of SID and are accompanied with a world file with the file extension SDW.