TerraLook supports a number of raster and vector file formats for display. The File->Open action will check to see if the selected file is a shapefile (ends in .shp) and if so attempt to load it as a new vector layer. If not, it will attempt to open it as a GDAL supported file format (listed below), and display it as a raster layer. If this fails, the optional OGR library is tried to see if it is another supported vector format.

Note that the File->Import action only operates on GDAL supported raster files. Vector files cannot be "imported".

TerraLook uses GDAL (Geospatial Data Abstraction Library) for accessing raster files, so any file formats supported by GDAL should be supported by TerraLook. The original, and authoritative list of GDAL Supported Formats should be checked for a current format list, and details of each format.

Long Format Name	Code	Georeferencing
Arc/Info Binary Grid	AIG	Yes
CEOS (Spot for instance)	CEOS	No
First Generation USGS DOQ	DOQ1	Yes
New Labelled USGS DOQ	DOQ2	Yes
Military Elevation Data	DTED	Yes
Eosat Fast Format	EFF	No
ESRI .hdr Labelled	EHdr	Yes
Arc/Info Binary Grid	GIO	Yes
TIFF / GeoTIFF	GTiff	Yes
Erdas Imagine .hfa	HFA	No
Atlantis HKV Blob	HKV	Yes
JPEG JFIF	JPEG	Yes
Atlantis MFF	MFF	Yes
PCI .aux Labelled	PAux	No
Portable Network Graphics	PNG	No
USGS SDTS DEM	SDTS	Yes
SAR CEOS	SAR_CEOS	Yes

TerraLook includes builtin support for reading and writing ESRI Shapefiles. This is a widely used file format for simple vector features with attributes, including support for points, polylines and polygonal areas (potentially with holes).

Additional formats can be read via an optional linkage to the OGR vector library, providing support for formats such as Mapinfo, SDTS, S-57, Tiger, and NTF.