GeoRaster, a Python package which hugely simplifies the process of working with geographic rasters, is now available as a stable package on conda-forge and PyPI with a GPLv3 licence. It provides high-level wrapping of the GDAL library, removing a lot of the complexity traditionally associated with importing GDAL-compatible datasets into Python. I actively maintain and develop the package, which also includes significant contributions from Amaury Dehecq.

If you already use Anaconda or Miniconda then you can easily try the package out on the command line:

conda create -n georaster_test
source activate georaster_test
conda install -c conda-forge python=3.5 ipython matplotlib georaster 

Then in an iPython shell:

import georaster
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
im = georaster.SingleBandRaster('myimage.tif')
plt.figure()
plt.imshow(im.r)

There’s already plenty of documentation available to help you get started, and I’ll be adding to this over the coming months. I’ve also got some extra functionality planned - keep an eye on the GitHub wiki for more details.