I changed the names of the 20 layers in my raster stack (Rstack) and then write the newly named stack to file but when I read the file back into R the names are not preserved so if I want to use the file I have to re-stack the rasters each time... Here is my code:
Rstack <- Rstack[[name]] #changing names of layers to match model filenames
writeRaster(Rstack, filename="Rstack.tif", options="INTERLEAVE=BAND", overwrite=TRUE)
Rstack <- raster("Rstack.tif") #read in the stack
But when I try to use the "read-in" stack I get an error that the names do not match the model order names - so I then have to restack and rename if I want to use the stack which takes a long time. Is there something I am missing in writeRaster() that would preserve the names after I change them?
You are correct in saying that writeRaster does not preserve layer names (except with using the "grd" format).
library(raster)
s <- stack(system.file("external/rlogo.grd", package="raster")) [[1:2]]
names(s) <- c("a", "b")
writeRaster(s, "test.tif", overwrite=TRUE)
b <- brick("test.tif")
names(b)
#[1] "test.1" "test.2"
However, it takes little effort to set them again
names(b) <- c("a", "b")
names(b)
#[1] "a" "b"
Or you can save as "grd"
writeRaster(s, "test.grd", overwrite=TRUE)
b <- brick("test.grd")
names(b)
#[1] "a" "b"
To save names in a tif file, you can instead use terra (the replacement of the raster package)
library(terra)
x <- rast(system.file("ex/logo.tif", package="terra"))[[1:2]]
names(x) <- c("a", "b")
r <- writeRaster(x, "test.tif", overwrite=TRUE)
names(r)
#[1] "a" "b"