Converting GeoTIFF to simple XYZ elevation file

Question

Is there a tool to convert a GeoTIFF file to a simple ascii (XYZ) elevation file?

Answer 1

You should be able to do this using the gdal_translate command line tool.

http://www.gdal.org/gdal_translate.html

To convert to Arc/Info ASCII Grid:

gdal_translate -of AAIGrid elevation.tif elevation.asc

To convert to ASCII Gridded XYZ:

gdal_translate -of XYZ elevation.tif elevation.xyz

Binary executables of the GDAL tools are available here: http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/wiki/DownloadingGdalBinaries

Answer 2

In GRASS GIS, the command r.out.xyz does this conversion job. Instead of first importing the GeoTIFF file, you can simply register it beforehand with r.external in the GRASS GIS location (i.e. basically the needed project directory).