Some firms currently have digital camera capability. However, they do not currently use multiple cameras with multi-spectral filters. The result is data that is captured digitally, but is approximately equivalent to a digitized aerial photograph (although "color-shift" won't occur with digital cameras). A "picture", not multi-spectral data, is created from these systems.

GPSI digital aerial images, on the other hand, provide multi-spectral data that can be used in land use and land cover analysis. Color infra-red and true-color pictures can be created from the same data set by combining color bands. Color bands can be analyzed using indices like the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI).