convert a png with known bounds from plate carree to mercator with gdal

Question

I have a png image that shows the region defined by the geo bounds UpperLat, LeftLon, BottomLat, RightLon (in degrees & -ve for West Lon and South Lat) in Plate Carree EPSG:4326. I want to convert it to Mercator EPSG:3857 using GDAL.

When I tried doing it this way:

Step1) gdal_translate -of Gtiff -a_srs EPSG:4326 pc_map_piece.png pc_map_piece.tiff
Step2) gdalwarp -s_srs EPSG:4326 -t_srs EPSG:3857 pc_map_piece.tiff mer_map_piece.tiff

I got this error:

ERROR 1: Unable to compute a transformation between pixel/line and georeferenced coordinates for pc_map_piece.tiff. There is no affine transformation and no GCPs.

Then I tried doing it this way:

Step1) gdal_translate -of Gtiff -a_ullr UpperLat LeftLon BottomLat RightLon -a_srs EPSG:4326 pc_map_piece.png pc_map_piece.tiff
Step2) gdalwarp -s_srs EPSG:4326 -t_srs EPSG:3857 pc_map_piece.tiff mer_map_piece.tiff

I didn't get the above error but the output image is not converted to mercator projection, I simply got the same image upside down as output.

Any ideas to get around this problem and convert the image to Mercator? Thanks.

Answer 1

Problem solved. Changing the order to LeftLon UpperLat RightLon BottomLat in my second approach gdal_translate did it for me!!