8 replies to this topic

[Greg]

I have recently come across a small app which is theoretically supposed to merge google sat / aerial photos.
You just give it the co-ord's of the area you want to cover, and the scale, and blam, it downloads and merges all the images into one file.

The application didnt work, but it got me thinking.. there must be an application out there that will work for this?

I have always just used print screen, paste into photoshop, crop, drop into illustrator or AutoCAD, and tile each image from there. It's a long and tedious task if you are covering a large area.

Does anyone have a solution?

I think OziExplorer has an add-on which will work with google sattellite, but I'm looking for something a little more on the FREE side of the fence.

[Charles Syrett]

It's a long and tedious task if you are covering a large area.

Tedious!?! Ever try creating an old-fashioned air photo mosaic, with physical photos? You need multiple espressos just to keep your head upright!
Don't know of any apps.....but all of this is copyright violation, no? Even when you do a screencap, Google's watermarks come along for the ride

Charles Syrett
Map Graphics
http://www.mapgraphics.com

[Greg]

copyright violation

I just use the mosaics for reference, when working on an area.. it's nice to have a plot of the area on my desk.

I have done photo mosaics, but with software like PCI Geomatica the task becomes much less time consuming!
I cannot even imagine tiling each photo manually!

Painful.

[Dennis McClendon]

I think such a program or applet would be a piece of cake for the right kind of programmer. Look, for example, at how Flashearth.com pulls in tiles from the various servers (though Google has been removed in the last year, probably at their request).

I'm told that Manifold includes the ability to suck in Google aerials tiles.

Since both Google and Live.com serve tiles to fill the entire browser window, I stretch it all the way across two side-by-side monitors and screen capture a couple thousand pixels at a time. An alternative that I keep meaning to explore: apparently the browser iCab can be AppleScripted to open a browser window larger than your monitor:

tell application "iCab"
Activate
set bounds of window 1 to {50, 50, 6000, 4000}
end tell

[Hans van der Maarel]

I'm told that Manifold includes the ability to suck in Google aerials tiles.

That is correct (though not officially supported by Manifold and certainly not condoned by Google). Apparently Virtual Earth is better in that regards.

[Aris]

There use to be a program called TTQV, which could save, georeference and merge the photos just with one click. But I don’t know if it can still do it. I haven’t seen it around for a while.

Aris

[wick]

If you're using ArcGIS you can pull in a number of different data sources (including imagery) into your map document. Check out these pages from their ArcGIS online resource center.
http://resources.esr...n...&tab=Layers
http://resources.esr....cfm?fa=content

[amtait]

You are probably looking for a low or no cost solution but you can pay Google some money (I think it's about $400) and get the Google Earth Pro license, it lets you export JPG images, at whatever view resolution you set, at 4800 x 3214 pixels. This is big enough in our experience for many purposes, especially for reference.

You get some other fun features like recording flights. We find the $400 is worth it for the convenience.

__Alex

[Greg]

We find the $400 is worth it for the convenience.

__Alex

Thanks Alex! I had no idea the solution was so simple.
I ordered Pro this morning...
It could take a while, since our software orders have to go through head office, but I will let you know if it works out!