Comments on: Importing Google Earth Imagery Into A GIS

By: kral oyun

kral oyun — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 12:28:49 +0000

Thanks, Nick chance you could post a link to that spreadsheet? Unlike Google Earth Free/Plus, there should be norgument boutusing Google EarthPro imagery inthis manner.

By: oyunlar

oyunlar — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 14:07:51 +0000

With google earth plus??

“My company does have a licence to use google earth’s images in our work.”

By: Carlos

Carlos — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 17:41:53 +0000

My company does have a licence to use google earth’s images in our work.

By: Nick McW

Nick McW — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 15:52:46 +0000

Hi, here’s the spreadsheet as a Google Document:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pWkKqjyOK8PkuHvEJ4QXcRQ

To use it, you’ll need to export from Google Docs to your PC:
Google Docs > File > Export > .XLS

Improvements welcome of course……

By: Leszek Pawlowicz

Leszek Pawlowicz — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 17:16:32 +0000

Thanks, Nick. Any chance you could post a link to that spreadsheet? Unlike Google Earth Free/Plus, there should be no argument about using Google Earth Pro imagery in this manner.

By: Nick McW

Nick McW — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 17:05:59 +0000

Just tried GE Pro at last – it’s great, in that it saves images at up to 4800 pixels horizontally. The vertical image size depends on the window size and whether the sidebar view is on. In full screen mode, I get 3765 pixels vertically, but I guess it would go up to 4800 x 4800 pixels if I stretched GE over two monitors or had a particularly hi-res display. I now get a c. 18 megapixel image rather than a 1 MP image. Looked at another way, a saved image covers almost 5 km x 4 km at 1 metre resolution.

However, I found the same as Dan, that the Shape2Earth extension for MapWindow only correctly references the basic 1000 pixel image. So I made a simple spreadsheet to “muck around with the pixel values” (I like the phrase!) and calculate the values needed for a worldfile for the 4800 pixel image. It’s rather clunky, requiring the user to copy the North, West, East and South extents of the bounding rectangle from the S2E dialogue and paste them into Excel, then to copy data out of Excel and paste it into a .jpgw text file. However, it does seem to work and is probably a bit quicker and potentially more accurate than georegistering in ArcGIS.

By: Dan

Dan — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 18:31:12 +0000

I did try this, and Nick (above) nailed it. The GE Pro 4800 pixel image does not match the referencing of the Shape2Earth B&W one. This could probably be corrected by mucking with the pixel values, but I couldn’t be bothered. I went with the method described here instead: http://forums.esri.com/Thread.asp?c=93&f=1740&t=193459&mc=3#575260.

By: Nick McW

Nick McW — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 18:50:20 +0000

This is really neat, thanks for posting. Have you tried it with GE Pro? I’m just asking since GE Pro saves images with a lot more resolution (4800 pixels rather than 1000 pixels – see http://earth.google.com/product_comparison.html). So, I wonder if the b&w image that Shape2Earth makes (step 5) will have the same resolution as the colour image saved by GE itself (step 6)? If the resolutions are different, then the pixel size values in the JGW will be wrong (although the corner coords will still be correct, I expect).

Also – any idea why Shape2Earth saves B&W, not colour?!?! Seems odd.

By: imran elahi

imran elahi — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 04:27:51 +0000

how can i use google earth images in gis for chitral, when ever i try i came across with some complications.

By: Thomas

Thomas — Wed, 28 May 2008 21:06:32 +0000

Touratech QV 4 can also grab images from GE to a GIS map.

30 days demo version:

http://www.ttqv.com/main.php?content=21&download=13