Creating large maps from ummm.... Maps.

utiler · 27 Feb 2012, 05:29

Hi guys, I'm fiddling with how best to extract optimum graphics from GE in greater sizes than what you can view on screen. I have recently required fairly high res imagery for viewing at 1:500 as an underlay to my proposed works yet bringing in GE data to SU your zoom extent is determined by how much detail you want to see....

I've seem some pretty neat hacks on the Digital Urban site: http://www.digitalurban.org/2007/10/tutorial-how-to-capture-google-maps-for.html

Particularly a4chitect's script for a GE grid generator:
http://a4chitect.webng.com/
however, I can't get it to work. Just the thing I needed though!!

Also a cool idea for creating large detailed Gmaps and GEarth images:
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1073912/google_maps_hack_how_to_save_large_maps/

Any thoughts on a better way?

srx · 27 Feb 2012, 07:07

The third one is great idea!...but I had 2 problems:
1 I think it doesn't work for satellite images...or does it?
2 Screen grab add on is not working in newer versions of FF. Is there an alternative?

My way was:
1 In G. Earth - Scale close, and don't change scale. Use only pan. Saving images with shortcut (CTRL ALT S, naming them with numbers), and panning from right to left and down to up. Its very fast and doesn't need to be accurate.
2 Drag all the images in Microsoft ICE, which is free, and that is all. If something is missing, add that part from GE and ICE again.

utiler · 27 Feb 2012, 10:28

I tried it earlier, srx and it worked after a little hang time.....

My workflow:

I zoomed into GMaps until you see the scale bar show 50m to about an inch on screen. This was enough detail for what I needed but I know my image was going to be huge as I needed about 12 kilometers of image!!
The point I zoomed to was approximately the centre of the final image knowing that when I changed the zoom extent it would grow around the centre.
I worked out that when I had that right and was ready to 'link to external' by cuttig and pasting into notepad (see metcafe video in the first post) and if I changed the default resolution from 450x350 to 'custom' and 1000x1000 the extent of my view now way about 2.25 kilometers both ways.... Now it was a simple calculation of how many times I wanted to multiply north south, east and west of my origin which gave me a overall resolution size to set the data pulled from GMaps.
Saved it as a HTML file, opened it and there it was!!!!! All I had to do then was do a screen grab of the view extent (again, explained in the video) and pasted it into GIMP.....

My 6000x12000 GMap image came out at 172MB and rather crisp!!!!
More than enough detail for what I needed for the job!

utiler · 27 Feb 2012, 10:32

Sorry, didn't answer one of your questions....

The Firefox plugin worked fine for me. Running the latest version of FF.

Now worries with sat imagery too.