To be honest, PS’s inbuilt merge and stitch is pretty damn good - I use it on astrophotography outputs where I need to match subtly different processes between subframes of a mosaic. If there are flaws, they’re not ones my eyes can see.
Geospatialist is amazing! I'm waiting for more maps of Europe. I'm particularly interested in a map of the old Austro Hungarian empire because of my family heritage. I wish custom orders were accepted.
When I was a google intern in 2013 I downloaded the raw google maps satellite images for all of the United States. I stitched it together into one giant high resolution image. The plan was to get it printed big enough to cover an entire wall. That ended up being too expensive though and nothing ever happened.
A couple of decades ago I was toying with stitching too, tring to combine high-resolution topo maps to cover all California. That was when I learned that the Earth is not flat, after my attempt failed. ;)
The datasets you pick from can be a bit confusing unless you click the (!) icon next to the names to figure out what they are.
I have mostly used it for looking at old reconnaissance satellite images from the 70's and 80's. I posted some directions here and a image from a satellite.
Kind of related. I used similar data to produce an Augmented Reality version of the (almost) entire Hawaiian Island chain with both topography and bathymetry:
Looks nice! I noticed that at the bottom of the page there is an e-mail sign up box that says:
"Don't See Your Favorite Place? Know when we release new maps."
Now I know e-mail sign up forms usually come canned in a bit of javascript, but it sure seems like it would help if people signing up could also include a place they would like to see. I'm not in the market for this kind of thing but I was hoping they would have the San Francisco Bay Area on there. Santa Cruz and the Monterey Bay would be cool too. Definitely want the bathymetry on those ones. I thought the bathymetry was a nice touch.
It’s actually a custom form (not canned) and we had previously had an additional field for area of interest but it lowered the conversion rate of the form so we dropped it.
Getting emails is more important to our business than knowing where folks want to see. We also don’t want folks to have the expectation that we’ll make a map because they requested it. Each map takes a lot of work and in our experience requesters rarely become purchasers.
(Also, we see the page you submitted your email on, which is often a search query that was not successful, which tells us what you were looking for!)
It would be even more awesome if a terrain elevation map was milled into the wood before painting/printing! Definitely would buy, especially from Big Island or Kaua’i! :-)
I’ve seen it done the other way around - print out a base layer, and then stack with thin layers of foam board following the countour lines - I can’t remember where I saw it, I think maybe a friend’s hobby project - but they’d done this with an ordnance survey map (they’d actually glued a whole map to foam and had then cut out along the contours), and it looked amazingly cool.
I also recall being at a RAF base in the late 90’s and being amazed by a tool they had in their map and chart division - little blow-moulder that would make a sheet of relief terrain from a DEM - as I guess that was easier at the time than getting pilots to look at digital models.
I had an idea to sort of automate this process or even a user aided wizard as a product but never to round to the mvp. Still an ok idea I think as satellite imagery on wall is great talking point. It can be beautiful, dramatic, always changing so makes for sets of images showing changes etc
It seems like the last "Improving the color" step is what gives most of the atheistic effects (by comparing the second last picture and the final result on the top).
Unfortunately the explanation for that step is only a few sentences..
That step could certainly be its own post of greater length than this one.
For this particular map it involves separate curve adjustment layers for the water and land. We generally increase the steepness of the curve (increasing contrast) and then adjust individual color channels to get the color balance right. We also do some localized burning (darkening) in areas where pushing the curve resulted in some pixels getting too bright.
I’d love to put together a post with lots of pictures and details about how we do this. It is motivating knowing there is an audience for it.
For the lucky guys/gals from NZ, there are high quality cloud free arial images freely available from linz. In particular check out basemaps.linz.govt.nz/
The images are already blended so much of the work is done.
porphyra|4 years ago
The open source Enblend/Enfuse, which ships as part of the open source panorama stitching software Hugin, does it automatically and seamlessly.
http://enblend.sourceforge.net/
madaxe_again|4 years ago
4g|4 years ago
https://twitter.com/geo_spatialist There is a video detailing the process
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AkaCAv2TSk
yosito|4 years ago
mdpm|4 years ago
https://github.com/plant99/felicette
changoplatanero|4 years ago
mparr4|4 years ago
If Google Earth Were Designed For Your Wall: https://ramblemaps.com/if-google-earth-were-designed-for-wal...
Miiko|4 years ago
BurningFrog|4 years ago
jubjubbird|4 years ago
https://www.usgs.gov/centers/eros/science/earth-art
KindOne|4 years ago
https://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/
The datasets you pick from can be a bit confusing unless you click the (!) icon next to the names to figure out what they are.
I have mostly used it for looking at old reconnaissance satellite images from the 70's and 80's. I posted some directions here and a image from a satellite.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24006367
sci_prog|4 years ago
https://youtu.be/m0fB4wrvgeY
mdp2021|4 years ago
https://jsfiddle.net/3tuprz7n/
TaylorAlexander|4 years ago
rado|4 years ago
mparr4|4 years ago
Getting emails is more important to our business than knowing where folks want to see. We also don’t want folks to have the expectation that we’ll make a map because they requested it. Each map takes a lot of work and in our experience requesters rarely become purchasers.
(Also, we see the page you submitted your email on, which is often a search query that was not successful, which tells us what you were looking for!)
unknown|4 years ago
[deleted]
oleh|4 years ago
madaxe_again|4 years ago
I also recall being at a RAF base in the late 90’s and being amazed by a tool they had in their map and chart division - little blow-moulder that would make a sheet of relief terrain from a DEM - as I guess that was easier at the time than getting pilots to look at digital models.
darknavi|4 years ago
These look great. I love the insights on the tuning process and it's nice to know it isn't just a lazy cropping.
jareklupinski|4 years ago
benboughton1|4 years ago
sillycross|4 years ago
Unfortunately the explanation for that step is only a few sentences..
mparr4|4 years ago
For this particular map it involves separate curve adjustment layers for the water and land. We generally increase the steepness of the curve (increasing contrast) and then adjust individual color channels to get the color balance right. We also do some localized burning (darkening) in areas where pushing the curve resulted in some pixels getting too bright.
I’d love to put together a post with lots of pictures and details about how we do this. It is motivating knowing there is an audience for it.
pope_meat|4 years ago
cycomanic|4 years ago
The images are already blended so much of the work is done.
unknown|4 years ago
[deleted]
abainbridge|4 years ago
notreallyhere00|4 years ago