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Author Topic: Exporting Orthomosaic/maps  (Read 4513 times)

Hurdleburdle

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Exporting Orthomosaic/maps
« on: July 07, 2016, 03:45:44 PM »
Hello folks!

I have recently started exporting some of my aerial imagery for people to use as maps.
At first everyone was happy, but the requests for more came pretty soon after.

As it is right now I have several people asking for a arrow pointing north on the map aswell as a scale bar of some sort. I dont seem to be able to find a feature for this in the program and I was wondering how you guys go about adding this sort of thing into your aerial images.
I could just draw them in quite roughly, but that method creates a whole new set of problems when I want to rotate my picture to best fit the paper i am printing it on.

Anyone got any ideas? Workarounds, fixes, third party software that still maintain the good resolution? Taking all bets!

Have a nice day!

stihl

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Re: Exporting Orthomosaic/maps
« Reply #1 on: July 07, 2016, 03:53:01 PM »
What you need is "GIS" software. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographic_information_system
Suggestions for it are: QGIS (open source), GlobalMapper (Big fan) or ArcGIS (not a fan)
Obviously there are other GIS packages out there. But most come at a hefty purchase cost or expensive annual charges.

QGIS and GM are both very good in what they do and whilest QGIS is free to use, GM costs a relative small amount. Both have their pro and cons but for map making I'd suggest QGIS. Also since it's open source and the documentation is thorough.

With these program you can make dedicated maps, the ones you speak of, with automatic legendas, North Arrows, scale bars etc etc etc.
Although I believe Photoscan is working on these things as well. You could try the latest Photoscan Pro version and see whether it has what you need. I believe they've so far incorperated a height and scale bar.

Mind you that the learning curve for these kinds of software is very steep. It is for a reason that there are uni/college studies just for this subject.
« Last Edit: July 07, 2016, 03:57:45 PM by stihl »

Hurdleburdle

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Re: Exporting Orthomosaic/maps
« Reply #2 on: July 07, 2016, 04:09:57 PM »
Thanks for the quick reply!

I've heard good things about QGIS and I think a free open source program would make most sense since this is such a small part of my work description.
What I dread though is loss of resolutionquality after importing my photos into another software just to touch them up with scale bars and north arrows. The customers I am making the maps for often ask for very large maps with high level of detail on wich they can draw and sketch and take some simpler measurements.
Maybe its not a problem! I'll give one of the programmes you recommended a shot and only time will tell if I manage to get something good out the other end!

By the way, I am running photoscan professional 1.2.4. I cant seem to find any scale bar incorperated.

Alexey Pasumansky

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Re: Exporting Orthomosaic/maps
« Reply #3 on: July 07, 2016, 04:11:38 PM »

Hello Hurdleburdle,
Quote
By the way, I am running photoscan professional 1.2.4. I cant seem to find any scale bar incorperated.
You can find those features of the Ortho view in the latest 1.2.5 release: http://www.agisoft.com/downloads/installer/
Best regards,
Alexey Pasumansky,
Agisoft LLC

Hurdleburdle

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Re: Exporting Orthomosaic/maps
« Reply #4 on: July 07, 2016, 04:17:11 PM »
Just realized that there probably was a changelog to read somewhere on the site. Downloading the newest version right now. =)

Side note: I checked for updates in photoscan about an hour ago and it told me I was up to date.

Thank you

stihl

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Re: Exporting Orthomosaic/maps
« Reply #5 on: July 07, 2016, 04:25:36 PM »
The beauty of working with GeoTIFF's is that they're a lossless file. Which means editig them in a GIS and adding things like scale bars, north arrows, annotations or anything else does not change the resolution (unless you want it to) and it will not reduce the quality if you export it as a GeoTIFF.
A GeoTIFF is a regular TIFF image bit with extra information attached to it so it's geo-referenced when loaded in a GIS or CAD software.