MapKnitter
mapknitter

Support Public Lab Today! For the last twelve years, Public Lab has hosted Mapknitter.org so that people everywhere can make maps from their aerial photos. Unfortunately, current circumstances have led us to scale back and take certain services offline. MapKnitter.org will go offline August 15, 2022. The MapKnitter platform runs on a combination of volunteer and paid labor by the many people that build, maintain, and operate it via Public Lab. This is an effective combination thanks to the culture of Public Lab's Coding Community. Public Lab's web ecosystem, including PublicLab.org, MapKnitter.org, SpectralWorkbench.org, Infragram.org and associated projects, takes 20 hours a week from three Code Coordinators and our sysadmin. While cost effective, it is not free. Web hosting and server costs for MapKnitter are approximately $1000 per month. We are doing our best to sustain programming and support for our community, and we need your help. Thank you for being part of our community. We can't wait to be back online with you. Support Public Lab by making a donation today. *Part of the [Grassroots Mapping Curriculum](/wiki/mapping-curriculum) series.* MapKnitter is a free and open source tool for combining aerial images into a map, or composite image. Informally, we call this "stitching a map" and it's useful if you have many images of overlapping or identical areas, and getting either a web map or a printable map from your photos. MapKnitter can make maps from any image source, but it was designed for making maps with aerial photos from balloons and kites. Start using [MapKnitter.org](http://MapKnitter.org) or read on for more documentation! ## Exporting Once you're map is complete, you can download it as a single image in JPG and other formats. Read about the new Cloud exporter here: https://publiclab.org/wiki/mapknitter-cloud-exporter Learn more about [exporting maps in MapKnitter here](/mapknitter-exporting). ## Activities [activities:mapknitter] **** ## Questions [questions:mapknitter] **** ### Advanced * [Decisions with distortions](https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=S8uUM3p3_Bk#!) - Learn about the design process of stitching maps when images are highly distorted or include tall buildings. This tutorial is in Photoshop, but the techniques are applicable to MapKnitter as well. * [Infrared multispectral compositing](/wiki/mapknitter-multispectral) (no video, in progress) Learn how to combine an infrared dataset with your map to assess photosynthesis. (Also: learn [how to collect infrared imagery](/tool/near-infrared-camera)) ...


Author Comment Last activity Moderation
gonzoearth "Excellent. And I see that it works fairly well in iOS. " | Read more » over 10 years ago
warren "Looking great! If you add basic image dragging, you have most of the base functions done! I agree with Dave too, the transparency, outline mode, an..." | Read more » over 10 years ago
stoft "Clever. Not sure where you intend to take this experiment, but grab-n-drag the photo and having a semi-transparent mode (to see the map below the p..." | Read more » over 10 years ago
mathew "Looking good! nice to see all the little to dos documented along the way. great update! " | Read more » over 10 years ago
warren "Hi, Justin - looks great, thanks! I like the attention to detail and appreciate your working to get this right. One thought was that it's a little ..." | Read more » over 10 years ago
mathew "real neat to see! the image placement is close, except for that rotation problem. Definitely a big help to prepping a map! " | Read more » over 10 years ago
warren "Finding "magnetic declination" looks difficult to solve for now, so I've left it aside. Haha, true enough and this rough placement is already exci..." | Read more » over 10 years ago
warren "Looking good! Did you want to share via the testing server? Hopefully we'll get you set up soon but since you should only be using client-side code..." | Read more » over 10 years ago
patcoyle "NIce progress Justin. Thanks. " | Read more » over 10 years ago
mathew "Woo!!! rotatable text!!! Wooo!! I'm doing a happy dance in Portland! I'm glad you found a manageable way to implement rotational text. I don't t..." | Read more » over 10 years ago
warren "Hmm, trying again now: https://mapknitter.org/map/view/pottskaptest2/ It worked this time! Not sure what your last error was but it seems converti..." | Read more » over 10 years ago
warren "Yes. And soon as possible, we should begin using Leaflet for both image instantiation (based on anish's code) as well as xy/latlon conversions. Tha..." | Read more » over 10 years ago
mathew "On anemometers-- learn the Beaufort scale and watch the tops of trees-- since wind speed on the ground is less important than high up, Beaufort is ..." | Read more » over 10 years ago
mathew "I haven't seen anyone doing orthorectification with Open CV. MicMac is the only toolchain I know of it include 3D construction and orthorectificat..." | Read more » over 10 years ago
xvidun "Just to clarify, the four points x1,x2,x3,x4 are the four points of the "aerial image" that is overlay, specifically in cartagen it is the pixel co..." | Read more » over 10 years ago
anishshah101 "I had tested it on iOS 7.1.1. The webkit prefix is already there in the code. It still isn't working as that on a desktop browser. " | Read more » over 10 years ago
ajawitz "Also a brief search into OpenCV and 3D Aerial Photography yielded some promising results- This post on Stack Exchange almost seems like it came fro..." | Read more » over 10 years ago
cfastie "That's good to know that structure from motion works with wide angle photos. It sounds like you have to correct the distortion first. It doesn't se..." | Read more » over 10 years ago
ajawitz "Now I can't wait to get back in the air because I really want to compare the Bimp+Gimp combo to DigiKam. I have a slight suspicion that DigiKam po..." | Read more » over 10 years ago
Philgib ""The lens is very wide, so stitching maps from multiple low altitude photos produces poor results" Sorry for not being clear enough. Gimp + Bimp ..." | Read more » over 10 years ago
cfastie "That is an excellent Mobius photo. The Mobius is so lightweight that there is no reason not to include one on every flight. The lens is very wide, ..." | Read more » over 10 years ago
Philgib "Sorry two more things for you : - make sure you use pulleys and proper pulleys string on your picavet. Brooxes.com is the place. My picavet / pulle..." | Read more » over 10 years ago
Philgib "That is the "black island" from Tintin album cover. My multicopter is hand made with super cheap material, it is therefore vibrating a lot. From a ..." | Read more » over 10 years ago
Philgib "Links to waterproof case (the only case I am aware of ) Video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sy8ONQOhha8 Purchase : https://joovuu.com/gb/home/1..." | Read more » over 10 years ago