6 ms·

Turning satellite imagery into wall art

140 points by mparr4 5y ago

jareklupinski 5y ago
so cool; seeing the evolution of the piece and thought put into the process, from sentinel source image to wall-worthy art, adds a lot
TaylorAlexander 5y ago
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.
- rado 5y ago
  They have it: https://ramblemaps.com/san-francisco-bay-area-map https://ramblemaps.com/san-francisco-bay-area-map
  - TaylorAlexander 5y ago
    Oh cool! I guess I scrolled too fast or something. Thanks.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- mparr4 5y ago
  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!)
sillycross 5y ago
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..
- pope_meat 5y ago
  Bump the contrast and saturation and you'll be pretty close I reckon.
  - sillycross 5y ago
    As someone who don't know how to use Photoshop, it's interesting to learn (as you said) that, most the difference is only contrast and saturation. The final image just looked so much better than the second last one for me.
    - jasonwatkinspdx 5y ago
      Photoshop gives you a lot of tools to tweak beyond simple contrast and saturation sliders. The curves UI has been in it in some form since very early versions in the 90s. It lets you dial in a transfer function for each color channel (or luminance) as a bezier curve. The UI shows you a histogram so you can easily understand what's going on with the actual numerical values, avoid clipping, etc. There's plenty of smart tools in the more recent versions too. Another simple but subtle advantage is you can do these corrections in a perceptual or near perceptual color space like CIELAB, rather than simple RGB. Particularly when you're pushing saturation this gives more natural looking outcomes.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- mparr4 5y ago
  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.
darknavi 5y ago
I'd love to request an area (USVI, St. John specifically). These look great. I love the insights on the tuning process and it's nice to know it isn't just a lazy cropping.
mdpm 5y ago
see also felicette. https://github.com/plant99/felicette https://github.com/plant99/felicette
jubjubbird 5y ago
If you just want some nice (public domain) art to hang on your wall: https://www.usgs.gov/centers/eros/science/earth-art https://www.usgs.gov/centers/eros/science/earth-art
- KindOne 5y ago
  Here is a direct link if you want to search stuff on a map. https://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/ 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24006367
porphyra 5y ago
Blending the colors in Photoshop manually seems very tedious. 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/ http://enblend.sourceforge.net/
- madaxe_again 5y ago
  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.
sci_prog 5y ago
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: https://youtu.be/m0fB4wrvgeY https://youtu.be/m0fB4wrvgeY
benboughton1 5y ago
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
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
changoplatanero 5y ago
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.
- BurningFrog 5y ago
  Too expensive for you or for Google?
  - changoplatanero 5y ago
    For me!
- Miiko 5y ago
  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. ;)
- mparr4 5y ago
  I wrote another post that is both an homage to Google Earth and an illustration of how these maps differ: If Google Earth Were Designed For Your Wall: https://ramblemaps.com/if-google-earth-were-designed-for-wall https://ramblemaps.com/if-google-earth-were-designed-for-wal...
4g 5y ago
I stumbled across a similar project that uses digital elevation maps and lidar data to add 3d effect to old maps, the results are quite interesting, https://twitter.com/geo_spatialist https://twitter.com/geo_spatialist There is a video detailing the process https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AkaCAv2TSk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AkaCAv2TSk
- yosito 5y ago
  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.
notreallyhere00 5y ago
Love it but they don’t have any of my fav areas and while I’ll submit a request - anyone know any similar websites that I can look at?
abainbridge 5y ago
Nice. Is anyone doing the same but with more focus on Europe? Lake Geneva or Lake Garda with the surrounding mountains would make a nice scene.
oleh 5y ago
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! :-)
- madaxe_again 5y ago
  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.
mdp2021 5y ago
Reminder that also the amazing "Tilt45" imagery exists: https://jsfiddle.net/3tuprz7n/ https://jsfiddle.net/3tuprz7n/
cycomanic 5y ago
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.

140 points by mparr4 5y ago

so cool; seeing the evolution of the piece and thought put into the process, from sentinel source image to wall-worthy art, adds a lot

TaylorAlexander 5y ago

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.

rado 5y ago
They have it: https://ramblemaps.com/san-francisco-bay-area-map https://ramblemaps.com/san-francisco-bay-area-map
- TaylorAlexander 5y ago
  Oh cool! I guess I scrolled too fast or something. Thanks.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mparr4 5y ago
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!)

sillycross 5y ago

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..

pope_meat 5y ago
Bump the contrast and saturation and you'll be pretty close I reckon.
- sillycross 5y ago
  As someone who don't know how to use Photoshop, it's interesting to learn (as you said) that, most the difference is only contrast and saturation. The final image just looked so much better than the second last one for me.
  - jasonwatkinspdx 5y ago
    Photoshop gives you a lot of tools to tweak beyond simple contrast and saturation sliders. The curves UI has been in it in some form since very early versions in the 90s. It lets you dial in a transfer function for each color channel (or luminance) as a bezier curve. The UI shows you a histogram so you can easily understand what's going on with the actual numerical values, avoid clipping, etc. There's plenty of smart tools in the more recent versions too. Another simple but subtle advantage is you can do these corrections in a perceptual or near perceptual color space like CIELAB, rather than simple RGB. Particularly when you're pushing saturation this gives more natural looking outcomes.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
mparr4 5y ago
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.

darknavi 5y ago

I'd love to request an area (USVI, St. John specifically). These look great. I love the insights on the tuning process and it's nice to know it isn't just a lazy cropping.

mdpm 5y ago

see also felicette. https://github.com/plant99/felicette https://github.com/plant99/felicette

jubjubbird 5y ago

If you just want some nice (public domain) art to hang on your wall: https://www.usgs.gov/centers/eros/science/earth-art https://www.usgs.gov/centers/eros/science/earth-art

KindOne 5y ago
Here is a direct link if you want to search stuff on a map. https://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/ 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24006367

porphyra 5y ago

Blending the colors in Photoshop manually seems very tedious. 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/ http://enblend.sourceforge.net/

madaxe_again 5y ago
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.

sci_prog 5y ago

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: https://youtu.be/m0fB4wrvgeY https://youtu.be/m0fB4wrvgeY

benboughton1 5y ago

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

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

changoplatanero 5y ago

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.

BurningFrog 5y ago
Too expensive for you or for Google?
- changoplatanero 5y ago
  For me!
Miiko 5y ago
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. ;)
mparr4 5y ago
I wrote another post that is both an homage to Google Earth and an illustration of how these maps differ: If Google Earth Were Designed For Your Wall: https://ramblemaps.com/if-google-earth-were-designed-for-wall https://ramblemaps.com/if-google-earth-were-designed-for-wal...

4g 5y ago

I stumbled across a similar project that uses digital elevation maps and lidar data to add 3d effect to old maps, the results are quite interesting, https://twitter.com/geo_spatialist https://twitter.com/geo_spatialist There is a video detailing the process https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AkaCAv2TSk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AkaCAv2TSk

yosito 5y ago
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.

notreallyhere00 5y ago

Love it but they don’t have any of my fav areas and while I’ll submit a request - anyone know any similar websites that I can look at?

abainbridge 5y ago

Nice. Is anyone doing the same but with more focus on Europe? Lake Geneva or Lake Garda with the surrounding mountains would make a nice scene.

oleh 5y ago

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! :-)

madaxe_again 5y ago
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.

mdp2021 5y ago

Reminder that also the amazing "Tilt45" imagery exists: https://jsfiddle.net/3tuprz7n/ https://jsfiddle.net/3tuprz7n/

cycomanic 5y ago

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.