Need help for getting a high resolution satellite image for digitising features in ArcGIS?

Question

I want to digitise some places of my city in ArcGIS. I found ArcGIS 'World Imagery' layer which I can use it as a basemap for digitisation. But the problem is it works only while the internet is connected. Is there anyway to save the cache of the layer at a particular zoom level so that I can work on it offline even after I restart the computer. If no, please tell me any other way- may be with google or bing imagery, I need to digitise important features of the city. So i require resolution at house level.

Answer 1

Check out the Shape2Earth Globe.

more infrmation available at:

http://shape2earthengine.com/shape2earth/Shape2Earth_Globe.html

Hope that helps,

meryloo

Answer 2

Earth explorer is a great option for non-production kinda stuff. It's easy to use and fairly logical. There are better websites for batch downloads, but this website distributes most of the governments publicly avialibable remote sensing files

http://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/

Answer 3

There are ways to link ArcMap with Google Earth. I have not done it in years, but XTools Pro allowed you to link ArcMap with Google Maps. Google Maps is showing high resolution imagery for your city, that may be an alternative; depending on what you are needing to do.

Answer 4

Try NAIP Imagery, http://datagateway.nrcs.usda.gov/ It is some of the most accurate imagery and is freely available and downloadable. USGS is another source as well. http://viewer.nationalmap.gov/viewer/ If you are not in the US http://landsat.usgs.gov/Landsat_Search_and_Download.php if you have $$ http://www.geoeye.com/CorpSite/how-to-buy/ You can use JOSM openstreetmap editor, it serves a satellite image layer, or even potlatch.

Answer 5

I found this method to save Google Maps image with less mosaicing :

1. Install 'Mozilla Firefox' and add 'Screengrab' extension ( used for saving a complete frame in webpage in jpeg/png format)

   Note:

   For new versions of firefox, install 'Screengrab fixed' extension.

2. Open Google Maps, zoom to the required resolution of the selected area, remove the labels and others if not necessary and copy the embedded iframe code and paste it in body tag in a html file.
3. Using notepad, modify the width and height to the extent of area you want and save the html file.

   Caution:

   Firefox may crash and also screengrab will not able to save the frame if the width and height is too much. I did it with 10000px*10000 px.

4. Now open the saved html file in firefox and after completion of the image tiles loading in the image frame, save the complete page frame as jpeg using Screengrab.

5. Georeferencing
   

   • Open the jpeg in ArcGIS or anyother georeferencing software and open the same area in google maps.
   • Now zoom to the desired level for selecting common points. After selecting a common point, right click at the exact point in google maps and select 'what's here'.
   • Now it will show the latlon values of the point. Use these values for Georeferencing.
   • Minimum of four points is needed for Georeferencing.
   • Google Maps has Spherical or Web Mercator Projection.