gdal2tiles misalignment

Question

I have a map image that I have reprojected from OSGB36 to googleMaps projection (EPSG:900913). When I run gdal2tiles on the reprojected map, the results are not alligned with the google maps images (its not just out by a little bit but by 10's of miles).

If I run it through MapTiler (from maptiler.org) it is aligned fine. MapTiler asks for an SRS which I dont specify when using gdal2tiles. So I'm thinking I've missied out a stage?

Also when I run gdalinfo on the warped file, the coords of the corners seem wrong. E.g. for the bottom-left corner the latitude is 51.143906, but it should be 50.955887 for google maps.

I'm usign gdal16 installed by OSGeo4W on Windows7 64-bit.

Warped file here.. https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B93lksnTC7_cNzIzZWQ0MDYtMTY5Yy00NjY0LThiMjktZjc2YzA3MmU5NjI4

gdalinfo on warped file...

C:\OSGeo4W\apps\gdal-16\bin>gdalinfo e:buckland_WARPED.tiff
Driver: GTiff/GeoTIFF
Files: e:buckland_WARPED.tiff
Size is 611, 419
Coordinate System is:
PROJCS["Google Maps Global Mercator",
    GEOGCS["WGS 84",
        DATUM["WGS_1984",
            SPHEROID["WGS 84",6378137,298.2572235630016,
                AUTHORITY["EPSG","7030"]],
            AUTHORITY["EPSG","6326"]],
        PRIMEM["Greenwich",0],
        UNIT["degree",0.0174532925199433],
        AUTHORITY["EPSG","4326"]],
    PROJECTION["Mercator_1SP"],
    PARAMETER["central_meridian",0],
    PARAMETER["scale_factor",1],
    PARAMETER["false_easting",0],
    PARAMETER["false_northing",0],
    UNIT["metre",1,
        AUTHORITY["EPSG","9001"]]]
Origin = (-474051.292871501410000,6617009.987366309400000)
Pixel Size = (8.392224865731517,-8.392224865731517)
Metadata:
  AREA_OR_POINT=Area
Image Structure Metadata:
  INTERLEAVE=PIXEL
Corner Coordinates:
Upper Left  ( -474051.293, 6617009.987) (  4d15'30.51"W, 51d 9'49.57"N)
Lower Left  ( -474051.293, 6613493.645) (  4d15'30.51"W, 51d 8'38.06"N)
Upper Right ( -468923.643, 6617009.987) (  4d12'44.69"W, 51d 9'49.57"N)
Lower Right ( -468923.643, 6613493.645) (  4d12'44.69"W, 51d 8'38.06"N)
Center      ( -471487.468, 6615251.816) (  4d14'7.60"W, 51d 9'13.82"N)
Band 1 Block=611x3 Type=Byte, ColorInterp=Red
  Mask Flags: PER_DATASET ALPHA
Band 2 Block=611x3 Type=Byte, ColorInterp=Green
  Mask Flags: PER_DATASET ALPHA
Band 3 Block=611x3 Type=Byte, ColorInterp=Blue
  Mask Flags: PER_DATASET ALPHA
Band 4 Block=611x3 Type=Byte, ColorInterp=Alpha

The sequence of commands I run are...

Georeference the OSGB PNG images...

gdal_translate -a_srs EPSG:27700 
-gcp 0 400 241538.5 119812 
-gcp 600 0 244713.5 121928.66666667 
-gcp 0 0 241538.5 121928.66666667 
-gcp 600 400 244713.5 11981
bucklands1.png bucklands1.tiff

Warp into googleMaps projection (EPSG:900913) ...

gdalwarp -s_srs EPSG:27700 -t_srs EPSG:900913 -of GTiff
bucklands1.tiff bucklands1_warped.tiff

Tile (make into googleMap 256x256 tiles) ...

gdal2tiles bucklands1_warped.tiff gmTiles

It works if I by-pass the gdalwarp stage and make google tiles directly from the OSGB36 images. But the image quality is poor as the interpolation is not so good.

Answer 1

It turns out that if you replace EPSG:900913 with either EPSG:3857 or EPSG:3785 in the gdal warping you get the google-map tiles correctly aligned. Apparently these codes are alternatives for the unofficial googleMaps EPSG:900913. Though there seems to be lots of confusion about which is the correct code - e.g. MapTiler doesnt recognise EPSG:3857.

Anyway this works...

gdalwarp -s_srs EPSG:27700 -t_srs EPSG:3857 -of GTiff
bucklands1.tiff bucklands1_warped.tiff

Answer 2

GDAL doesn't agree with you that the map is in OSGB (EPSG:27700) but thinks that it is in EPSG:900913 so I don't know what a reprojection and tiling to the same project will do.

If in doubt use -a_srs to specify the correct projection to gdal.