Is there a way to download a region from Google maps to a PDF or JPEG file? I would like to download as many zoom levels as possible so I can zoom in and out without being online. I need this for practical reasons when I will be traveling to remote China and I need detailed maps of certain provinces/counties.I will be browsing these maps on an iPod touch.
I only need the street information, so only the "map" part of gmaps.
GoogleMaps is now offering 'off-line' mode, so you can do this without any GIS or programming at all. The trick is you'll need Android Ice Cream Sandwich or Jelly Bean: A new Google Maps app for smartphone and tablets
The offline maps feature for Android is also no longer available. Instead we’ve created a new way for you to access maps offline by simply entering “OK Maps” into the search box when viewing the area you want for later. Finally, My Maps functionality is not supported in this release but will return to future versions of the app. People who want to create powerful custom maps can still do so with Maps Engine Lite on desktop.
It would probably be easiest in Google Earth, where you can directly save the extents to a JPEG. If you have a Pro Account, you can set the output resolution and also save to PDF. Source.
You might also be interested in this which explains caching various places so that Google Earth can be used in offline mode. You can store up to 2GB of imagery this way, which is quite substantial.
Edit: Per your edit, it seems that GE is not for what you are looking. A manual way to solve your question would be to "print" the current view, which opens a new window. From there you can save the page as Web Page, complete (in Firefox), which saves a folder containing the image. Inside said folder is an image aptly named staticmap.png.
You don't need to change the URL if you pan/zoom around, so you can save the page multiple times, thereby giving you your desired maps.
Assuming you save the files to a folder, this Python script will move all the images in the subfolders to the main folder specified at run time.
from Tkinter import Tk
from tkFileDialog import askdirectory
import os, shutil
Tk().withdraw()
folder = askdirectory()
for i,dirname in enumerate([x[0] for x in os.walk(folder) if x[0] != folder]):
old = "{0}\\staticmap.png".format(dirname)
name, ext = os.path.splitext(old)
new = "{0}{1}{2}".format(name, i, ext)
os.rename(old, new)
shutil.move(new, folder)
There is possibility to download the Google Maps by free software like Terra Incognita (link). It can be georeferenced and tiled raster format (GeoTIFF or JPG).
Instruction (link):
1. Select area which is interesting for you ◦ you can use menu 'selection' to switch to selection mode ◦ or you can hold Ctrl key to create selection various ways how to create selection is described later 2. Select map source from menu ◦ this can be done also before selecting area 3. Zoom up to resolution which you want to have used in saved map ◦ you can select resolution in menu 'zoom levels' list ◦ or you can click to map to zoom up until your detail level is reached 4. Go to menu 'file' and select 'save map' ◦ you don't need to wait until map is saved, save operation will continue on background ◦ if you want to save various maps for the same area you must continue on step 2. 5. Go to menu 'selection' and select 'clear selection' ◦ this will remove selection and remove dimmed layer
Try GoogleMapsRipper from http://www.blueblackworks.com
“GoogleMapsRipper is mapping software that allows you to download both satellite imagery, topographic and road maps from Google Maps, Bing Maps and OpenStreet Maps. “
Also try Google Maps Downloader from http://www.bigeastsolutions.com/index.html You can download Google satellite maps
