Import satellite imagery

Satellite imagery is downloaded on demand from a web map-tile service and saved as a georeferenced GeoTIFF (.tif). g-Space downloads the tiles that cover your project area, stitches them into a single image and stores it so it can be displayed as a cultural background under your data. This topic covers the download wizard; the result is imported as an image only.

Purpose

Fetch basemap / satellite imagery over a chosen rectangular area and store it as a georeferenced raster. The image is intended as a cultural background for maps and base-map views - it does not carry any seismic, well or horizon data. This is an import-only workflow: there is no matching export back to a tile service.

Launching the download

Open the Satellite imagery downloader wizard. The dialog opens with the project coordinate reference system already applied, so the area you enter is interpreted in project coordinates.

[image: placeholder_The_Satellite_imagery_downloader_wizard_.png]

Step-by-step

Choose the area. Either pick a saved outline from the Polygon list, or leave it on User defined and type the bounding box into Min X, Max X, Min Y and Max Y. Coordinates are shown in metres (or feet, following the active measurement system).
Set the Zoom level (1-19; 15 by default). A higher zoom gives finer detail but downloads many more tiles.
Check the Description panel: it reports the CRS, the estimated number of Tiles and the resulting Image size in pixels for the current area and zoom.
Press Download. The wizard converts the area to geographic coordinates (WGS84), downloads each map tile with a progress bar, and stitches them into one image.
When the download finishes the georeferenced .tif is written to the project folder and can be added as a background image.

[image: placeholder_The_Progress_group_box_showing_the_tile_.png]

Notes

The output is a 3-band RGB GeoTIFF georeferenced in WGS84 (EPSG:4326), saved into the project directory with an automatic name such as satellite_z15_YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS.tif.
Imagery is fetched from an online map-tile service, so an internet connection is required. Tiles are 256 x 256 pixels and are combined into a single stitched raster.
Very large requests take a long time; the wizard warns before downloading if the area is unusually big (thousands of tiles), and extremely large images are rejected. Reduce the area or lower the zoom level if needed.
The download runs in the background and can be stopped with Cancel while it is in progress.