Across the Public Lab community, people are making their own maps using aerial photos (by balloon mapping, kite mapping, and the like) with the MapKnitter website - which helps people "stitch" or "knit" images into a combined map, using an existing satellite map base layer as a reference.
(this post was cross-posted on the Public Lab blog)
The core of MapKnitter's interface, the Leaflet.DistortableImage library, is seeing some new life as members of our coding community have started to dig in and make improvements! (This was made possible in part with support from NASA's AREN project) Its main goal of letting people distort aerial images to fit onto a map is being refined, debugged, and expanded.
Above, a new feature you can see in the menu is a full resolution download -- with no server-side processing at all. This was made possible through a lot of work by John905 and rexagod.
Try it out in the demo: https://publiclab.github.io/Leaflet.DistortableImage/examples/
This takes the original full resolution image and distorts it in your browser (you may need to allow popups), and then downloads.
For example, the lead image generated this full-res distorted image: full.png (2304x1536 pixels)
See the preview below.
This may mean that for some smaller MapKnitter maps, you won't need to run a full export, which can take a while. This code should publish on MapKnitter within the next few days. Down the road, we're looking at more ways to refine the export process to make it even easier to make your own maps using balloon, kite, pole, or drone mapping.
