Satellite Imagery as PNG
Open BetaSatellite PNG is a satellite snapshot of your area in lossless PNG. Unlike the other exports, this does not draw an OSM vector map but real imagery from orbit: osm2cdr.ru downloads XYZ tiles from free providers (ESRI World Imagery up to ~1 m/pixel, or Sentinel-2 Cloudless at 10 m/pixel), stitches them and crops to the bounding box. PNG preserves every pixel exactly, which matters for scientific work and overlays. The file is a plain image with no georeferencing — if you need coordinates, choose satellite GeoTIFF. Coverage is bounded (up to 400 tiles per request).
Key Features
About Satellite PNG Format
PNG is a lossless raster format: every pixel is stored exactly as it arrived, with no compression artifacts. It is supported by every program and browser, and it can do transparency.
This export gives real imagery from orbit, not a drawn map. PNG is chosen when the image goes into further processing: measurements on the imagery, before-and-after comparison, layer overlays, a scientific illustration — anywhere you cannot allow compression to invent pixels.
How it is assembled: tiles from free providers (ESRI World Imagery and Sentinel-2 Cloudless with 10 meters per pixel) are stitched and cropped to your frame, and the zoom is chosen automatically to fit the limit of 400 tiles per request. The file is an ordinary picture with no coordinates: for the image to land on the map in a GIS by itself, you need the GeoTIFF option.
What Program Opens Satellite PNG Files
The following programs and applications can open, edit, and work with Satellite Imagery as PNG (.png) files exported from OSM2CDR:
Format specifications
- Open standard
- 2D only
- Lossless (no quality loss)
- No attributes
- Output: 1 file
- A lossless PNG stitched from ESRI/Sentinel-2 XYZ tiles, every pixel preserved exactly; no georeferencing — use the satellite GeoTIFF for coordinates. 400-tile cap.
Who Uses Satellite PNG Maps
How to Export Satellite PNG
How to Open After Export
- Viewing — any browser or image viewer, everything understands PNG.
- GIMP, Photoshop, Affinity Photo — processing without loss of quality: cropping, layers, measurements, export to the format you need.
- QGIS — a PNG can be georeferenced by hand through the Georeferencer module; if you would rather not bother, download Satellite GeoTIFF right away.
- Comparison with the vector map — download the same area as SVG or PDF and overlay them: a convenient way to check what is already mapped in OSM and what is not.
- Attribution — when publishing, credit the source of the imagery: ESRI and its suppliers, or Sentinel-2 Cloudless by EOX (CC BY 4.0).
Popular maps in Satellite PNG
Get Satellite Imagery as PNG map exports
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