Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Property Projects & Construction Inserting drone photos in Google Earth: FYI

I wanted to measure the area and perimeter of my refurbished pond, but the imagery of my property dates back to 2019 in Google Earth. So, my friend came over with his drone and took some nice overhead photos, like this one:



There is a way to import this image to Earth, scale it, and still utilize the measurement functions.

Actually, I had to take an additional intermediate step and overlay the drone photo with the aerial image in Bing maps. Bing imagery is from 2022, still before my pond construction, but contains a current landmark (the rectangular platform in the above pic) that makes it easy to orient and scale the latest drone image.

Once I had that combined image created, I went to Google Earth > Add > Image Overlay. This opens a dialog where you can insert the image, make it transparent, and then use the green handles to size, rotate, and pan it into the correct position on the underlying Earth imagery. In this case, I used the T-shaped dock as the landmark to orient and scale the overlay image correctly:



Once that is done, the measurement tools can be used as usual. Here, I created a polygon around the new pond, and Earth correctly computed area and perimeter.

Good to know! Thanks for posting that.

I am using Google Earth Pro, which you must install on your computer. It is free of cost. Google Earth the webpage is not as featured and does not include the image overlay function (I think.)

I am rather annoyed with the outdated imagery from Google. At my old house, the aerial imagery seemed to refresh every year or two. My current home is 4+ years. I sent a couple requests to Google for updates.

I was checking some dimensions in my yard on Earth Pro and noticed they have a new image up for our house. The date is 1/6/23. They must have to stitch together discrete satellite passes to generate their images. I think it is strange that they are almost four years apart on some stitches? Also, that a lower population area like Kansas would be more up to date.

Did the government start building an "Area 52" facility near your house?

Ha, no Area 52 that I know of!

Just 1/2 mile to the west, the image date is 5/23. Weird.

You can also use "draftlogic area calculator", and "draftlogic distance calcuator" online. I compared both to surveys when we had our house built and they are very accurate.