Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Produce a Photo 'Placard' in Google Earth

The idea is to produce a Placemark that has a small photo as an icon. When clicked it opens a full sized version of the image. The photo appears above the ground tethered to it by a line making it look like a placard.

Screen Shot from Stefan's original Kom Firin Post, the first example I saw of placards.
I think the weird green color is shading added by Google to make this part of the Nile delta look green at altitude. It works a mile up but from down on the ground it looks very odd.

Before we start you should find an image to use and produce a smaller version of it. This can either be a cropped image, a reduction in pixel size or a completely new small image like a company icon.

Lets dive in:

  • Click the Yellow pin icon on the top of the 3D screen to produce a placemark.
  • A yellow box appears in the main screen, drag it to where you want the placemark to sit.
  • In the new placemark dialog box select the 'Altitude' tab and give the placemark an appropriate altitude above the ground and tick the 'Extend to ground' box. The extend functionality adds the handle to the placard.
  • Click the yellow pin icon top right of the dialogue box, the 'Icon' dialogue will open. Click 'Add Custom Icon' button bottom left and locate your small image. Click OK
  • Back in the main dialogue, click the description tab and add the text:
<img src="">
  • Add your large image name and path inbetween the inverted commas. This is actually html code, if you're not used to it or get stuck this is a useful guide (scroll down in the link to find the section on adding images).
  • Click the OK button and you're done!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Rich. Nice idea - I got there a little earlier ;)

http://www.digitalgeography.co.uk/archives/2006/01/tethered-images-as-placemarks-in-google-earth/

Rich Treves said...

I've been scooped! :)

You are one of my rss feeds but didn't remember that you'd written about that. That serves me right for pointing out that I'd written about audio in GE first :)

Rich

Anonymous said...

To be honest I'd completely forgoten Rich. I had to go back through my archives! In any case I really like the term placard!