Hi everyone!

I'm working on a personal historical cartography project about Centallo, a small town in Piedmont, northern Italy, using QGIS.

My goal is to create something similar to Google Earth's historical imagery timeline, but extending much further into the past by combining different cartographic sources.

So far, I've been collecting and georeferencing:

• Historical military aerial photographs, including imagery from the 1970s and 1980s.
• Regional orthophotos provided by the Piedmont Region, including imagery from the 1980s–1990s and more recent years.
• Historical cadastral maps, including Napoleonic-era maps from the early 1800s and late 19th-century surveys.
• Old topographic maps, historical surveys, and other archival cartographic material.

The idea is to have all these sources aligned in QGIS, allowing me to switch between different years and observe how the landscape, roads, buildings, agricultural fields, and waterways have changed over time.

Here's my problem:

Google Earth Pro has a fantastic archive of historical satellite and aerial imagery, with multiple dates available for my area.

If I could integrate those historical images into QGIS, I could potentially almost double the number of time periods represented in my project.

Ideally, I'd like to access each historical imagery date as a separate raster layer, similar to how WMS, WMTS, or XYZ tile services work, without manually exporting and georeferencing everything.

What I've found so far:

The only practical workaround I've identified is:

1. Open Google Earth Pro and select a historical imagery date.
2. Export the view as a high-resolution image (up to 8K).
3. Import the image into QGIS.
4. Georeference it manually.
5. Repeat the process for every date and every section of my municipality.

Unfortunately, covering the entire municipality at a useful resolution, across all available dates, could take weeks of repetitive work.

My questions:

1. Is there any supported way to access Google Earth's historical imagery directly in QGIS, perhaps through an API, WMS/WMTS, XYZ tiles, or another method?
2. Can historical imagery be requested for a specific date, rather than just displaying the current Google Satellite basemap?
3. If direct access isn't possible, is there a more efficient workflow for importing and georeferencing multiple images without repeating the process manually?
4. Are there alternative services or archives offering comparable high-resolution historical imagery for Europe, particularly Italy, with GIS-compatible access?
5. I'm also interested in understanding the licensing limitations. Is there a legitimate way to integrate this imagery into a personal, non-commercial historical research project?

I'm not trying to redistribute Google's imagery or create a commercial service. I'm mainly interested in finding a sustainable and legally permitted way to compare different historical periods in my local GIS project.

I know this is quite a specific request, but I imagine other people working with historical cartography, landscape evolution, or urban development might have encountered the same problem.

Any suggestions, tools, plugins, or alternative workflows would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

ps: if this message looks AI-generated is because it is, i'm sorry but english is not my first language and i'd like to convey my question in the best way possible, sorry!

Hi everyone! I'm passionate about GIS and remote sensing, and I create step-by-step tutorials covering QGIS, spatial analysis, cartography, LiDAR, and practical geospatial workflows.

My aim is to make geospatial techniques easier to understand and apply, whether you're a beginner or an experienced GIS professional.

I'd be happy to contribute to discussions and share relevant tutorials when they might be helpful to the community. Here is a link to my channel: https://www.youtube.com/@thegeospatiallab/videos

I’m not a pro, so a lot of things are new for me. Currently I’m working on my project, using SCP.
I downloaded landsat images, made clip for B1-B7 bands and Reflectance. After that I selected 4-3-2 and got natural coloured image. Here I saw this dots… I don’t know what to do with this sh.t.
I would appreciate any advice!

Hi, I want to create the effect shown in the attached image. I have Australia (Admin_0) as my study area, how can I create the effect? That is, the lighter blue color that sits between the land mass and the ocean. I tried using Buffer but the effect was not that aesthetically pleasant. Any ideas?

hello everyone im currently working on a projrct about the evelotion of the urban tissue and i need help to find georeferenced arial images with high reselution (like google earth ) in the 1980, 2000 and 2020

I've been trying to make a base map of the moon based on elevation data, ideally with a hill-shade layer, but I'm about ready to give up on that.

Mostly, I just want to be able to translate the map from Astropedia into different map projections, but I'm having no luck. Any solutions?

I get this error when I try to start QGIS and there was a recent update:

I'm running archlinux and QGIS version 4.2.3-2.

qgis: symbol lookup error: /usr/lib/libqgis_core.so.4.2.3: undefined symbol: _ZN14QWebEnginePage17runJavaScriptImplERK7QStringjPN9QtPrivate15QSlotObjectBaseE, version Qt_6

Hi,

Thomas, maintainer of the OpenTopoMap tileserver here.

I know that many of you use the OpenTopoMap layer in QGIS — over 5,000 users on a typical workday, to be precise. I imagine at least some of you rely on it for professional work.

I'd love to hear your thoughts: What changes or improvements would you like to see in the map? Are there any features, styling choices, or other aspects of the map that you think could be improved?

As a first step, we at Top-O-Map have made a simple relief map without any text or map details to use as a background for own data. Now we have also set up a new server that renders the map at four times the pixel resolution, making text and other details much sharper. Also the database is updated daily.

You can have a look at onlinetopomap.com

I'd also like to ask a more general question: Would you be willing to pay a small fee to use the map to help cover the server costs?

I'm looking forward to hearing your feedback and suggestions!

I have several pages with the same layout, and whenever I try to group items (to avoid the visual clutter caused by having so much information) QGIS crashes; it just keeps loading and then closes. Whether I use Ctrl+G or group the items manually, QGIS crashes. Does anyone know how to fix this?

Note: It’s strange, because this doesn't happen when working with the map itself, i’m able to organize various layers into different groups without any issues. This error is specific to the layout environment.

Hi guys, I’m fairly new to QGIS, and am using it for a project. Every time I export the line-work from the layers, it comes into auto cad and rhino at a strange angle (not a top down plan view). How should I fix it, and is there anyway to export all line layers at once?

Thank you.

What has your experience been with QGIS performance on a Mac?

I have a MacBook Air and use QGIS 3.44 and now 4.2.3, but the performance is much worse compared to Windows. Zooming with the trackpad feels very laggy and unnatural. I found it was a little better with 3.44.

Hello,

I am currently on 3.44.7-solothurn on Mac.

When I go web > QuickMapServices > click on any basemap, nothing happens. It doesn't load in, there's no error message, nothing.

I've tried :

• uninstalling and reinstalling the QMS extension
• Restarting QGIS
• Restarting my computer
• (edit) Updating to version 4.2.3

Any ideas?

I have the polygon round the selected one. But how I can i can make one polygon to fill the empty area inside without including the selected one? (In total will be 3 polygons)

Hi guys, I have a question for you. Ten years ago I had one SAR program made in QGis ( I think that version of QGis than was 2.6). Yesterday I found that program and I wondered if I could switch it to newest version. Thank you for help.

Hi all,

I graduated last December from a polytechnic university with my BS in Environmental Biology, with my emphasis being an ecology, conservation, and biodiversity.

For some reason, I never took any GIS courses while in my undergrad, because they were not required for my major. Over the last six months or so, I have quickly realized how important having some kind of experience and training in GIS is when it comes to getting a career in terrestrial ecology and conservation. I feel like I missed out on some great information from not taking any courses, so I am looking to get some sort of training and certification.

I am looking for suggestions on where I should look into taking GIS courses/getting training to get an accredited certification, whether it’s fully online or hybrid (I live in SoCal). I am in my early 20s and don’t have a ton to spend, but am looking to see potential options.

Thanks all!

I cannot think one good reason to use this. It makes the georeferenced image basically unusable. And for whatever reason, the option is often checked by itself.

What am I missing here?

I made a simple small tracing tool plugin mainly for myself, sharing in case I'm not the only one missing a good tracing tool!

Every time I needed to digitize along an existing line I'd hit T, nothing would happen, and then I'd remember tracing needs snapping set up first. On the right layers. With the right tolerance. And even then it takes the shortest route between clicks, so along a winding stream next to a road I end up clicking every bend anyway.

So I wrote Pro Trace for my own work (inspired by the trace tool in ArcGIS Pro and with help from my friend Claude). Click on a line or polygon edge, move the mouse and it just follows along. No snapping settings. Click off the line for freehand points and then carry on tracing. It only uses the layers you have switched on, so unticking a layer is the off switch.

I had to port it from my old QGIS 3 version (lokal plugin version) to QGIS 4 anyway, so now its in the official catalogue, search "GeoDrafter Pro Trace" in the plugin manager. Free and GPL.

I think it works better for the way I digitize, but let me know if there are any problems: https://github.com/hrosenskjold/GeoDrafter-QGIS-Plugins/issues

Docs if anyone cares: https://geodrafter.com/qgis/pro-trace/

/Henrik 〰️✏️ (missing a tracing smiley so a wave-pencil will have to do)

Hi, everyone, while working on my thesi i ran on to a problem where the information is in in layer wit a point geometry but i needed to be in a polygon geometry just like the layer underneath, is there any way to transfer the atributes from one layer to another without haing to edit every single element?? thanks

Where can I download soil data? And what's the process of making it effectively work in QSWAT? Cause I'm encountering problems whenever I try to click read with the soil data I found in Digital Soil Map of the World. I followed tutorials, rasterized it, reprojected it, still, it won't work. There's no available tutorial from downloading it, to inputting it to QSWAT. Can someone help?

Where can I download soil data? And what's the process of making it effectively work in QSWAT? Cause I'm encountering problems whenever I try to click read with the soil data I found in Digital Soil Map of the World. I followed tutorials, rasterized it, reprojected it, still, it won't work. There's no available tutorial from downloading it, to inputting it to QSWAT. Can someone help?

Hi all. I've been working on a side project called GIS Plugins: https://gisplugins.dev

It's a browsable directory of the plugins in the official repo at plugins.qgis.org, refreshed nightly. The main reason I built it was to answer one question before upgrading: which of my plugins will work in QGIS 4?

What it does right now:
- Tracks 3,810 plugins, 1,503 of them (39.4%) currently listed as QGIS 4 ready
- A /qgis4 page with readiness stats and popular plugins still waiting on QGIS 4 (Freehand raster georeferencer, Digitizing Tools, go2streetview, QAD and others)
- Category pages with a few hand-picked plugins in each
- "New this week" and "Updated this week" lists

It's free, no account needed. There's also an optional weekly newsletter if you want a digest: https://gisplugins.dev/newsletter

Readiness is based on what each plugin declares in the repo, so it may not match real-world behavior in every case.

I'd really like feedback. What's missing, what's wrong, and what would make this useful for your day-to-day work?