GMap Image Cutter ^1.4

GMap Image Cutter allows web designers to embed large images in web pages– in gif, jpg, png, bmp, or tiff format –  and gives users the ability to zoom and pan via the well-known Google Maps interface.

Use of the software for any purpose other than academic research requires the standard commercial licence available from this website. For an academic research licence, please go directly to UCL's CASA website.

Web designers often wish to incorporate large images into sites where presenting smaller versions of the images would lose crucial detail. Unfortunately, web browsers lack features to make navigation of large images easy, resulting in a cumbersome and unsatisfying experience for website visitors.

With GMap Image Cutter, web designers can give visitors access to familiar navigation tools so they can explore large images in an intuitive way. The application works by ‘cutting’ images into tiles that can be loaded by Google Maps: users can then use the Google Maps interface to pan and zoom images, even though the images themselves may not have a geographic aspect. Although publishing large digital photos is the most obvious application, this tool can be used for other types of image files also e.g. annotated maps of an area that are not to scale but which give directions.

GMap Image Cutter is easy to use and works on all the most common image formats, including gif, jpg, png, bmp, and tiff.  It automatically chooses the depth for the maximum zoom level to prevent pixellation.

For website users, the main benefit is convenient access to fine-scale detail in large images. For web designers, GMap Image Cutter provides an easy-to-use application and a Javascript solution that, unlike flash applications with similar functionality, works in most browsers without requiring the website visitor to install special plug-ins.

Included in the bundle are:

• the application executable file, and
• help documentation (also available for download prior to licence purchase; see the ReadMe text file listed under Product Files at the bottom of this page)

GMap Image Cutter was created at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA) at University College London (UCL), www.casa.ucl.ac.uk. CASA is a world leader in geospatial and crowdsourcing technology, with work that has recently featured in New Scientist, Wired and The New York Times.

OS

• PC: XP, Vista, 7; installation via Windows Installer
• Mac & Linux: installation via .jar file

Software

• Java