What's a good source of satellite images?

[PlutonianEmpire]

I'm planning on placing a virtual texture of the town where I graduated high school in on the Earth in Celestia.

I recall posting a thread a few years ago about using images from Google Earth in Celestia, but was told it may lead to legal troubles, so I was wondering if there was a good site I can get satellite images from?

[John Van Vliet]

--- edit ---

[PlutonianEmpire]

Ok, I'm finally getting around to downloading images from that site. Question is, is it possible to load their GeoTIFF's into gimp? Or do I need a specialized program or plugin to use them?

And I'd prefer one with a point-and-click interface. No exceptions.

[Fenerit]

Ok, I'm finally getting around to downloading images from that site. Question is, is it possible to load their GeoTIFF's into gimp? Or do I need a specialized program or plugin to use them?

And I'd prefer one with a point-and-click interface. No exceptions.

Yes, you can load the geoTIFF within GIMP. All the "geo" metadata references will be lost, though; this mean that the image will not load onto the proper geographical position and projection. You need GIS programs to do that. There are several freewares avalaible.

[PlutonianEmpire]

Ok, I'm finally getting around to downloading images from that site. Question is, is it possible to load their GeoTIFF's into gimp? Or do I need a specialized program or plugin to use them?

And I'd prefer one with a point-and-click interface. No exceptions.

Yes, you can load the geoTIFF within GIMP. All the "geo" metadata references will be lost, though; this mean that the image will not load onto the proper geographical position and projection. You need GIS programs to do that. There are several freewares avalaible.

Yeah, I did load it into GIMP, but for some reason, it appeared quite transparent, meaning it was not completely opaque. Any way to fix that?

[Fenerit]

Depend upon the complexity of the image, but with an inverse selection ( selection->inverse) followed by (layer->transparency->remove alpha channel), the selection will be plain. Sorry, my GIMP is in Italian, so I cannot say which are the correct english words for that menu options.

[PlutonianEmpire]

Depend upon the complexity of the image, but with an inverse selection ( selection->inverse) followed by (layer->transparency->remove alpha channel), the selection will be plain. Sorry, my GIMP is in Italian, so I cannot say which are the correct english words for that menu options.

Tried that, the image wound up being overly white, with shadows replaced by white, etc.

[Fenerit]

If the images you deal with are wholly transparent canvas for themselves and moreover with shadows too, then isn't easy to mark up what you wish; you can only try to duplicate it several times in order to refurbish the colors, but the whole canvas will remains transparent.