Georeferencing Online Aerial Imagery with QGIS

This tutorial will describe how online aerial images can be georeferenced using QGIS. Georeferencing is a very important stage where the aerial images will be positioned to the geographical coordinates for easy linking with a GIS. We’ll walk through how to bring in online aerial imagery into QGIS, where we can establish control points by identifying points in the imagery and the base map and then apply transformations on the imagery.

You will also get to know a few others like Affine and polynomial transformation and how to select the type of transformation best suited for a given problem. At the end of this tutorial, you should be armed with the ability on how to georeference online aerial imagery hence improving the quality of your spatial referencing and mapping exercises. Regardless of whether it is for fun at home or for inserting imagery into a company’s Geographic Information System (GIS), this guide will equip you with the right information for the desired outcome.