High resolution Earth map

[Deadshade]

I am looking for a realistic high resolution picture of the Earth (natural colors, relief).
I am specifically interested in the area going broadly from Washington to Bogota (N/S) and from Georgetown to Acapulco (E/W).
I have some pictures but they have either smaller size or are not realistic.
Where could I find Something like that (I don't like the Google Earth's ocean and relief representation) ?

[Azélor]

Do you know about Natural Earth, it's a pretty neat resource: http://www.naturalearthdata.com/downloads/

Aside form that, I've found even higher resolution (in raster format). The files where a lot bigger, like over 1gb for just one small part of the world. Unfortunately, I don't know where it was. I'll see if I can find it.

Btw, which Georgetown is it? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgetown

[Deadshade]

Do you know about Natural Earth, it's a pretty neat resource: http://www.naturalearthdata.com/downloads/

Aside form that, I've found even higher resolution (in raster format). The files where a lot bigger, like over 1gb for just one small part of the world. Unfortunately, I don't know where it was. I'll see if I can find it.

Btw, which Georgetown is it? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgetown

Thanks Azelor. Will be checking it at once. I have 32 GB RAM so I am not afraid of 1 GB files. If it's easy to glue them seamlessly I am taking that too.
The Georgetown is the Guyana's very own.

[Midgardsormr]

Well, there's NASA's Visible Earth project: http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view.php?id=73580

500 meters / pixel.

You can get higher resolution for small areas from specific satellites, but you'll have to stitch them yourself.

[johnvanvliet]

the BlueMarble server mirrors have the full earth for each of the 12 months
ftp://mirrors.arsc.edu/nasa/
the 12 months
ftp://mirrors.arsc.edu/nasa/world_500m/

the "world.topo.???? " are shaded already
-- the North West 1 / 8 of the full Earth
world.topo.200401.3x21600x21600.A1.png

or

for relief you can shade the height data
ftp://mirrors.arsc.edu/nasa/topography/

or the Newer map i produced
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6Z...ew?usp=sharing

Ds15.zip is 854.6 MiB
ds15.65536_32768.16S.raw is 4 GiB
Every tone is 0.5 M
-844 to +17695
sea level is set at "0" zero

-- a web page with images using the above DEM
http://forum.celestialmatters.org/vi....php?f=9&t=616

[Deadshade]

Many thanks Midgardsormr and Johnvanvliet. I think I have enough to occupy me for the next few days to check how it behaves and looks in Gimp.

[Deadshade]

or the Newer map i produced
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6Z...ew?usp=sharing

I wanted to have a look at that too.
I have never used Google Drive. First it told me that Smart Screen refused the download. Then I did some random clicking and finally succeeded to download it.
However once unzipped, no software I have is able to open the .raw file and/or to transform it in a png or jpg format so I am stuck.

[johnvanvliet]

the image is in 16 bit signed LSB format RAW
-- a format used a lot in scientific data and for DEM's

gdal can convert it to a 16 bit signed geo-tiff
http://www.gdal.org/index.html
-- PREBUILT binaries
http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/wiki/DownloadingGdalBinaries
(this runs on Linux, Apple , and Windows )

the ESRI *.bil format is a RAW with a detached header -- VERY HANDY image format

rename "ds15.65536_32768.16S.raw"
to
"ds15.65536_32768.16S.bil"

and make this text file for the header

  ncols 65536
  nrows 32768
  cellsize 1
  xllcorner
  yllcorner
  nodata_value -32767
  nbits 16
  pixeltype SIGNEDINT
  byteorder lsbfirst

and save it as " ds15.65536_32768.16S.hdr"

then run

gdal_translate ds15.65536_32768.16S.bil 64k.D15_Earth.tiff

or use the Qgis GUI interface

this should take about 1 Minute, maybe 90 seconds , to convert

this software i use for Big images is Nip2 ( a GUI for the vips image library )
-- this opens 16 bit signed and Unsigned images
http://www.vips.ecs.soton.ac.uk/index.php?title=VIPS
( this runs on Linux, Apple , and Windows )

a 4 gig image is NO problem . The Nip2 program has no issues even with a 32 Gig image

[Deadshade]

Hey Johnvanvliet, you must have mistaken me for a computer programming specialist
I didn't understand one word about gdals, signed geo-tiffs, ESRI headers and GUI interfaces.
I am just a quantum physicist and amateur cartographer - you must speak with me slowly and carefully when the matter is to run some exotic programs with unknown functionalities
But thanks for having answered anyway.

[johnvanvliet]

I am just a quantum physicist and amateur cartographer

I was working toward a degree in Astro-physics observational and theoretical with some Experimental tossed in
-- Cosmology

so on the subatomic side of things

if the particle zoo makes sense then working with image data should be somewhat easy
it is a bit easier than a particle trace from the LHC

So i am betting you have a bit of a background with "mathworks" or "Matlab"
i might be able to put together a matlab "*.m" file to convert ( no mex file seeing is i use Octave) in a day or so

Using gdal and "gdal_translate" is really simpler than a formula in Matlab or in MathWorks
At lease it is not a Diffy-Q

images used in height data are normally expressed in a image format with height values between -32767 ( sea level =0 ) to + 32768 and are in Meters above / below sealevel
this is a 16 bit signed integer image

most image programs tend not to support that ,they support 16 bit Unsigned ( values from 0 to +65536 )