this post was submitted on 01 Jun 2026
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OpenStreetMap community

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Everything #OpenStreetMap related is welcome: software releases, showing of your work, questions about how to tag something, as long as it has to do with OpenStreetMap or OpenStreetMap-related software.

OpenStreetMap is a map of the world, created by people like you and free to use under an open license.

Join OpenStreetMap and start mapping: https://www.openstreetmap.org/.

There are many communication channels about OSM, many organized around a certain country or region. Discover them on https://openstreetmap.community/

https://mapcomplete.org/ is an easy-to-use website to view, edit and add points (such as shops, restaurants and others)

https://learnosm.org/en/ has a lot of information for beginners too.

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OpenStreetMap satellite view? (feddit.org)
submitted 22 hours ago by gandalf_der_12te@feddit.org to c/openstreetmap@lemmy.ml
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ok so i'm trying to understand the structure of the whole OSM project. i generally like it but it's confusing and i'm confused.

i'm specifically looking for satellite image data (landscape as seen from above, no infrastructure data, just real photography). i like satellite images a lot because it provides a much better feel for the landscape than infrastructure data alone. such as: how many trees are there, how much nature is there around, ...

does OSM itself do this? (ideally without having to be logged in)

i found OpenMapTiles which seems to also provide satellite data; but i'm not sure what their relation to OSM is. are they a separate project?

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[–] Mannivu@feddit.it 1 points 9 minutes ago

You can't on osm.org, but you can use MapCompare and see a portion of Earth both on OSM and via Aerial imagery.

[–] nitroemdash@lemmy.wtf 3 points 10 hours ago

There is a separate project, OpenArealMap, for Free as in Freedom areal/satellite images. Most useful images are proprietary though. Some, like Bing, allow limited usage of their images for improving OSM, some don't.

[–] TheTechnician27@lemmy.world 20 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

No, OpenStreetMap has no aerial imagery of their own.

Editors like iD and JOSM and end-user apps like OsmAnd rely on third-party imagery for over/underlays, and the most prominent among these is Bing.

OpenStreetMap under the hood is simply a database of key–value pairs assigned to nodes, lines, polygons, and "relations" between those three.

Edit: And yes, OpenMapTiles is a separate thing, and any of its aerial imagery would also not be its own. It's prohibitively difficult for but a few select organizations to maintain aerial imagery like that. You can read more here.

[–] jomo@mstdn.io 7 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

@gandalf_der_12te it's quite a common misconception that OpenStreetMap is a map, and arguably its name and the website showing a map don't really help there.

But it really is just a database of coordinates and tags that describe features found and those coordinates. You can use this database to generate maps, and there are several projects that do this.

Another common misconception is that what Google and other big players call "Satellite" view or images is rarely 1/2

[–] jomo@mstdn.io 4 points 21 hours ago

taken with satellites. You'd have clouds in the way, very low resolution, and other issues. The higher quality ones are aerial images and this is what people are usually looking for. There are a couple sources listed at https://osm.wiki/Vertical/_Aerial/_Photographs

Getting these to display in an application depends on the application, and there is no "OSM application" except for maybe the iD editor. Everything else is developed by third parties. 2/2

@gandalf_der_12te

[–] schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

OSM doesn't do this, but there are freely licensed satellite images out there. Usually they are produced by or for national governments and often ended up freely licensed precisely because OSM people asked for that…

For my country this is basemap.at and it would actually be an interesting project to aggregate such things in one UI, but I am not aware anyone has done that yet.

[–] vespucci_editor@en.osm.town 0 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

@schnurrito @gandalf_der_12te an 'open mosaic' has been done multiple times however a) it is a lot of work and cost even if the imagery is "free", b) while there is a lot of high res (that is 30cm or better nominal resolution) data available most of the world isn't covered.

[–] schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 9 hours ago

Do you have an example of that?

[–] Cort@lemmy.world 3 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Not seeing the option in osmand, but I'd love to know if it's a possibility

[–] 73QjabParc34Vebq@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 points 14 hours ago

OsmAnd is not OpenStreetMap. Its a third party client to the OpenStreetMap data.

OsmAnd can have aerial imagery, Configure Map > Map Source ( > Add More ) > Microsoft Hybrid