Obtaining Google Earth images

There are many commercial aerial photograph suppliers which will provide copies of historical aerial photographs for a fee. In addition, free copies of historical satellite/aerial photographs can be obtained from Google Earth Pro which can be downloaded from www.google.co.uk/intl/en_uk/earth/versions/#earth-pro You should download the Google Earth Pro on desktop version, rather than use Google Earth on web or Google Earth on mobile, because the latter two do not have the historical image facility.

Finding the location you are interested in

You can find the location you are interested in by entering a place name or postcode in the search box and tapping the Search button. 

You can then use the navigation bar on the right to zoom in as needed. If you cannot see the navigation bar tap the View tab and tick the Show Navigation...Automatically box.

Set View options

Initially you needed the navigation bar to zoom but, once you have set the zoom, you can tick the Show Navigation... Compass Only box so that the outline of the navigation bar does not appear when you come to take a screenshot.

Tick the Sidebar box and untick all the Layers options.  The Layers options superimpose information on the image such as the names and locations of shops, businesses and places of interest but generally it is only the image itself (and objective data such as the scale legend and North pointer)  which you want to include in the screenshot and not anonymous commentary. 

If you initially found the image you are interested in by doing a search there will be a red marker labelled with the place name or postcode you searched for  superimposed on the image.  You can remove the red marker by tapping the X symbol in the sidebar just below (and slightly to the right) of the search box. 

Make sure that the only other box ticked (under View) is Historical Imagery.  

Adjust the boundaries of the display panel so that the image is slightly taller than it is wide.

Finding the historical images you are interested in

Click on the left and right arrows of the time slider to move the slider to the month and year you are interested in. Google Earth Pro will then display an image taken that year not later than that month. 

The reason why you cannot be sure that the image was taken in the exact month shown on the slider (rather than earlier in the year) is that, particularly  if a large area is being displayed, the image shown might be a mozaic made up of two or more images. Some of the images in the mozaic might have been captured on the same day but others may have been captured a day or two earlier, perhaps even the previous month. so the slider shows the month of the most recent image in the mozaic. Also Google generally tries to use the best images so if there is cloud cover in one image another image of the same sector, captured at an earlier date, might be used instead. There is also a further reason. According to Google, Google does not always know the exact month that each of its images were captured. Some images purchased from suppliers might have been in batches labelled simply "summer 2007" so that, although in this example every image is known to have been captured before the autumn of 2007, the exact month is not known. Sometimes only the year an image was taken is known - e.g. 2008 - in which case the slider will show 12/2008.

Saving Google Earth Pro images

Whilst it is possible to save an image by selecting File - Save or File - Print, you should not use those options because an image saved in either of those ways will not show the time slider which indicates in which year the image was taken. Rather you should tap CTRL-SHIFT-E to and email the image as an attachment to yourself.

Then save the attachment. You know that the image was definitely taken in the year shown on the slider but, with regard to the month of that year, you only know that it was taken not later than the month shown on the slider. So when saving an image you should not save it with an exact month in the filename - which might give a misleading impression of the degree of precision - but only with the year, like this:

GoogleEarth Image 2003.jpg 

Typically you will only be interested in images of a single area. If you are obtaining images of multiple distinct areas then add a brief description to the filename - e.g.

GoogleEarth Image - Rose Cottage - 2003.jpg

GoogleEarth Image - Park Farm - 2003.jpg 

Google has a policy of only making available one image for each time period and this means that if, some time after you have displayed an image, Google acquires another image for the same period, then next time you use Google Earth Pro a different image might be displayed. This would in general normally be at least as clear as the previous image but it could be a worse image from your point of view - e.g. most of it might be clearer but there might just happen to be a long shadow obscuring the particular point you are interested in. So, when you find the image you are looking for, make sure you save it when you find it because if you don't save it then, and you go back to it a month later, there is a possibility that that particular image might no longer be available.       

Disclaimer

This information page is designed to be used only by clients of John Antell who have entered into an agreement for the provision of legal services. The information in it is necessarily of a general nature and will not be applicable to every case: it is intended to be used only in conjunction with more specific advice to the individual client about the individual case. This information page should not be used by, or relied on, by anyone else.

The information on this page about specific computer techniques is provided for information purposes only. Every reasonable effort has been made to ensure that the information is accurate and up to date at the time it was written but no responsibility for its accuracy, or for any consequences of relying on it, is assumed by me. You should satisfy yourself, before using any of the techniques, software or services described, that the techniques are appropriate for your purposes and that the software or service is reliable.

This page was lasted updated in August 2024 Disclaimer