Download Satellite Imagery to GeoTIFF
Clip Sentinel-2, Landsat, and NAIP imagery to your area of interest — directly in your browser. Powered by Microsoft Planetary Computer; no uploads, no account required.
Draw your area of interest
Pick a collection and date range
How it works
- Draw an AOI. Use the map to drag out a rectangle over your area of interest. The rest of the tool activates once an AOI exists.
- Pick a collection and date range. Sentinel-2 for the most recent global optical coverage, Landsat for a longer archive back to 2013, NAIP for high-resolution US aerial photography. Adjust the cloud-cover slider to filter out obscured scenes.
- Search. The tool queries Planetary Computer's STAC API for scenes whose footprint fully contains your AOI, sorted by date with the newest first. Each result is drawn on the map as a thin blue rectangle.
- Pick a scene. Click a thumbnail to select it; its footprint highlights on the map and the band picker appears.
- Pick bands, then download. Preset buttons set common composites (true colour, false-colour NIR). The size estimator shows the expected output size as you toggle bands — adjust until you're inside the free or Pro cap.
- The clip runs in-browser. GDAL-WebAssembly opens each COG via
/vsicurl/, reads only the tiles covering your AOI through HTTP range requests, and writes the DEFLATE-compressed GeoTIFF locally. A 10 km² clip typically downloads less than 5 MB of network data.
Supported collections
| Collection | Resolution | Coverage | Archive starts |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sentinel-2 L2A | 10 m | Global, ~5 day revisit | Jun 2015 |
| Landsat 8/9 C2 L2 | 30 m | Global, ~8 day combined | Apr 2013 |
| NAIP | 60 cm | USA, 2–3 year refresh | 2010 |
About the output
Each band becomes a DEFLATE-compressed GeoTIFF with TILED=YES, written in the source's native CRS (usually UTM). A single-band download is a single .tif; a multi-band download is a .zip containing one GeoTIFF per band — standard remote-sensing practice. Every file opens directly in QGIS, ArcGIS, rasterio, Google Earth Engine, or anything GDAL-aware.
Privacy and architecture
All STAC queries go directly from your browser to Planetary Computer. Asset COGs are read directly from Azure blob storage using short-lived signed URLs issued by PC's public SAS endpoint. No geospatial data passes through QuickMapTools servers. Every clip, including the band stacking, is performed by GDAL-WASM in your browser tab.
Frequently asked questions
What is STAC?
SpatioTemporal Asset Catalog — an open specification for describing geospatial assets (satellite scenes, aerial photos, DEMs) as JSON, with a standard HTTP search API. This tool queries Microsoft Planetary Computer's STAC API to find scenes over your area of interest, then downloads just the pixels inside your AOI by reading the Cloud-Optimized GeoTIFF via HTTP range requests.
Why is the download so small compared to a full scene?
Cloud-Optimized GeoTIFFs let clients read just the tiles covering an area of interest using HTTP range requests — the browser only downloads the bytes it needs. A 10 km² clip of a Sentinel-2 band typically fetches under 5 MB of network data even though the full scene is around 120 MB.
Do my files or queries go through your servers?
No. All STAC queries go directly from your browser to Microsoft Planetary Computer. Asset COGs are read directly from Azure blob storage via signed URLs. All clipping and format conversion happens in the browser using GDAL-WebAssembly.
Which collections are supported?
Sentinel-2 L2A (10 m optical, global, ~5 day revisit, 2015 to now), Landsat 8/9 Collection 2 L2 (30 m optical, global, 2013 to now), and NAIP (60 cm US aerial imagery). More collections may be added in future releases.
Is there a size limit?
Free accounts can download up to 50 MB per clip. Pro accounts can download up to 200 MB per clip. The live size estimator on the asset picker shows the expected output size before you download, so you can adjust your AOI or band selection if you hit the cap.
Why must my AOI be fully inside a single scene?
v1 supports only single-scene clips — the tool filters search results to items whose footprint fully contains your AOI. Scenes can straddle UTM zones and have different timestamps, so mosaicking across multiple scenes requires additional reprojection and compositing logic which we plan to add in a later release.
What format is the download?
If you select one band, the output is a single compressed GeoTIFF (.tif). If you select multiple bands, the output is a ZIP archive containing one GeoTIFF per band — standard remote-sensing practice. Each GeoTIFF keeps the source's native CRS (usually UTM) so it opens correctly in QGIS, ArcGIS, rasterio, or any GDAL-aware tool.
Can I calculate NDVI or other indices?
Pro users can send a clipped Sentinel-2 or Landsat Red+NIR pair directly into the Raster Workflow Builder with an NDVI template preloaded. Additional templates (true-colour composite, change detection) will be added in future releases.