Free For All – Google Earth Super-Overlay Tool (GEST)

Google Earth has made satellite and aerial imagery available and easily accessible to the public. This month’s Geospatial Free For All merges the public world of Google Earth with a common remote sensing program, ENVI. The Google Earth Super-Overlay Tool (GEST) allows ENVI users to display their processed imagery in Google Earth at full resolution.

The Google Earth Super-Overlay Tool (GEST) lets users export images to KML files.
In order to save the image as a Google Earth file, the image needs to first be displayed in ENVI. From the ENVI Display Window, go to the File drop-down menu, click on Save Image As and choose Google Earth Super-Overlay. You will be prompted to choose a folder to save the image to and to choose a file name. You have the option to subset the image and to choose a tile size.

Once the process is finished, you will see a bunch of files in the folder you specified. You only have to click on the KML file you created in the first step and it will load all of the tiles into Google Earth. To get your hands on this nifty ENVI extension, click here.