Orthophotos

An orthophoto is a georeferenced image laid over the map — last month’s flight, a client’s site plan, a processed survey output. You upload the image and the world file that tells the app where it sits, and it draws underneath your flight areas and annotations.

Before you start

Orthophotos are included from the Pro plan. On Starter the Orthophotos group does not appear in the rail at all. Note the billing page still calls this line item Raster overlays and organisation certificates; in the app it is Orthophotos everywhere.

Export the image at a low resolution before you start — the limit is 10 MB.

Steps

1. Open the project Spatial tab

   Open the project, select Spatial, and find the Orthophotos group in the Layers rail. Empty, it reads Upload an orthophoto to overlay it on the map.

2. Start an upload

   Use the group’s add button, Upload orthophoto. The dialog is Add Orthophoto Overlay: Upload a georeferenced image and its world file (.jgw / .wld). Low-res exports only (max 10 MB).

3. Select both files at once

   Select Click to select image + world file and pick them together in one go. The picker accepts .jpg, .jpeg, .png and .webp for the image, and .jgw, .jpgw, .wld, .pgw and .pngw for the world file. The dialog then shows Image: and World file:, each reading none selected until matched. The Name field fills itself from the image filename.

4. Say when and in what system

   Set Capture date & time to when the imagery was flown, and Coordinate system to OSGB36 / British National Grid or WGS 84 (Lat/Lon). The world file’s six numbers are read against that system to place the image.

5. Add it

   Select Add Overlay. It appears in the rail and draws on the map.

Options

Adjust an overlay

Select the overlay in the rail to open its inspector. Visible on map toggles it between On and Off. Opacity is a slider reading out as a percentage — drop it to about 50% when you need to see the basemap through it. Locate on map flies to it. Delete opens Delete orthophoto? and removes it from the project permanently.

There is no rename. The name is fixed at upload, so get it right in the Name field.

Share one across jobs

Make primary stars an overlay — the note reads Primary — shown on every linked job by default. Send to job(s) picks the specific jobs it should show on.

Working from a job

A job’s rail shows the same Orthophotos group, hinted Add one of the project’s orthophotos to this job. Its add button is Add orthophoto and offers Select from project list or Upload new orthophoto. On a job, the delete control is replaced by Remove from this job, which only unassigns it, and is hidden for the primary overlay.

What happens next

The overlay renders beneath flight areas, control points and annotations on both the project and job maps, so you can trace a boundary directly off the imagery.

Troubleshooting

The image is too large. The message is specific: Image is too large (max 10 MB). Use the low-res export — full-res orthophoto tiling is coming via the geospatial server. Re-export smaller. There is no cloud-optimised GeoTIFF path today.

Only one file was recognised. Select both an image and its world file. Both must be chosen — the dialog routes them by extension, so make sure the world file’s extension is one of the five listed. If your world file uses .wldx, switch the file picker to show all files; the app accepts it even though the picker filters it out.

The world file could not be read. Could not read the world file — expected six numeric lines. A world file is exactly six numbers, one per line. Re-export it from your processing software.

The Orthophotos group is not in the rail. The organisation is on Starter.