The MapKnitter platform runs on a combination of volunteer and paid labor by the many people that build, maintain, and operate it via Public Lab. This is an effective combination thanks to the culture of Public Lab's Coding Community. Public Lab's web ecosystem, including PublicLab.org, MapKnitter.org, SpectralWorkbench.org, Infragram.org and associated projects, takes 20 hours a week from three Code Coordinators and our sysadmin. While cost effective, it is not free. Web hosting and server costs for MapKnitter are approximately $1000 per month. For the last twelve years, Public Lab has hosted Mapknitter.org so that people everywhere can make maps from their aerial photos. Unfortunately, current circumstances have led us to scale back and take certain services offline. We are doing our best to sustain programming and support for our community. And we need your help. Support Public Lab by making a donation today.
*Part of the [Grassroots Mapping Curriculum](/wiki/mapping-curriculum) series.* MapKnitter is a free and open source tool for combining aerial images into a map, or composite image. Informally, we call this "stitching a map" and it's useful if you have many images of overlapping or identical areas, and getting either a web map or a printable map from your photos. MapKnitter can make maps from any image source, but it was designed for making maps with aerial photos from balloons and kites. Start using [MapKnitter.org](http://MapKnitter.org) or read on for more documentation! ## Exporting Once you're map is complete, you can download it as a single image in JPG and other formats. Read about the new Cloud exporter here: https://publiclab.org/wiki/mapknitter-cloud-exporter Learn more about [exporting maps in MapKnitter here](/mapknitter-exporting). ## Activities [activities:mapknitter] **** ## Questions [questions:mapknitter] **** ### Advanced * [Decisions with distortions](https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=S8uUM3p3_Bk#!) - Learn about the design process of stitching maps when images are highly distorted or include tall buildings. This tutorial is in Photoshop, but the techniques are applicable to MapKnitter as well. * [Infrared multispectral compositing](/wiki/mapknitter-multispectral) (no video, in progress) Learn how to combine an infrared dataset with your map to assess photosynthesis. (Also: learn [how to collect infrared imagery](/tool/near-infrared-camera))