Create a map or story in Google World Web

Tutorial Contents

Prerequisites
Let's Become Started!
Create a project and add places

Adding a place from Street View
Preview your finished project

Add rich data to your places

Adding photos, videos and text
Previewing changes
Styling placemarks
Adding 3D views
Changing the Info box
Add information to your 2d placemark
Calculation videos

Add lines and shapes to your project

Draw a line
Describe a shape

Add slides to your project
Share your project

To share a link to the project
To share the project with specific people for viewing or collaboration

More with World creation tools

Viewing your projects on spider web and mobile
Pinning Projects
Importing your KML files
Exporting KML

Give-and-take and Feedback
What'due south Adjacent

Prerequisites

No programming skills needed!
A Chrome browser (download here), logged into your Google Business relationship. Don't have one? Sign up here.

Permit's Go Started!

The new cosmos tools in Google Earth allow you to easily create and share maps and stories about our world as an Earth project. Y'all can create a project on any subject of your choosing, drawing placemarks, lines and shapes, calculation rich contextual information to your places (text, links, images, videos, 3D views and Street View), and organizing your project into a narrative menstruum. Yous tin can share your project and collaborate with others. In presentation fashion, viewers will fly from 1 identify to the next following the narrative of your projection, immersing them in the journey through Google World's imagery and the custom content you lot provide.

This tutorial will innovate you to the new cosmos tools, and walk y'all through the process of creating and sharing your own Earth projection. In order to consummate this tutorial, yous will need some text, photo and video content to add to your project. Y'all tin apply your own content or you tin utilise the sample content provided past our friends at the Jane Goodall Constitute (JGI). Download the zip file below for the JGI images and extract the contents to a folder on your desktop.

JGI_sample_content.zip (249k Naught file)

If you cull to follow along with our Jane Goodall example, you may want to preview the finished sample Jane Goodall story before yous beginning the tutorial.

Create a projection and add places

Open Google World on your estimator: https://earth.google.com/web
Click on the Projects icon in the left-hand navigation.
If you've never created a Projection before, you will click the Create button to create a new project. If you've created Earth projects before, then you lot'll come across a listing of your projects and can click the New projection push button to create a new project. If you're not already logged into your Google account, yous'll be prompted to do so.
In the Project Details panel, click the Edit button to the right of Untitled Project to edit the projection's title and description. In this case, we've supplied some text beneath for you to copy and paste into these fields.

Project Title: Jane Goodall'due south Journey to Gombe

Description:
Jane Goodall is one of the best-known naturalists and conservationists in the globe. Her work revolutionized our understanding of chimpanzees. She started the Jane Goodall Found, which works for chimpanzee conservation across Africa.

You lot'll notice that your edits are automatically saved in Google Drive as you work.
Now it's time to add your outset place to the map. There are two ways to add a place: dropping a placemark on the map or using Search to find a place. First, nosotros'll endeavour adding a placemark to the map:

Navigate around the world until you see England. At present, click the Add placemark push button in the creation toolbar at the bottom left-hand to actuate the placemark tool.

Then click on the map, on England, to add together the placemark.

Tip: If you are not seeing country and other place names on the earth, endeavor changing your Map Way. Click on the Google World menu button and select Map Fashion. Change your Map Style to Exploration so that yous can run into place names on the globe.
In the Save to project box, click into the Championship field and name your placemark "Jane's Babyhood". The Project field should be gear up to "Jane Goodall'south Journey to Gombe". So click Save.

Yous should see your titled placemark appear in the listing of features in the Projection Details panel.
Now let's add a placemark using the second method: the Search tool. Click the Search icon in the left-hand navigation and search for "Nairobi National Museum". Click on the offset search consequence.
On the Nairobi National Museum Knowledge Bill of fare at right, click the Add to project button.

Click Relieve to add together the second place to your project. You tin can shut the Knowledge Bill of fare by clicking on the X in the top-right corner.

Adding a place from Street View

Now let'southward add a tertiary and last place - this time a identify in Street View! Use the Search tool once again to fly to "Gombe National Park", just close the Noesis Card without adding it to the Projection.
Click on the Street View pegman in the bottom correct corner. Blue lines and dots will appear wherever Street View imagery is bachelor. Click on the blue line or dot to enter Street View on one of the forested hills in the park.
Navigate through the Street View until you observe the view you'd like to add to the place. Click the Capture this view push.
Title the placemark "Gombe National Park" and relieve it to your projection.

Preview your finished project

Click the Present button to see your projection presented in a narrative format.
Click next and previous buttons in the Table of Contents at lesser left to fly to each feature in your projection. Click the back button - the arrow in the meridian left corner - to exit the presentation.
- Tip: You can too drop a placemark on the globe past clicking the New characteristic push button and select Add placemark.
- Tip: To alter the narrative social club of your project, get to the Project Details panel and reorder the feature list by clicking and dragging the features into a new lodge.

Add rich information to your places

Adding photos, videos and text

In the Projection Details panel, hover over the start characteristic in your project and click the Edit push button to open the Belongings Editor panel.
Click on the Photographic camera button.

Hither y'all will see options to upload an image from your estimator, choose a photo from your Google Photos albums, search the web for images, select an image by URL or add YouTube videos.

Using the search option, search for images of Bournemouth (Jane's childhood home) and select i that yous similar. Click Select to see the prototype announced with a thumbnail view in the Property Editor panel.
Click the photographic camera button again to add together a 2nd photo. Search for and add a 2nd photo. Adding multiple photos volition create an image carousel in your Info box.
Click the Description field and copy and paste the below text. This box has basic formatting options available, including bold, italics, underline, bullet lists, indentation, and hyperlinks. Text starting with "http.." will automatically be hyperlinked.

Jane Goodall grew upward in Bournemouth, England. Growing up, she was fascinated by all kinds of animals. When she was young, her favorite books were Dr. Dolittle and the Tarzan series. All she wanted to do was go to Africa, notice the incredible animals living there, and write books about them.

Previewing changes

Click the Preview presentation button to see your changes in presentation mode. Click the back button to go back to the Holding Editor panel and go on editing.

Screenshot of a preview of the presentation

Styling placemarks

Scroll downward the Property Editor panel and detect the Placemark section. Click on the placemark size and change the size to Large.
Click on the pigment saucepan icon to alter the placemark color to yellow.
Click on the placemark overflow card and select See more icons. Search the icons using the word "book" and select the book icon to stand for Jane's babyhood.

Tip: You can as well add a custom icon (your own icon image file) by clicking the placemark overflow menu and selecting Upload custom icon. Your icons must be in jpg or png file format and nosotros recommend you employ an paradigm size of 128 10 128 pixels or 64 x 64 pixels (extremely big icons may impact the performance of the app).

Adding 3D views

Now that nosotros know Jane grew upward in Bournemouth, let's brand the view in Earth of Jane's babyhood more specific and immersive.

Click on the placemark and elevate the marker to Bournemouth (but west of Southampton along the southern coast of England). You may need to zoom and pan the map to become a amend view of the town.
Now, tilt and rotate the World's surface using the compass or keyboard shortcuts until yous find a view of Bournemouth that you similar.
Click the Capture this view push. This associates this 3D view with your location, and in presentation manner when you visit this location, the map will fly to this view.

Changing the Info box

You can modify the mode of the Info box that displays your content (text, photos, videos, etc).

In the Property Editor panel click the driblet downwardly pointer on the right-side of the Info box and change the Info box from Small info box to Big info box.
Click the Preview presentation button to run across the changes. Decide which style you like best!

Preview of 3d view of Bournemouth with Jane's Childhood narrative

Add information to your 2d placemark

Now allow's add together information to the other placemarks in your project.

Click the back button to go back to the Projection Details panel.
Hover over the second placemark and click the Edit push button .
Since nosotros added this placemark from a Knowledge Card, it displays information from the Google Knowledge Graph (y'all can click the Preview presentation push to run across the default data displayed). You lot could choose to keep the Knowledge Bill of fare information as is, or you lot can click "Replace" in the Property Editor panel to delete this information and then add your ain content. In this instance, let's delete the Google information menu content.
Keep the championship "Nairobi National Museum" given by the Knowledge Graph, simply add a new description to this placemark:

In 1957, on a visit to Kenya, Jane met the famous anthropologist and paleontologist Dr. Louis Leakey, and was hired as a secretary. Dr. Leakey was looking for someone to brainstorm a report of chimpanzees to gain insight into human beings' evolutionary past.
Add an image by uploading the file titled jane_and_leakey.jpg (establish in JGI_sample_content.null) from your computer.
Set a 3D view and click the Capture this view button.
Now edit your third and concluding placemark, Jane'south Peak. Add together the following description:

Jane Goodall arrived in Gombe in July of 1960. The surface area was located in what was then the British protectorate of Tanganyika. Information technology was unheard of at the time for a young woman of 26 to travel into the forests of Africa alone. Armed only with her binoculars and a notebook, Jane would climb to Gombe's highest superlative in search of the chimpanzees. Over the years, Jane'due south inquiry led to many new discoveries, for instance that chimpanzees know how to make and use tools, like humans do. Her research team has studied the behavior and followed the lives of the chimpanzees of Gombe for many decades now.

Adding videos

While even so in the Holding Editor panel for the tertiary placemark, click on the camera button and select YouTube. Y'all may search for a YouTube video or you can admission your public YouTube videos. If you accept an unlisted YouTube you'd similar to add, you can enter its URL in the search box to select it.
Search for "jane goodall termite fishing" and select the first search result to add the video to the place.

Add lines and shapes to your project

Depict a line

In the Project Details panel, click the New characteristic push and select Draw line or shape (Annotation: You lot can besides click the Depict line or shape button in the creation toolbar at the bottom of your screen).
On the map, click to add a series of points to draw the line. Each fourth dimension you click, a new segment is added to your line. To end your line, press enter. For the Jane Goodall project, you might describe the path that a boat would take to get from the nearest metropolis (Kigoma) to the enquiry station in Gombe.
In the Add to project box, name your line and click Edit identify.
In the Width and colour section, click on the width dropdown and change the line width to eight pixels.
Click on the color palette to select cherry-red for your line color. Alternatively click Custom colors to create your own colour swatch (Note: the hexadecimal code can be edited straight for exact web color matches).
Zoom out to so that yous can encounter the entire line and click Capture this view.

Tip: If you open the Belongings Editor panel for your line, yous will be able to drag and movement your line points to reshape your line, just you can't delete or add together segments.

Draw a shape

Now, we'll add a shape. In the Projection Details panel, click the New characteristic button and select Draw line or shape.
On the map, click to add a series of points to draw your shape. Each time you lot click, a new segment is added to the outline of your shape. To cease your shape, click over again on the first bespeak that was added to close the shape. For the Jane Goodall project, you might describe a shape effectually the research station in Gombe.
In the Add to Project box, name your shape and click Edit place.
In the Outline width and color section, change the outline to ruddy.
In the Fill color section, change the make full color to yellow. Yous can also change the transparency using the drop down carte to a higher place the colour palette.
Adjust the view and click Capture this view.

Tip: Yous tin can reshape your polygon past clicking and dragging points, but you lot can't delete segments. You can non click and drag your entire shape to a new location.

Add slides to your project

In the Project Details panel, click the New feature push button and select Fullscreen slide.
Give the slide a title and description.

Jane Goodall'southward Journey to Gombe

This is the story of Jane Goodall and her groundbreaking inquiry with chimpanzees in Gombe National Park.
Add an paradigm by selecting the Camera push button, and then Upload and selecting the file entitled jane_peak.jpg (found in JGI_sample_content.zero) from your computer.
Click the back button to get to the Projection Details panel.
Click on the slide in the feature list and drag it to the top of the list of features.
At present click the Nowadays push button to run into how your new slide introduces your project.

Tip: You can add slides to introduce your project, create chapters or sections, to add together an ending message or credits and more.

Tip: If yous choose to use an epitome as your slide background, your title and description will appear at the bottom lefthand of your slide. If you choose to employ colour every bit your slide groundwork, your title and description will announced centered on your slide.

Y'all have many options when you lot want to share your Earth project with others. All projects are private by default — only you lot equally the creator of the projection can view or edit information technology. Below you'll learn how to share the project, as well as how to collaborate on your projection with others.

Click the Share push on the Projection Details panel.
Click Get shareable link.
Copy the link. You can now share this link with others then that they can view your project. Annotation: if you turn link sharing on, anyone who the link is shared with can view your project. If y'all'd like to control access permissions by Google account then you volition probable want to employ the method described directly beneath instead of turning link sharing on..

Tip: By default, people with the link will only exist able to view your projection. If you'd like, you can modify the permissions so that anyone with the link can edit your project.

Click the Share push button on the Project Details console.
Under People, type in the email addresses of the people you'd similar to share the map with directly, or choose from your contacts, and click Done. You can select whether the people you invite can edit the project or simply view it. If a person does not take edit admission, they will non see the Edit buttons in the Projection Details panel and thus will not have access to the Belongings Editor for any features in the project.

Viewing your projects on web and mobile

Yous tin find maps and stories y'all ain and that have been shared with you lot by clicking on Projects in the navigation and looking through the listing in the Projects panel. In the list, you'll encounter maps and stories organized by the categories Pinned to Earth, KML files and Contempo. Yous can as well apply the New project push to open projects and KML files that practice non automatically appear in your Projects list. You can also open up an Earth projection direct from Google Drive, or from a shared link.

You can view your projects on a mobile device past opening the Google Earth app, clicking the menu in the upper lefthand corner and selecting Projects. Y'all can not edit your projects on mobile at this fourth dimension.

Pinning Projects

In order to ensure that a project ever appears in your listing of projects (even if you haven't recently opened it), hover over the project in the Projects panel and click the pin icon. The project will now appear in the Pinned to Earth section on your device.,

Screenshot of a pinned project.

Tip: Pinned projects are always visible on the globe (unless you toggle off visibility using the Hide project button), even when yous're exploring a different project in presentation way. Y'all can apply this feature to "mash up" several unlike projects and/or KML files together.

Importing your KML files

If you've already created a map using another mapping tool such as Google My Maps, Tour Builder or Earth Pro and saved information technology as a KML or KMZ file, you tin import the KML or KMZ to view and edit in Google World (with some limitations):

Currently, y'all are able to import your KMLs only as local files. Local files are projects stored in your local browser storage on your computer. Local files are not stored in the Google Cloud. Local files cannot be shared with others and cannot be shared beyond devices. Local files are stored only in the local browser storage on the computer used to import the file.

Before you can import your KML files, you must plow on KML import in your Google Earth settings.

Click the Google Earth menu button and select Settings.
Scroll to the bottom of the Settings menu and toggle the setting for "Turn on KML file import" to on.
Click Save.

Now you tin can import a KML file.

Go to the Projects panel and click the New project button. Before you turned on KML file import, clicking this button but immune you to create a new project or open a project from Google Drive. At present yous will see options to create a KML file and to import a KML file from your computer or Google Bulldoze.
Select Import KML file from reckoner.
Select the KML file from your computer and click Open.
Your KML file will announced in your Projects console. You tin at present explore and edit your KML.

Tip: Y'all may experience some bug importing more complex KML files. For case, some advanced KML features currently don't work well or at all in the new Google World for web and mobile, including 3D models, tours, tracks, time-based KML, and photo overlays. As well, very big KML files or circuitous features (eg: polygons with many vertices) may non import or render well.

Tip: If you create or import KML files, you will not be able to catechumen them to Earth projects (stored in the Cloud), so you will non be able to share your KML files with others.

Exporting KML

To export a KML of your project, go to the Project Details panel and click the overflow carte Kebab menu , and then select Consign equally KML file.

Discussion and Feedback

Accept questions about this tutorial? Desire to give us some feedback? Visit the Google Earth Help Community to talk over it with others.

James Nelice1980

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