To work in QGIS is very often much more convenient if you can use a basemap for your data. In the past we used and promoted OpenLayers plugin quite often but this was not the best out there as you saw often some issues with projections as well as with “lost tiles” in the map composer. So here is the new weapon of choice: the QuickMapServices plugin for QGIS.
Getting the QuickMapServices Plugin
Of course you can download the plugin via the plugin manager in QGIS but you can also download the latest version from NextGIS github account. Nextgis is Moscow based GIS company with lots of plugins for QGIS but which also offers some online services to support you with your daily spatial data.
QuickMapServices Plugin
About the QuickMapServices Plugin
Well the plugin works straight forward: Select a basemap and wait for the tiles to load and BAM there is your basemap. The cooles thing: QuickMapServices standard basemaps seems to work in nearly every projection (even custom ones):
EPSG:53009 Mollweide
a custom azimuthal equidistant projection
EPSG:53029 Van der Grinten Sphere
EPSG:102016 North Pole Azimuthal Aequidistant
IAU2000: 51118 Carme Noth Pole Stereographic
You can use several basemaps by default like:
eatlas
landsat by gis-lab.info
Mapquest
Mapsurfer
nasa (only a few Us-centric layers)
OSM
basic styles in QickMapServices
To add some more basemap styles you need to download the so called “contributed pack”. Select Web->QuickMapServices->Settings->More Services and you will get even more basemap providers like:
SEXTANTE by Victor Olaya is a powerful plugin that bundles many methods and applications from QGIS in one place and provides a GUI for your processing work flow…
Thank you for the tip Riccardo! I was still using old-school OpenLayer plugin. I’ll give a try to QMS!