Analyze Change with Planet's New Compare Lab

I would like to introduce the Compare Lab, an old favorite here at Planet Labs that’s now available publicly on our platform for any user with API access. The Compare Lab has existed as a collection of internal “employees-only” tools at Planet Labs for a long time, often showing up on employee chat rooms and blogs. Now, any user can compare overlapping scenes to each other (or a basemap), and easily share findings with others.

A user can choose a mosaic, base map, or another scene to compare against. There are three different tools to choose from: a slider, fader , or spy. Below, you’ll find examples of each tool.

Use the Slider Tool to see large-scale change in agricultural fields in Saudi Arabia

Compare before and after images of this reservoir in Venezuela with the Fader Tool

See new islands emerge in the South China Sea with the Spy Tool

As Planet’s revisit rates move closer to daily, this is a great way to search through Planet’s backlog to find the most recent scenes in your area of interest. Hovering over each scene will render the footprint on the map. Users can add scenes into the “Scenes to compare” area and share multiple scenes by copying the url. Starting with a scene, you can use this tool to quickly check Planet’s history for evidence of change.

We’ve even added a way for tablet users to toggle the headers and sidebar on and off. This allows for a full screen map which looks sleek and simple on mobile devices.

Developers—get access to our the Compare Lab and our growing Open California data set. Sign up here!