If you have a contract with Planet, you can order imagery directly from Explorer or via Planet's APIs. If you do not have a contract with Planet, you will not be able to order imagery. Please contact sales if you would like to order imagery but don't currently have access.
At the very bottom of the Search panel on the left of the screen, you will see two buttons - one for API {:} and one for Orders. In this section we will focus on the Orders button, the Orders button references the images in the above panel that you have selected via the "cart" button.
The Order Items Button¶
The Order Items(n) - where n equals the number of image sets you have selected in the panel above - button will open a new window. If you would like to download imagery, select Direct Download.
How to Place an Order for Direct Download¶
From here, there are 4 steps to completing your order: choosing your delivery option, naming your order, selecting assets, and tools (where available) and final review.
To download your data locally, choose Direct download as your delivery option. You will also be asked to select a file format for your download.
The file format options are:
- GeoTIFF or TIFF + RPC (Default)
- Cloud Optimized GeoTIFF (COG)
- NITF 2.1 (not available to all users).
There is an icon in the upper right of the order field labeled Order settings. Click on Order settings to choose options to Receive emails for order status and/or Include STAC metadata files.
At the second step, the Name field is required and you can choose your own naming convention here.
For the third step, after you have named your order, you have two options. You can make further selections for your order or you can do an express check-out.
To complete the express check-out, you can click Order on the bottom right-hand side of the screen. This will place an order for each selection displayed in the Orders Summary column. Each white box shows a summary of your selections, including item type, asset type, and any tools selected. Each white box will be placed as a separate order, and will be charged to your account accordingly. You should only do an express check-out if you are familiar with the default assets chosen and if you don't want to add any tools (such as composite or harmonization).
The fourth step is making further selections for your order. To do this, click the Continue button or click on Select Assets at the top header.
At the Select Assets step, you will see the item types listed that you ordered (for example, PlanetScope Scenes or SkySat Collects). Click into the item type that you wish to select assets for. Once you click on the item type (i.e. PlanetScope Scene), you will see a menu of assets to choose from. The default asset is highlighted in teal. You can unselect it by clicking on it. If you would like to order Unorthorectified assets, click + Show More and choose from the menu of Unorthorectified assets. If you choose these assets, you will receive the raw files that did not go through the rectification process. They are delivered as TIFF & RPC (rather than as a GeoTIFF and do not include geo location information.) The asset that you select will show up on the Order Summary to the right of the screen.
Once you are done selecting assets, click Continue or click on the Tools & Review header at the top of the screen. At this step, you will see a list of all of the assets that you have chosen. Click on each asset to add tools (clipping, composite, or harmonization, where applicable). Your selections will be reflected in the Order Summary on the right hand side.
Note
Some customers have access to clipping imagery (per their contract). When you clip imagery, you only order pixels that are in the AOI you drew. Otherwise, you download the entire scene your AOI touches. If you would like to clip imagery, but don't currently see that option in the interface, please reach out to the support team.
Customers who have access to clipping imagery also have access to compositing imagery. The composite tool stitches scenes together within an order to deliver fewer images with less or zero overlap. This reduces unnecessary overlaps within imagery, and consequently reduces the overall area of imagery delivered.
Two ways to composite an AOI within your order are per strip or everything:
- The first is to composite by strip. Compositing by strip allows for consistency per strip. This choice is ideal for the GIS analyst who is doing pixel analysis and is sensitive to variability in temporal, spatial, spectral, geometric, or environmental conditions.
- The second is to composite all. Compositing all means that all layers are combined into one image. This choice is ideal for the quota-sensitive user who has a primarily visual use case. Seamlines or variability in environmental conditions may appear.
If a customer has a composite that is larger than the stated sq km below (which changes per item type), they do not see the option to use the composite tool. The limit depends on the item type of the input scenes due to differences in resolution.
- High resolution (SkySatScene): Limit of 375 sq km per composite
- Medium resolution (PSScene, REOrthotile, Sentinel2L1C): Limit of 9,000 sq km per composite
- Low resolution (Landsat8L1G): Limit of 1,200,000 sq km per composite
Customers will also have access to the harmonization tool for surface reflectance assets. The harmonization tool ensures consistent radiometric calibration with Sentinel-2 satellites. This helps with combining and comparing Planet data from other sources. We recommend using this option when you are downloading data from varied Planet constellations (i.e. imagery from Dove-C and Dove-R.)
Downloading your order¶
After selecting your download preference, continue making your order selections as described above.
Once you choose Order, you will see a note pop up briefly that you will be notified by email when your imagery download is ready. The left panel will pop open automatically to the Orders tab, and you will see your order in progress.
When the order is ready for download, you will get an email to the address associated with your account. Once ready, you will be able to download a .zip of your assets from the Orders section in the left hand toolbar.
Note
The limit for number of scenes you can request in one order:
- Default = 100
- SkySatCollect = 50
How to order to Sentinel Hub¶
To deliver your order to an image collection hosted in Sentinel Hub, open the Order imagery modal and select “Image collection” from the delivery destination options.
Note
To deliver to Sentinel Hub you must have linked your Planet account to your Sentinel Hub account. To learn more about linking accounts, see this Community Page post.
Optionally, you can add an existing image collection id in the “BYOC collection” field if you want to send your order to an already-created image collection in Sentinel Hub. You can find existing collections and their ids from the Sentinel Hub collections dashboard. For the best experience in Sentinel Hub, we suggest that you maintain one collection for each of your imagery-types.
Note
To deliver to an existing collection the imagery assets you are ordering must be the same as the imagery assets your image collection was set up for. For example, you cannot order 8-band PlanetScope assets to a collection that was set up for 4-band PlanetScope assets.
If you do not specify an existing image collection id, your order will create a new image collection in Sentinel Hub.
To complete your order, continue with steps 2-4 as outlined above in how to place an order for direct download
We are continually working to improve our technical documentation and support. Please help by sharing your experience with us.