Blog

Step-by-step guides for the TerraLab QGIS plugins, plus writing on geospatial AI.

AI Segmentation in QGIS: aerial imagery on the left, AI-detected building polygons on the right.

AI Segmentation for QGIS: The Complete Guide

Draw a zone, name the object, get every polygon as a clean vector layer. The full run in QGIS, the three-step review in any order, and Semi-Auto mode.

AI Edit in QGIS: aerial imagery on the left, AI-generated segmentation on the right.

AI Edit for QGIS: The Complete Guide

Turn the aerial imagery in your QGIS canvas into edits, clean maps, and vector data with plain-language prompts, using AI Edit by TerraLab.

AI Agent in QGIS: a chat panel on the right, buildings coloured by height over satellite imagery on the left.

AI AgentQGISTutorial

AI Agent for QGIS: The Complete Guide

Describe a task in plain language and it runs in your open QGIS project: load data, run algorithms, style layers, build a layout. Every run can be undone.

The Gas Works Park site in Seattle in 1973, a former gasworks on the lake shore before it became a park.

AI EditQGISGuide

Greenfield vs Brownfield: The Difference, on a Map

A greenfield site has never been built on. A brownfield site has, and may still carry what the last use left behind. How to tell them apart in QGIS.

The QGIS interface with a choropleth map of median income in Houston, the layer panel on the left.

AI SegmentationQGISTutorial

How to Add a Basemap in QGIS: XYZ, WMS and Plugins

Browser panel, XYZ Tiles, double-click OpenStreetMap. Then Google, Esri and Bing by URL, national imagery by WMS, and which basemap a detection model can read.

Coloured LiDAR hillshade of drumlins near Hood Canal, Washington, the bare ground with the forest removed.

DSM vs DTM: The Difference, and Which One You Have

A DSM is the height of the top of everything: roofs, treetops, bare ground. A DTM is bare ground alone. Subtract one from the other to get what stands on it.

A glossy colored site plan of Broadway Gardens, Letchworth: warm grey buildings with drop shadows, charcoal roads, green lawns and round tree canopies.

AI EditQGISTutorial

Colored site plan: the same block four ways

Flat, watercolor, pencil and glossy, all rendered from one aerial image of Letchworth Garden City. Every prompt in full, and where the model invented water.

Three panels of the same suburban street from the air: bare satellite imagery, an OpenStreetMap centreline drawn down the middle of it, and the paved surface filled in kerb to kerb as a polygon.

AI SegmentationQGISTutorial

Extract Roads in QGIS: 6 Methods and One Trap

Start with QuickOSM. Where OSM is thin, five more ways to get roads out of imagery, and the line-or-surface choice that decides all of them.

Three panels over the same suburban rooftops: plain aerial imagery, the same roofs with OpenStreetMap solar generators drawn as sparse outlines, and the same roofs again with every array detected as its own polygon.

AI SegmentationQGISTutorial

Detect Solar Panels in QGIS: 5 Methods

Check OpenStreetMap first. Then four ways to map rooftop PV from aerial imagery in QGIS, with the menu paths and where each one fails.

Three panels of the same suburban block from the air: bare imagery, a colour threshold lighting up the pools and a blue roof alike, and a segmentation result with only the pools outlined.

AI SegmentationQGISTutorial

Detect Swimming Pools in QGIS: 5 Methods

Start with QuickOSM on leisure=swimming_pool. Where the map is thin, threshold the blue, run a water index, or use a segmentation model. Five methods compared.

Three panels of the same parkland: plain aerial imagery, an NDVI raster with vegetation in red, and every tree crown as its own coloured polygon.

AI SegmentationQGISTutorial

Map Tree Canopy in QGIS: 6 Methods, Free and Paid

For multispectral imagery, threshold NDVI in the raster calculator, then polygonize. Six methods, what each one needs, and what a canopy layer costs.

A flat architectural site plan of Broadway Gardens, Letchworth, generated from satellite imagery: white building footprints, grey roads, green lawns and tree canopies.

AI EditQGISTutorial

Turn a Satellite Image into a Site Plan in QGIS

From a Google Satellite view of Letchworth Garden City to a four-class site plan in under a minute. The manual route, the AI route, and where each one breaks.

An aerial view of Besançon with the Doubs in flood, brown water covering the quays and the riverside park.

QGISGeoAIAI Edit

How to Simulate a Flood in QGIS: 5 Methods

From the official hazard map to a generated aerial view of the water. Which method gives a number, which gives a picture, why an elevation model changes both.

Aerial view of apartment blocks generated on former car parks, with the title Google Earth AI alternative.

QGISGeoAIAI Edit

Google Earth AI Alternative for QGIS

Google pulled image generation from Google Earth after one day. AI Edit runs the same Nano Banana model inside QGIS and returns a map layer, not a screenshot.

An aerial view of a commercial strip road rebuilt with cycle tracks, street trees and planted forecourts.

QGISGeoAIAI Edit

How to Redesign a Street in QGIS: 5 Methods

Five ways to show a street rebuilt, from hand-drawn vector layers to a generated aerial view. Only one gives back a picture that stays on the map.

5 Best Bunting Labs Alternatives for QGIS (2026)

QGISGeoAIComparison

5 Best Bunting Labs Alternatives for QGIS (2026)

Bunting Labs traces one line at a time. For every object in an area, use AI Segmentation. Five tools on input, price and privacy.

Deepness Alternatives in QGIS: 5 Free and Paid

QGISGeoAIComparison

Deepness Alternatives in QGIS: 5 Free and Paid

Deepness runs an ONNX file you supply, offline and free. If you have no such file, here are five tools compared on input, price and where the imagery goes.

5 Best eCognition Alternatives in 2026

QGISGeoAIComparison

5 Best eCognition Alternatives in 2026

Trimble stopped actively selling eCognition. AI Segmentation is the fastest replacement. Five tools compared on input, cost and where your imagery goes.

Mapflow Alternatives for QGIS: 5 Free and Paid

QGISGeoAIComparison

Mapflow Alternatives for QGIS: 5 Free and Paid

AI Segmentation is my default pick: draw a zone, type a word, no graphics card. Five QGIS plugins on price, install, GPU and where the imagery goes.

Three panels: a land cover raster drawn as a grid of coloured pixels, the same boundary traced by polygonize as a staircase, and the same boundary again as a smooth green line after dissolve, an area filter, simplify and smooth.

QGISTutorialGeoAI

Convert Raster to Vector in QGIS: 5 Methods

For a classified raster, use Raster > Conversion > Polygonize. Here are the five methods, the fix for staircase edges, and what to do with a photograph.

A diagram in which the outline of a roof, drawn in green, sits offset from the dashed outline of the walls underneath it, labelled overhang plus lean, beside an aerial view of houses whose detected outlines are drawn in red.

What Is a Building Footprint? Meaning, Floor Area

A building footprint is the outline where a building meets the ground. Most downloadable ones follow the roof. The difference, floor area, and the open data.

QGISAI SegmentationComparison

8 Best AI Plugins for QGIS in 2026 (Free and Paid)

For pulling objects out of imagery, start with AI Segmentation or Mapflow. Eight plugins compared on price, where the computation runs, and install effort.

Aerial imagery of dense Paris blocks split down the middle, plain photo on the left and every detected building drawn as its own coloured polygon on the right.

What Is GeoAI? Definition, Examples, Uses in QGIS

GeoAI is machine learning run on geographic data. The five things it extracts today, what it costs in hardware and time, and how to run it in QGIS.

A before/after slider over aerial imagery of a Paris neighbourhood, plain rooftops on the left and each building filled with its own colour on the right, under the title Building Footprints in QGIS.

AI SegmentationQGISTutorial

Detect Building Footprints in QGIS: 3 Methods

Draw a zone, name the object, run it: you get a polygon layer in minutes. Open data, hand-digitizing and AI detection compared, with the filtering step.

A before/after slider over aerial imagery of a lakeside park, plain trees on the left and each tree crown filled with its own colour on the right, under the title Segment Anything in QGIS.

AI SegmentationQGISTutorial

Segment Anything (SAM) in QGIS: 7 Plugins Compared

SAM outlines an object from a click or a word. Seven QGIS plugins run it: what each costs, which needs an NVIDIA card, and how to install one.

Spatial intelligence podcast: Lilien Auger and Stéphane Barbot, TerraLab.

PodcastDigital TwinFrançais

Spatial Intelligence: l'IA qui simule le monde

Stéphane Barbot and Lilien Auger join the podcast Les dessous de l'IA to talk geospatial AI, digital twins, foundation models and who controls territorial data.

Les dessous de l'IA

Raw terrain, 10 m resolution. Quebec orthophotos + Sentinel-2 + SRTM.

Digital TwinForest ManagementQuebec

Quebec Forest Digital Twin: 115,000 Orthophotos

We ran our pipeline on 115,000 Quebec orthophotos, one of North America's richest public datasets: incompatible projections, color mismatches, coverage gaps.

Stéphane Barbot

A card showing the exact error, ImportError: DLL load failed while importing _C, above the fix: install the Visual C++ Redistributable for x64, then restart Windows.

QGISTroubleshooting

QGIS: DLL Load Failed Importing _C (Solved)

Install the Visual C++ Redistributable (x64), then reboot. That clears it on most machines. Four fixes, in the order they turn out to be the real one.

A card showing the exact error, ImportError: DLL load failed while importing _gdal, above the fix: take the non-QGIS GDAL folders out of PATH, then sign out and back in.

QGISTroubleshooting

QGIS: DLL Load Failed Importing _gdal (Solved)

A second GDAL sits earlier on your PATH and wins the DLL search. Take the non-QGIS folders out, sign out, sign back in. Five fixes, likeliest first.

A card showing the two errors the Flatpak build of QGIS returns, no module named pip and a read-only file system, above the fix: run pip with --devel and install with --user.

QGISTroubleshooting

QGIS Flatpak: No Module Named pip (Solved)

Run pip through the Flatpak with --devel and install with --user. The exact commands, four fixes when it still fails, and why /usr is read-only.

Some of this is on video

We record plugin walkthroughs on our YouTube channel.

Open the playlist