QGIS is a crossing point of the free and open source geospatial world. While there are a great many tools in QGIS, it is not one massive application that does everything, and it was never really designed to be that from the beginning. It is rather a visual interface to much of the open source geospatial world. You can load data from proprietary and open formats into spatial databases of various flavors and then analyze the data with well-known analytical backends before creating a printed or web-based map to display and interact with your results. What’s QGIS’s role in all this? It’s the place where you check your data along the way, build and queue the analysis, visualize the results, and develop cartographic end products.
This learning path will teach you all that and more, in a hands-on learn-by-doing manner. Become an expert in QGIS with this useful companion.
Module 1, Learning QGIS, Third edition, covers important features that enable us to create great maps. Then, we will cover labeling using examples of labeling point locations as well as creating more advanced road labels with road shield graphics. We will also cover how to tweak labels manually. We will get to know the print composer and how to use it to create printable maps and map books. Finally, we will cover solutions to present your maps on the Web.
Module 2, QGIS Blueprints, will demonstrate visualization and analytical techniques to explore relationships between place and time and between places themselves. You will work with demographic data from a census for election purposes through a timeline controlled animation.
Module 3, QGIS 2 Cookbook, deals with converting data into the formats you need for analysis, including vector to and from raster, transitioning through different types of vectors, and cutting your data to just the important areas. It also shows you how to take QGIS beyond the out-of-the-box features with plugins, customization, and add-on tools.