Andrew Cutts - QGIS Quick Start Guide: A beginners guide to getting started with QGIS 3.4

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Andrew Cutts holds a geography degree and a masters degree in GIS and has almost 20 years of experience in working with geospatial technology. He currently works as a freelance geospatial consultant. He has worked in local government, large multinational companies, and small and medium-sized enterprises. He has run a geospatial blog for almost 3 years and is a co-host of the #scenefromabove podcast. Andrew has spoken at events worldwide on GIS and Earth observation. He is a keen user of Python, especially for rapid prototyping for geospatial challenges. Currently, he is working with clients to maximize their investment with geospatial technology through direct consulting, training, and technical writing.

Alexander Bruy is an open source advocate and developer working on the QGIS project. He also develops tools such as Photo2Shape and QConsolidate plugins for QGIS and various Processing providers. He has been working with QGIS since 2006, and is now an OSGeo charter member, QGIS core developer, and community voting member. He is also the author of QGIS By Example, published by Packt Publishing.

Alexander is currently a freelance GIS developer and works for various companies worldwide.

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QGIS is an user-friendly open source GIS. Lately, open source GIS and QGIS has been gaining a lot of popularity.

This book is a quick-start guide to QGIS 3.4. It is for anyone who wants to learn how to use QGIS to analyze geospatial data and create rich mapping applications. This book assumes no previous knowledge or experience.

, Getting Started with QGIS 3 , covers the introduction and installation of QGIS 3, including a brief discussion of different versions. We will then look at opening QGIS, the layout of the software, the menus, and the toolbars.

, Loading Data , is where we will download and open various types of GIS data. We will talk about the different types of data and we will work predominately with the GeoPackage format. We will mention the GeoTIFF (raster) and Shapefile (vector) formats as well. We will use existing data to interact with the canvas via zoom/pan/selection. Finally, we will talk about saving a project and look at projections.

, Creating Data , will have you create a GeoPackage and build a simple project around it. We will create vector data. We will look at editing tools, as well as snapping and correcting errors. We will look at the attribute table and how to populate it. Finally, we will load in raster data and discuss how to create raster data.

, Styling Data , we will style our GIS data. We will look at styling options (there are many) for both vector and raster data. We will look at the Layer Styling Panel in QGIS.

, Creating Maps , will involve using data from the previous chapters to create maps. We will look briefly at labeling and examine, in more detail, how to create better and more aesthetically pleasing maps. Finally, we will look at the Atlas function.

, Spatial Processing , will see you use data in a GeoPackage to analyze your data. This chapter will be an introduction to the processing toolbox. We will look at individual tools and we will look at spatial queries on the data.

, Expanding QGIS 3 , looks at expanding QGIS. This will be focused on plugins, model builder, and a small amount of command-line work.