Satellite Print of San Francisco
The peninsula, the Golden Gate and the bay, captured from space.
Choose any date from 1984 to today and we'll find the real satellite capture of San Francisco from that moment — then print it on archival matte art paper, framed and ready to hang.
Create Your San Francisco Print
What San Francisco looks like from orbit
San Francisco makes an unusually good print because the geography does most of the composition for you. The city occupies the tip of a peninsula, water on three sides, with the Golden Gate strait as a hard notch in the coastline. The Presidio and Golden Gate Park read as green against the dense grey street grid, and the bay itself shifts colour with sediment and tide — south bay salt ponds sometimes appear in startling reds and greens.
What you can pick out in a San Francisco print
At 10 metres per pixel, these are the features that read clearly on a framed San Francisco print:
- The Golden Gate strait separating the city from the Marin headlands
- Golden Gate Park as a long green rectangle running to the ocean
- The Presidio’s forest at the northern tip
- Alcatraz and Angel Island in the bay
- South bay salt evaporation ponds, often vividly coloured
The best time of year for a clear image of San Francisco
September and October generally give the cleanest captures.
Counter-intuitively, summer is the wrong season — the marine layer that locals call Karl blankets the city through June and July. September and October bring the clearest skies of the year in the Bay Area.
This only matters if your date is flexible. If you're printing a specific day — a wedding, a birth, the day you got the keys — we work with that date and find the clearest capture available in that month.
Frequently asked questions
How much detail can I see in a satellite print of San Francisco?
Our San Francisco prints use Sentinel-2 imagery at 10 metres per pixel, which means every pixel covers a 10 m square on the ground. You can clearly make out parks, rivers, major roads, runways, harbours and the shape of neighbourhoods. You cannot make out individual houses or cars — this is a portrait of a place, not a street-level photo.
Can I choose the exact date?
Yes. Pick any date from 1984 to the present and we search the satellite archive for a capture of San Francisco from that moment. Dates from 2015 onward use Sentinel-2 at 10 m resolution; earlier dates use the Landsat archive at 30 m, which has a softer, more painterly quality.
What if it was cloudy over San Francisco that day?
Satellites only pass overhead every few days, and cloud does sometimes obscure the exact date. When that happens we find the clearest capture within the same calendar month and tell you which date we used — we never silently substitute a different month. The best conditions over San Francisco are typically september and october.
What sizes and finishes are available?
Framed prints come in 12×16", 18×24", 24×36" from $69 to $149, printed on archival matte art paper in a black frame. A full-resolution digital download is also available for $6 on its own or alongside a framed print.
Prints of other places
San Francisco prints are popular for first homes, startup milestones and coastal weddings — but we can print anywhere on Earth, not just the cities below.
Giving a San Francisco print as a gift
Your San Francisco, on the day that mattered.
Framed prints from $69. Digital downloads from $6.
Create Your San Francisco Print