Avenza Introduces Geospatial PDF and GeoPDF Import in MAPublisher 8.5 for Adobe Illustrator

NewsJune 2, 2011

– Easily import geospatial PDF and GeoPDF documents and automatically assign layers –

Toronto, ON, June 2, 2011– Avenza Systems Inc., producers of the PDF Maps app for iOS and geospatial plugins for Adobe Creative Suite, including Geographic Imager for Adobe Photoshop, is pleased to announce the release of MAPublisher 8.5 for Adobe Illustrator that has the ability to import geospatial PDF documents. This is the first time spatially-aware PDF documents can be opened in the Adobe Illustrator environment and have all of its contents be assigned to MAPublisher layers.

“We’ve done a lot of research, development and testing of spatial PDF technology to see what is capable and compatible with MAPublisher. We’re able to provide geospatial PDF and GeoPDF® import to Adobe Illustrator for our users and I believe they will be pleased that it will introduce a new range of uses and applications,” said Ted Florence, President of Avenza. “Not only will our users be able to take existing spatial PDF documents and work with them, but they will also be able to customize their own PDF maps and share them with their own customers and clients,” he added.

The import process opens a geospatial PDF or GeoPDF document at which time the user can assign content to MAPublisher layers and MAP Views while maintaining georeferencing and attributes. This process can be simplified by using the auto-assign option which scans the contents of the PDF document and assigns it to the appropriate MAPublisher layer. Alternatively, content can be manually assigned to MAPublisher layers.

Geospatial PDF import also works with geospatial PDF and GeoPDF files generated by third-party vendors including Esri ArcGIS, FME and TerraGo.

More about MAPublisher for Illustrator

MAPublisher for Illustrator is powerful map production software for creating cartographic-quality maps from GIS data. Developed as a suite of plug-ins for Adobe Illustrator, MAPublisher leverages the superior graphics capabilities of this graphics design software for working with GIS data and producing high-quality maps with efficiency.

MAPublisher 8.5 for Illustrator is available free of charge to all MAPublisher customers with an active maintenance subscription and as an upgrade for non-maintenance users at US$599. New licenses are US$1399. Academic, floating and volume pricing is also available. Prices include one year of full maintenance. Visit www.avenza.com/mapublisher for more details.

More about Avenza Systems Inc.

Avenza Systems Inc. is an award-winning, privately held corporation that provides cartographers and GIS professionals with powerful software tools for making better maps. In addition to software offerings for Mac and Windows users, Avenza offers value-added data sets, product training and consulting services as well as the PDF Maps app for viewing geospatial PDF files on iPhones, iPads and iPod Touch devices. Visit www.avenza.com for more details.

For further information contact:

Tel: 416-487-5116 ● Email: info@avenza.com ● Web: www.avenza.com

Avenza Releases MAPublisher 8.5 for Adobe Illustrator

NewsJune 1, 2011

– Newest release fully compatible with Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 –

Toronto, ON, June 1, 2011– Avenza Systems Inc., producers of the PDF Maps app for iOS and geospatial plugins for Adobe Creative Suite, including Geographic Imager for Adobe Photoshop, is pleased to announce the release of MAPublisher 8.5 for Adobe Illustrator. This release is now fully compatible with Adobe Illustrator CS5.1, part of the new Creative Suite 5.5 family.

“We’re delighted to release MAPublisher 8.5 to follow the latest update of the Adobe Creative Suite,” said Ted Florence, President of Avenza. “Our users will be happy to know that this release of MAPublisher will be fully supported and compatible with Adobe Illustrator CS5.1 on both Windows and Mac. We’ve also included some priority fixes from user requests,” he added.

Major features and new functionality are being planned and developed for the next release of MAPublisher.

Additional MAPublisher 8.5 features

Support for Adobe Illustrator CS5.1 (also known as Illustrator 15.1 in Adobe CS5.5) on Windows and Mac
Seamlessly open geospatial PDF and GeoPDF documents and assign content as MAPublisher layers
New spatial filter option when indexing map objects

More about MAPublisher for Illustrator

For further information contact:

Tel: 416-487-5116 ● Email: info@avenza.com ● Web: www.avenza.com

How to get Open Street Map data into Adobe Illustrator with MAPublisher

BlogJune 28, 2011

Edit: Updated with a new QGIS workflow (November 21, 2014)

The following tip is courtesy of Hans van der Maarel of Red Geographics.

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For many areas on Earth, OpenStreetMap is a viable alternative to commercially offered data sources. However, it is not always easy to process. This blog tutorial explains the steps needed to load OpenStreetMap data into MAPublisher.

1. Download and install QGIS, this is a free GIS application, available for Windows, Mac and Linux computers. QGIS now comes with built in tools for downloading Open Street Map Data.

2. Open QGIS and zoom in to an area of interest. Use the OpenLayers plugin for a basemap if you do not have any imagery or mapping of your own. Keep in mind that downloads from the OpenStreetMap website are limited in the number of exported objects, so for larger areas you will have to combine multiple downloads yourself, or look for other options (for example Geofabrik).

3a. Go to the Vector Menu and Choose OpenStreetMap and then Download data.

3b. Choose how you want the extent of the downloaded data to be defined. The easiest way is to use the Map Canvas.

4. Open your downloaded .osm file in QGis using the Add Vector Layer tool. Select all the Layers and choose OK.

This results are shown in several layers depending upon what is present in the extent you have downloaded. In this case there are points, lines, multilinestrings and multipolygons. Note that QGIS only imports features that fall completely within the extent specified. So make sure you choose an area larger than your actual area of interest to ensure it is completely covered.

5. Export these layers one by one. Right-click and choose “Save As, then ESRI shapefile”.

6. The shapefiles can be imported into Adobe Illustrator using MAPublisher. After reprojecting, scaling and cropping we’ve ended up with the raw OpenStreetMap vectors in Adobe Illustrator, with all attributes still maintained.

7. Once within the data is imported successfully, you may now use any of the MAPublisher and Adobe Illustrator tools to style and customize the map in any way you want.

OSM Layers loaded and themed in MAPublisher

Optimizing Adobe Illustrator Documents with MAPublisher for Geospatial PDF Export

BlogJune 3, 2011

Adobe Illustrator documents with GIS data can be exported to georeferenced PDF files thanks to the MAPublisher Export Geospatial PDF feature. A geospatial PDF is an Adobe Acrobat file that contains geospatial coordinates. With coordinates, users can view and interact with the PDF to find and mark location data. MAPublisher exports all the MAP Attributes data in an Adobe Illustrator document into the geospatial PDF. Attribute values can subsequently be accessed and searched in Acrobat 9 (and 8 with limitations).

In order to ensure the best interoperability and geospatial PDF output results from your MAPublisher documents, the following work practices are recommended:

Convert document color mode to RGB

To ensure predictable color results, it is highly recommended to convert the documents color mode to RGB prior to exporting to Geospatial PDF. This is advisable especially if generating geospatial PDF documents to be used in conjunction with the PDF Maps app for IOS devices. The document color mode can be changed in Adobe Illustrator through File > Document Color Mode > RGB Color.

Crop data to the required extents using the MAP Vector Crop Tool

Remove any extraneous data not required for the geospatial PDF document by cropping the map using the Vector Crop Tool (located in the Adobe Illustrator Toolbar). If necessary, exclude data from being cropped by locking the its the appropriate layers.

Remove unnecessary layers

Delete any map layers that are not required for the final PDF map document. This may include raster layers, hidden layers, and layers that are outside the mapping extent or art board. Not only will this decrease file size, it will also simplify your layers list and improve organization. Delete layers in the MAP Views panel or the Layers panel.

Preserve data contained within sublayers

If your document contains map data organized within sublayers it will be necessary to reorganize/move this data to it’s parent layer if you wish to preserve it when converting to and from geospatial PDF. This is necessary because data contained on sublayers are forced into their parent layer by the Adobe Illustrator PDF exporter. Layers are also required for importing a geospatial PDF back into MAPublisher in order to assign a schema.

Remove unused attribute information

Data sets, especially those available through various data portals and government agencies can contain attribute information not suited or required for our mapping need, or perhaps we are only interested in the geometry of the data for representational purposes. In this case it is advisable to delete any attribute information that does not fulfill a purpose as this will unnecessarily increase the resultant file size. Select your data, open the MAP Attributes panel, and click the Edit Schema button. You may delete and organize your attributes using this panel.

Assign MAPublisher attributes to Adobe Illustrator Object names

This recommendation is not necessary but may be useful in some cases. In MAPublisher the #Id attribute column is a unique identifier MAPublisher uses internally to associate attributes with unique pieces of art. By default the art will have a name of “path” or “compound path” however it may be desirable to tag the object with a unique identifier from an existing attribute column for the purposes of making it easier to differentiate art objects within the Acrobat tree list, for example.

To do this we can use the “Apply Expression” option in the MAP Attributes panel. Simply designate the #Name column as the “Apply to” option while entering the name of the attribute column you wish to derive the attributes from as the “Expression”. For example in the screeshot below we are renaming the art objects contained in the #name column with values stoed in the “ROUTE” column with the results being reflected in the artwork listed in Illustrator Layers panel.

Use the Simplify Line Tool

Reduce the number of vertices available in MAP Line and Area layers by using the Simplify Line tool (located on the MAPublisher toolbar). This differs from the Adobe Illustrator Simplify Path tool because it takes into account X and Y coordinates. The proximity value or simplification tolerance is based on the vertical difference between the begin-end line and points off a line, not the distance between anchor points on the line.

Geospatial PDFs derived from or include images should be generated as 72 DPI

This has particular relevance when dealing with geospatial PDF files, especially those generated with Geographic Imager. When a 200 DPI (dots per inch) georeferenced image is converted to a geospatial PDF, the image will be embedded in the PDF as a 200 DPI image. However, when displayed by PDF viewing applications such as Acrobat or Illustrator it will appear as a 72 DPI image. Due to this, on export, MAPublisher converts the referencing to 72 DPI format since it must be imported back as 72 DPI

Following the above recommendations should help ease the transition of your MAPublisher documents to and from geospatial PDF.

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Monthly Archives: June 2011

Avenza Introduces Geospatial PDF and GeoPDF Import in MAPublisher 8.5 for Adobe Illustrator

Avenza Releases MAPublisher 8.5 for Adobe Illustrator

How to get Open Street Map data into Adobe Illustrator with MAPublisher