It’s an exciting day for anyone who works with geospatial imagery, especially if your workflow involves editing images in Adobe Photoshop. We released a brand new version of Geographic Imager® – the plug-in for Photoshop that provides tools to make tasks like reprojecting, georeferencing, and terrain shading possible.
In addition to the new features like vector data import and Equal Earth projection support, we also improved many of the existing features that were already there (after all, Geographic Imager has improved the lives of cartographers for many years) and updated the interface so that it looks and feels just like the rest of the Adobe environment. Geographic Imager 6.0 is fully compatible with Adobe Photoshop 2019, and you can find the rest of the system requirements and compatibility requirements here.
Here’s a rundown of the new features you’ll find in Geographic Imager 6.0:
Vector Data Import
This long-awaited feature allows you to import a number of GIS vector formats directly on to your images. Whether performing a check to ensure accurate georeferencing, QA/QC or simply including supplemental data, these tools will improve the efficiency of your workflows. E.g. you can import your polygons from a shape file and convert them to pixel selections in one simple step!
Points and Text Import
Now you can provide geographic context to your images by importing geospatial text data and converting it to cartographic labels, or simply importing points of interest and overlaying them on top of your image in a few clicks. Datasets consisting of point or text features can be imported as Text Layers or by using the Count or Note tools in Photoshop. When using the Text tool, an attribute may be selected to generate the text and the imported text features are grouped together by layer.
When importing with the Note tool, you can control which attributes to include (or exclude) in the note itself. The name of the layer and the feature it belongs to are automatically added to the note.
When importing using the Count tool, no attributes are imported; however, the points are grouped together by layer for easy identification and management.
Similar to the import feature in MAPublisher (for Adobe Illustrator), the spatial and layer filters ensure that you only import what you need.
Line and Area Import
Polyline and polygon data can be imported as a single Photoshop path or each feature can be placed on its own path. The ‘Same path’ method is more beneficial when accessing individual features while the ‘Separate path’ method allows for more control over each feature. Here too, you can filter the data on import using spatial and layer filters, and you can choose attributes to use as path names.
Set your preference before importing for how to handle lines and areas that extend beyond the extents of the canvas; either import only data that intersects the canvas, crop to the canvas, or import everything and allow the data to extend outside of the map area.
Support for the Equal Earth Projection
The Equal Earth projection is gaining popularity as it is intended to provide a visually pleasing alternative to the Gall-Peters projection, which shows landmasses at their true size relative to each other but drastically distorts their shape. With Geographic Imager 6.0 you can reproject virtually any map using Equal Earth (or hundreds of other supported coordinate systems). All of the geospatial information will be recalculated and preserved in the new projection. It’s that easy!
Look and Feel
We’ve updated the Geographic Imager tools and dialog boxes to more closely match the look of the Photoshop interface. When you change the appearance settings in Photoshop, the appearance of the Geographic Imager toolbars and dialog boxes will change to match. Nice, right?
Simplified Chinese Interface
Working with tools in multiple languages can be confusing. So, when the installed version of Photoshop is configured to use the Simplified Chinese language option, you will be prompted to install Geographic Imager in the Chinese language to maintain the continuity of the Geographic Imager experience. For now, Geographic Imager in Simplified Chinese is available for Windows only.
Try Geographic Imager 6.0 today and see how easy it can be – when you have the right tools – to work with spatial imagery in Photoshop!
One of the most difficult steps in map design is choosing an appropriate colour scheme that helps the viewer to visualize data. The colour scheme should also contribute to the esthetic of the map. It can be a delicate balance. However, if you’ve worked in the realm of data visualization at any time during the past 20 years, whether it’s creating graphs, infographics or maps, there’s a good chance that you’ve used the ColorBrewer Color Advice tool to make colour selection easier.
The ColorBrewer Color Advice tool was created in 2001 by Cynthia Brewer, an American professor of Geography. The tool was updated in 2013 by Brewer and contributors from Penn State University and Axis Maps. It’s an online tool for cartographers that suggests various colour schemes and previews what a map using those colours might look like. Change up the colour schemes to see how easy it is to distinguish the colours from one another on a map. The tool also makes it easier to see how outlier colours stand out against the rest of the colour scheme.
Since the ColorBrewer Color Advice tool is so useful for cartographers, we made it easily accessible in MAPublisher so that you can experiment with colour schemes while styling your maps in Adobe Illustrator. All the color ramps are available directly from the Illustrator Swatch Library. To access the colour ramps, go to the Swatches panel, then Swatch Library > MAP Swatches > ColorBrewer RBG or ColorBrewer CMYK.
Check out the ColorBrewer colour ramps next time you’re styling a map in Adobe Illustrator, using the MAPublisher plug-in, and see what a difference the right colour scheme can make to the readability and esthetic of your map!
MAP Themes are a great tool for stylizing your data quickly and easily. Since we all love to make our workload easier, did you know that you can batch generate rules for your MAP Theme Stylesheets instead of creating them all individually? Batch generate rules allows you to easily categorize your data and stylize it as you see fit.
Check out this short video that demonstrates how to use the batch generate rules tool in MAP Theme Stylesheets in MAPublisher!
For more How It’s Done in MAPublisher videos, check out our YouTube channel!
Adding a north arrow to your map allows your map reader to better understand the direction of the map, and is a key tool for navigation. North arrows can be configured to a custom coordinate, such as magnetic north as well as true north.
Check out this short video that demonstrates how to create and configure north arrows in MAPublisher!
For more How It’s Done in MAPublisher videos, check out our YouTube channel!
This guest blog post was written by Tom Patterson — one of the creators of the Equal Earth Projection, and Natural Earth Data, (you can read more about Tom here). Learn how he used Geographic Imager for Adobe Photoshop to create two maps from Landsat 8 imagery.
I am a big fan of Landsat 8 satellite images as a resource when making maps. Typically, I use these free images taken every 16 days for verifying and updating other geospatial datasets. I also transfer Landsat textures to shaded relief art in order to better evoke a sense of the physical environment.
The examples that follow demonstrate how I have used Landsat imagery to enhance two maps. The first example is Prince William Sound, Alaska, a map that I am presently working on. The second example is a Landsat mosaic of the Big Island of Hawaii. Both of my examples will give you a general idea on how to integrate Landsat images into your cartographic workflow—using Avenza’s GIS plugins for Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator—with a few technical tips thrown in for good measure. For in-depth information about using Landsat in Photoshop, refer to this tutorial.
Prince William Sound, Alaska
Prince William Sound, in south-central Alaska, is a spectacular place to map. Its sheltered waters are bounded by the lofty Chugach Mountains, indented by deep fjords with tidewater glaciers, and dotted by forest-cloaked islands. The problem I am facing is out-of-date geospatial data because of the rapidly melting of glaciers. For example, the positions of glaciers, lakes, rivers, and coastlines available in the National Hydro Dataset (NHD) have changed considerably since these data were collected between 2008 and 2012. In order to make an accurate map—if only for this year—I have had to re-digitize these vector elements using Landsat images as a reference.
For this task, I used “LandsatLook Images with Geographic Reference” downloaded from the Earth Explorer website. These quasi-natural color images, which come pre-made from bands 7, 5, and 3, clearly depict water bodies, vegetation, bare earth, and glaciers. They were perfect for mapping the changing landscape of Prince William Sound.
National Hydro Dataset lines overlaid on a LandsatLook image in Adobe Illustrator. The lines do not match physical features on the more recent satellite image.
For reference, I used images taken on September 29, 2018, about the time when glacier melting ceases before the onset of winter. Images taken later in the fall are hampered by fresh snow cover and deep mountain shadows due to lower sun angles.
Because the LandsatLook images were in the same projection as my map, I could directly place and then register the images in the Adobe Illustrator file with MAPublisher. Had the projections been different, I first would have had to transform the LandsatLook images using the Geographic Imager plugin in Adobe Photoshop. Finally, I moved the LandsatLook images to a bottom layer and dimmed them for editing the lines with Illustrator’s Pencil tool. Using a Wacom tablet and stylus for editing lines greatly improved my drawing speed and accuracy.
If a 30-meter LandsatLook image lacks enough detail, you can increase the apparent resolution to 15 meters by applying panchromatic sharpening. Doing this will involve downloading all data bands that comprise the Landsat scene (a Zipped archive about 1 GB in size). Within this archive is Band 8, a grayscale image showing the same area as the LandsatLook image, but with double the resolution.
Coming into focus. A LandsatLook image before (left) and after (right) panchromatic sharpening.
Besides increasing detail, panchromatic sharpening also shifts colors.
Once Band 8 is downloaded, the first step is to enlarge the size of the LandsatLook image by 200 percent in Photoshop (Image/Image Size). Resample it using the Preserve Details (enlargement) option. Next, copy and paste Band 8 on top of the LandsatLook image. Then, in the Layers window, change the blending mode of the Band 8 layer from Normal to Luminosity. Finally, apply Curves adjustments to both layers until the tonal range of the combined image is to your liking. The pan-sharpened LandsatLook image will keep its georeferencing thanks to the Geographic Imager plugin.
Use the Layers window in Photoshop to apply panchromatic sharpening.
Selecting Luminosity blending mode for the Band 8 layer is key.
The Big Island, Hawaii
In 2017, I created a Landsat mosaic of the Big Island as a starting point for making two National Park Service maps: Ala Kahakai National Historic Trail and Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. I used the Landsat mosaic as a source for land cover textures—forest cover and historic lava flows (those that formed since 1800)—depicted on these maps. Compared to the Landsat mosaic, the map textures print very lightly in the interest of visual cleanliness.
Big Island Landsat mosaic (left) and the maps of Ala Kahakai National Historic Trail (middle) and Hawaii Volcanoes National Park (right) derived from it. Click here to see a larger version of the Ala Kahakai map (5 MB) and here for the Hawaii Volcanoes map (6.4 MB).
The first step in creating a Landsat mosaic was downloading the appropriate image data. In a perfect world, a mosaic of the Big Island would only require four 185-kilometer-wide Landsat images. However, because of persistent cloudiness on the windward side of the island, ten images were needed to complete a nearly cloud-free mosaic. Using images taken in previous years was a necessity. When selecting older images with fewer clouds, I looked for those taken at about the same time of year to keep the lighting consistent. I then used the Clone Stamp and Spot Healing Brush tools in Photoshop to carefully delete any unavoidable clouds and their shadows from the mosaic. Fortunately, the few clouds that remained were in remote areas far from the main focus of the final maps.
The Big Island is covered by four overlapping Landsat images.
Clouds be gone. The Landsat mosaic before (left) and after (right) editing.
The Landsat mosaic was assembled in Photoshop using Geographic Imager (File/Automate/GI: Mosaic). In the Mosaic window, I selected the Maintain Layers option to ensure that each Landsat image was placed on a separate layer. I then added layer masks to each image layer to piece together the ten images with the goal of avoiding clouds. Although the masks themselves with feathered edges looked like a messy jig-saw puzzle, they combined to produce a seamless Landsat satellite image mosaic.
Geographic Imager’s Mosaic window.
I created the Big Island mosaic in natural color by compositing Bands 4, 3, and 2 as red, green, and blue channels, respectively, in Photoshop. I also brightened the forested areas with LandsatLook mosaic placed on the topmost Photoshop layer and with the layer opacity reduced (in normal blending mode). The natural color procedure is explained in detail here.
With a Landsat mosaic of the Big Island completed, my next task was extracting the forest and lava textures and applying them to the Ala Kahakai and Hawaii Volcanoes maps. But that was an involved procedure that will have to wait for another blog.
One more thing …
Since making the Big Island mosaic in 2017, the Puna district experienced volcanic activity in 2018 that covered a large area in lava and reconfigured the shoreline. Although Puna is the cloudiest area on the Big Island, I was lucky to find a recent cloud-free Landsat image that I then used to update the mosaic. You can download a GeoTIFF of the updated mosaic here (120 MB). It is in the public domain.
Puna District, Hawaii, before (left) and after (right) the volcanic eruptions of 2018.
A scale bar is an important map element. Learn how easy it is to create a scale bar and customize it using MAPublisher. Scale bars can be edited easily after creation if updates or changes are necessary.
Check out this short video that demonstrates how to create and edit scale bars!
For more How It’s Done in MAPublisher videos, check out our YouTube channel!
Does your map have data that updates periodically? Maybe your river data gets updated each year, or the lake boundaries change. Typically, this means importing all the data into your map again as things change. To make your life easier, MAPublisher has the option to Manage Data Links, which allows you to check for updates to linked data and to automatically apply the updates to the map! You can even set your MAP Theme Stylesheets to apply to the new data so you don’t have to re-style it manually.
Say you’ve got a street map that you created last year. But, the city has updated the status of some of the streets. Some of the lanes have changed to local roads, and some of the minor arterial roads have been updated to major arterial. Instead of importing all of your data again, let’s create some data links (with linked MAP Theme Stylesheets) to update the map with ease.
Let’s focus on a small inset of this map so we can better see the changes that will happen. In this example, we’ll focus on an area where we know the ‘laneways’ have changed to ‘local’ roads. Our laneways are purple, and our local roads are in blue.
Now that we know what we’re looking for, let’s check out the data link itself. Your data link was automatically created when you imported your data. To access the data link, simply open the Manage Data Links in the MAP Views panel.
You’ll see that there is one data link, and that’s for the streets file we imported to make the map last year. To view the settings of the data link, click Edit (pencil icon) at the bottom-left of the dialog box.
Now you have the option to turn on the ‘Automatically check for updates when the document is opened’ setting, and (or) turn on ‘Apply any relevant stylesheet or dot density themes to layers on update’. In order for the stylesheet option to work, be sure to set the appropriate destination layer.
Once all the settings are set, check if there are any data updates by clicking the Check button in the Manage Data Link window.
After checking we can see that the Status has updated to say that our data is out of date. Click the Update button to update the data. A dialog box will pop up to confirm that this is indeed the data you’d like to update. Click Update to start the update. I know that some of the ‘laneways’ have been changed to ‘local’ roads, and so the attribute has been updated. Since I created the MAP Theme using those, we should see the changes.
Once the update is finished, we can see on our map that all of our ‘laneways’ have changed to ‘local’ roads, and they have updated with the MAP Theme Stylesheet as well.
Using the Manage Data Links option is an easy way to update your data when updates become available! Save yourself the time and hassle of importing data over and over again and use the data links to your advantage. If you’re looking for more documentation, be sure to check out our help pages.
Sometimes when you’re on the hunt for geospatial data, all the data you need isn’t available in common file formats. Luckily for us, lots of data is available on Web Map Services (WMS), Web Feature Services (WFS), ArcGIS Online, ArcGIS Web Services, and PostGIS.
Data can be imported into MAPublisher from all of these services. Importing from a server connection always retains the attributes and referencing that exists in the original data. In order to import from a server, an internet connection is required.
WMS and WFS services can be part of open data portals, or for private use. Both services allow you to add layers of data to your map in MAPublisher, but have different functionalities. WMS allows you to import raster data in a variety of formats, while WFS allows you to import vector data.
To import from WMS or WFS, go to Import or Multi Data Import, and choose Web Map Service, or Web Feature Service from the Format listbox. Once you’ve selected the source you’d like to use, load services from Avenza (pre-loaded services) or, import your own from a file.
Once you’ve selected your specific service, you can select the layers you’d like to import. Information such as layer name and description is included. There is also the option to use the spatial filter directly in the layer selection box, to use the extents of another layer to specify, or specify exact coordinates to limit the area being imported.
When importing data from WMS or WFS, you have the option to use the spatial filters, layer filters (attribute expressions included!) and simplification. These options allow you to filter the data to better suit your needs.
If you’re importing from ArcGIS Online, you’ll need an ArcGIS Online account, and an internet connection. Once you’re logged in, you’ll be able to select data to import. When importing data, you can choose Feature Layers, Map Image Layers, and Tile Layers to import.
When importing Feature Layers, you’re able to filter the data as well. Once you select the Feature Layer that you’d like to import, you can choose to ‘Edit Query’ and write a SQL statement to narrow down the features or attributes you’d like to import.
Once your query is made, your data can be imported.
If you want to import Map Image Layers or Tile layers, you’re able to choose a specific area to import, very similar to the Spatial filters available when importing other files. Using the ‘Select Area’ option can help reduce the size of the image you’re importing and helps crop data before you import it, so you’re not importing large amounts of data you’re not going to use.
In order to import from ArcGIS Web Service, you’ll need an ArcGIS Web Service URL. Previously imported services are saved in the Service URL drop-down list.
Lastly, if you’re importing data using the PostGIS option, you also have the ability to filter your data. You can specify a Spatial Filter, and manually set the coordinates for points 1 and 2.
This will allow you to import only the data you need! You can also filter your data using a SQL query, which will help reduce the number of features or attributes you need to import.
Importing from different servers can be a great way to get different data. The best part about importing from servers is that MAPublisher allows you to filter as you import, just as you can when importing other file types. Crop or query the data as you see fit, regardless of where the data came from!
The process of making maps can vary greatly depending on the cartographer and the purpose of the map. Tom Patterson, one of the cartographers behind the public domain data set Natural Earth and the popular website Shaded Relief, regards cartography as a creative process. He sees geospatial data as an artist would see paint on their palette. “They are raw materials from which the map is made,” says Patterson. “For me, the map making process starts with an online scavenger hunt for geospatial data, and ends with a visual depiction of the results of that scavenger hunt, a map.”
Patterson recently retired after 26 years with the U.S. National Park Service at the Harpers Ferry Center, located in West Virginia. Harpers Ferry Center is the media hub for the U.S. National Park Service, where most of the maps, exhibits, and publications for public consumption are produced.
Patterson is well-known for making maps with beautiful shaded relief effects, a technique that he has focused on for his entire career. It’s something he has a passion for and is a feature that he believes makes his maps unique. “When making a shaded relief, I go to great pains to portray the natural world in a beautiful and idealized manner, by combining shaded relief with land cover data, drop shadows, gradients and vignettes, with control and restraint,” says Patterson. “I ultimately want to create a shaded relief that readers will find attractive and which will blend harmoniously with the vector elements above.” Patterson prefers light, luminous colours for depicting terrain, and also tell a story. “A map is more than just a combination of points, lines, polygons, type and pixels. To me, a really good map is one that becomes much more than the sum of these parts,” he says. “Maps are an important form of communication, and they should effectively share the ideas of the cartographer to the map reader.”
When making graphically creative maps, you want to use tools that provide you with the most control. With MAPublisher, you can easily access and manipulate geospatial data using Adobe software. “MAPublisher and Geographic Imager bridge the gulf between graphical and GIS worlds.”
Patterson was an early-adopter of MAPublisher, a plug-in for Adobe Illustrator after learning about it in 1996 at the annual North American Cartographic Information Society (NACIS) conference. If you’ve ever used the Natural Earth data, you might be interested to know that most of the vector elements were created with MAPublisher and Adobe Illustrator.
He was also integral in the development of Geographic Imager when during a presentation about manipulating Digital Raster Elevation Model (DEM) data he commented that having a MAPublisher-like software for Adobe Photoshop would be useful. “My suggestion was heard by the President of Avenza, Ted Florence, who was in the audience. He put me in touch with the software development team at Avenza to brainstorm ideas about a GIS plug-in for Adobe Photoshop. Geographic Imager was the eventual result of our discussions.”
Along with his many contributions to the cartographic community, Patterson has held some important positions as the former president and current Executive Director of NACIS. Patterson has created accessible, open source data for global use (Natural Earth), he recently contributed to a new map projection that is taking the cartography and GIS world by storm; Equal Earth. “This equal-area pseudo-cylindrical projection has gained traction rapidly—it seems that cartographers and map users alike have had an unfilled need for world maps depicting countries at true size and presented in a pleasing manner,” he quips.
As an accomplished and respected veteran of the field, we asked that what advice Patterson would give to new cartographers, finding their way? “Seek out advice,” he states. “Map design and production is mostly a solitary task, and any map you create will seem easy-to-understand and logical to you since you are the one who made it. But, your readers may not see it that way,” says Patterson. “The easiest way to avoid these potential ‘failures to communicate’ is by showing drafts of your maps to people that are not family and close friends.”
Another tip that Patterson has for fledgeling cartographers, is to give readers a reason to slow down and read your map. “The trick in today’s media-saturated environment is to design a map that will catch your reader’s eye, ignite their curiosity, and draw them in. Give the most emphasis to the information you want them to remember long after they put down your map.”
We released an update today, to MAPublisher, our well-known cartography plug-in for Adobe Illustrator. This version features support for the Equal Earth projection, has a new look and feel that more closely matches Adobe Illustrator’s interface and includes new options for importing geospatial data into Illustrator.
Equal Earth Projection
Our partners, Blue Marble Geographics, have added the Equal Earth Projection to their GeoCalc library, the system that we use for data reprojection and coordinate transformations. This projection is now available in MAPublisher 10.4.
Want an Equal Earth map to experiment with? You can download MAPublisher-enabled Adobe Illustrator files at equal-earth.com
Crop to Artboard
In MAPublisher 10.4, when a matching MAP View is found while using the Import or Copy MAP Objects From tools, you can now choose to crop the added data to an artboard’s extents. This same functionality is available when specifying the destination MAP View in Multiple Data Import. Furthermore, if you don’t want to add data to the existing MAP View, you now have the option to specify which artboard the incoming data will be added to.
New Look
We’ve changed the look of the MAPublisher tools and dialogs to match the colours, fonts, and styles of the Adobe Illustrator interface. So as you use the MAPublisher tools, it feels more like you are still using Illustrator – which of course, you are! The MAPublisher tool and dialog styles will also change to match any changes in the Illustrator interface preferences. Note that the interface changes only apply to Adobe Creative Cloud versions of Illustrator, not CS6.
MAPublisher 10.4 Release Notes
Support for Equal Earth projection
New options available to auto-crop data when importing or copying MAP objects
Enhanced user interface matching Adobe Illustrator interface preferences
National Hydro Dataset lines overlaid on a LandsatLook image in Adobe Illustrator.
Coming into focus. A LandsatLook image before (left) and after (right) panchromatic sharpening.
Use the Layers window in Photoshop to apply panchromatic sharpening. 
Big Island Landsat mosaic (left) and the maps of Ala Kahakai National Historic Trail (middle) and Hawaii Volcanoes National Park (right) derived from it. Click 
The Big Island is covered by four overlapping Landsat images.
Clouds be gone. The Landsat mosaic before (left) and after (right) editing.
Geographic Imager’s Mosaic window.
Puna District, Hawaii, before (left) and after (right) the volcanic eruptions of 2018.
