In the Map Spotlight this time, we are highlighting a submission from the 2021 Avenza Map Contest. Serengeti in Motion by Riley Champine was a supplement to the December 2021 issue of National Geographic magazine, which featured several stories about the Serengeti and its wildlife. The map depicts the annual great migration of wildebeests, one of Earth’s last remaining large-mammal migrations. It also depicts the natural features of the landscape as well as the boundaries of several protected areas in the Serengeti region.
Each year over one million wildebeest (and other mammals such as gazelles and zebras) participate in a circular migration which starts in the southern Serengeti in Tanzania, loops through Serengeti National Park, and advances north toward the Masai Mara National Reserve in Kenya. Seasonal rains drive migration patterns as the wildebeest search for more grass to graze on. On this map, the migration has been illustrated using 340,000 points collected by an ongoing 20+ year biological study that uses GPS collars worn by wildebeest to track their location. The map also details the path of a single female wildebeest as she crossed multiple habitats, several rivers, and an international boundary (twice!) over the course of one year.
Select the images below to see a detailed look at Riley’s map
Making the Map
To create the terrain of the map, Riley used Geographic Imager to reproject and then mosaic aerial imagery of the Serengeti region. This terrain imagery could then be saved and imported into MAPublisher to constitute the background for the map. Some of the data was prepared in other programs such as Microsoft Excel, QGIS and Natural Scene Designer, and then easily imported into MAPublisher.
Riley used the MAP Selections tool to select location points by their date attribute, and group them into three main categories: rainy season (January to April), dry season (July to October), and migration periods (May to June and November to December). He also employed the use of MAP Stylesheet Themes to symbolize these points as well as other data on the map.
The MAP Point Plotter came in handy for Riley while creating the path travelled by the single female wildebeest on the map. The Simplify Art tool was also helpful in decreasing the detail in some line and area features, which helps in software performance when dealing with a large amount of data in one document.
Riley added the finishing touches to his map using his Stylesheet Themes to create legends as well as using the LabelPro add-on to easily place labels by attribute.
Learn more about the Avenza Map Contest and submit your entry here, and check out our other Map Spotlight blogs here!
At the annual Avenza User Conference a few months ago, one of our very own Avenza team members Riley Sweeney gave us a preview of the new Vector Basemaps tool for MAPublisher. As a member of the quality assurance team, Riley’s expertise was instrumental in the development of Vector Basemaps.
In this presentation, Riley gives us a sneak peek into the exciting future of MAPublisher. Her presentation sparks new ideas of how a map can be started, created, or even finished with the Vector Basemaps tool. Riley leads us through a demonstration of the functionality and workflow possibilities this new feature holds. The special thing about the Vector Basemaps tool is that you don’t need to be an experienced GIS user or cartographer to quickly get the hang of it. It is the perfect tool for those with Illustrator experience who are looking to get into the art of cartography. Hang tight, Vector Basemaps are coming very soon to MAPublisher!
The Avenza User Conference is an annual free virtual conference for map makers, GIS enthusiasts, and geospatial professionals worldwide who share a common interest in Avenza mapping technology. The conference includes a combination of virtual sessions led by experts who will share their experiences with Avenza mapping products.
The Avenza User Conference is an annual event that grows each year with incredible speakers and participants. Get inspired by mapping and industry professionals by joining us for #AvenzaUC2024. Register here for next year’s conference taking place on May 9th, 2024.
An important component of any map that contains roads is the stylization of such roads, and ensuring that the end user can understand the way they are displayed. To go even further, it may also be important for the user to be able to differentiate between the various road classifications they are viewing.
When a line layer containing road data is first imported into MAPublisher, all roads appear with the same appearance regardless of their class or type. However, with the help of MAPublisher and some native Illustrator tools, you can easily turn your roads from this:
…into this:
Getting Started
As stated above, this workflow uses tools from both Adobe Illustrator’s native toolbar as well as the MAPublisher extension. More specifically, MAP Stylesheet Themes and MAP Selections along with the Graphic Styles and Appearance panels.
This process will only work if your road data contains an attribute on which you can base classification rules. For example, my road data has an attribute column named “CLASS” with four categories: Primary Road, Primary Ramp, Secondary Road, and Local Road. I have previously created a graphic style for each road type and saved them in a template document titled RoadStyles.ai. In my current document, I have simply imported these styles to the Graphic Styles panel by using the menu option for “Open Graphic Style Library”. For more information about the Graphic Styles panel, check out its Adobe help page.
Controlled Access Highway:
Controlled Access Ramp:
Major Road:
Minor Road:
These styles have all been created using the Appearance panel to overlay a stroke with a smaller weight over a stroke with a larger weight of a different colour. These road styles are usually referred to as cased roads. For information about the Appearance panel, check out its Adobe help page.
Now that the graphic styles have been created/imported, I can apply a MAP Stylesheet Theme I have created based on the road types.
Cleaning Up with Groups
Now that the main styles have been applied to each road class, we must perform a few more steps to perfect the appearance of our roads. If you zoom in closely on the roads you may notice that intersecting roads do not appear as seamless as you would like. Don’t worry; there is a way to transform your roads from looking like this:
…to this:
Why does this happen?
This occurs because MAP Stylesheet Themes apply the graphic styles at the path level. To look like intersections, each road classification must become one object, whether by being grouped or by turning the various paths into a compound path. Grouping is the preferred method for managing these objects since a compound path will delete the attributes of all paths that are being compounded. For example, if I turned my road types into compound paths, the street names would be turned blank. This would make automatic labeling with MAPublisher LabelPro impossible. Regardless, using groups instead of compound paths will avoid this issue, as grouped objects retain their original attributes.
Grouping Road Classes
In order to group our road classes we will have to select the road paths belonging to each class. We can use MAP Selections to individually select each of our road classes. The expressions we created when defining our MAP Stylesheet Theme rules can be saved as Named Expressions to be used again through the Expression Library. Once selected the street classes can be grouped using CTRL+G on your keyboard, right-clicking and selecting “Group” or selecting Object > Group from the menu. The final step is to re-apply the graphic style appropriate to each group using the Adobe Graphic Style panel.
If we want to get technical here regarding what has happened to our artwork, using the Appearance panel we can see that each of the paths we initially imported now has a graphic style applied to it on two levels: at the path level (done through MAP Stylesheets) and at the group level (done by grouping and applying a graphic style to the group). It is possible to symbolize our artwork even further, at the layer level, by selecting the target icon for our roads layer. If desired we could apply a transparency at the layer level that would supersede all graphic styles used on objects in the layer.
Our artwork now has symbolization that suggests intersections, giving our road map a much neater appearance.
Finishing Touches
Now that our roads are grouped together, they are much easier to manage in the Illustrator layers panel.
Groups can be easily arranged using the Layers panel. Many cartographers prefer to arrange their roads with major highways at the top and descending to reach local roads at the bottom of the hierarchy. Groups also make it easier to move objects between groups if necessary: simply select the path in the Layers panel and drag it to another group.
With our groups, we can now apply some tweaks to finish off their appearance. There will be many instances where we will need to override the intersection appearances that result from grouping. For example, in the image below we have ramps that definitely do not intersect as suggested by their grouping.
To correct this error, we can select the road lines that will pass over the others and, using the Layers panel, drag the paths from their group. This will eliminate the implication on the map that these roads actually intersect.
The ungrouped roads can now be arranged relative to the other paths until we find a layout that is the truest representation of the road network.
Using MAP Stylesheet Themes to Create a Legend
So why do we use MAP Stylesheet Themes if we must manually group the objects again after use? For a few reasons: it keeps us organized, it allows us to add the Named Expressions to the Expression Library, and most importantly, we can use these MAP Stylesheet Themes to automatically generate a Legend for us that reflects our Stylesheet rule names.
A deeper understanding of the Adobe Illustrator toolbox can go a long way in helping you use MAPublisher to leverage the full potential of your GIS datasets to create customized road styles. Happy mapping!
Be sure to check out our tutorial for Creating Line Stylesheet Themes as well as the video tutorial. This tutorial also includes the instructions for creating cased roads!
Last month at the annual Avenza User Conference, we had the pleasure of hearing from Robert Simmon, a renowned cartographer and science communicator who specializes in visualizing imagery from satellites. Robert is currently approaching a decade working for Planet Labs, where he helps create near-daily medium-resolution imagery of the Earth, maps Planetary Variables and designs bespoke graphics for media. Prior to his work at Planet Labs, he co-created the NASA Earth Observatory, a website dedicated to communicating Earth and remote sensing science. His work has appeared in newspapers, magazines, and websites, including the front page of the New York Times and the cover of National Geographic. He is also known for crafting the Blue Marble featured on the original Apple iPhone.
In this presentation, Robert demonstrates his workflow to import high-bit-depth scientific data into Adobe Photoshop and transform it into accessible & readily displayable imagery. These techniques rely on Geographic Imager‘s unique capabilities to exploit the georeferencing embedded in common data formats. This unlocks Photoshop’s powerful image processing tools which can produce higher-quality output than typical GIS and image processing software, all while maintaining the precise location of every pixel. The presentation touches on processes such as reordering bands, blending scenes, color correction with curves, vibrance enhancement, and sharpening.
The Avenza User Conference is an annual free virtual conference for map makers, GIS enthusiasts, and geospatial professionals worldwide who share a common interest in Avenza mapping technology. The conference includes a combination of virtual sessions led by experts who will share their experiences with Avenza mapping products.
The Avenza User Conference is an annual event that grows each year with incredible speakers and participants. Get inspired by mapping and industry professionals by joining us for #AvenzaUC2024. Register here for next year’s conference taking place on May 9th, 2024.
The Day 13 theme of the #30DayMapChallenge was more of a question: can you create a map in 5 minutes? Well, we were up for the challenge! Here at Avenza, we used this as an opportunity to teach our marketing team (with limited GIS experience) the basics of cartography. In the weeks leading up to this day, we taught them how to perform a few simple tasks in MAPublisher to create a basic map of South America.
Simplified Steps for Creating a Map
We broke down the process of making this map into five general steps for the purpose of simplicity.
Import Data
The first step was to import country area data using the Import button on the MAP Toolbar. After import, the Artboard tool was used to adjust map boundaries to the desired position. The MAP View Editor could also be used to fine-tune the movement of the data.
Stylize Data
The second step was to add a stylesheet to the countries using the MAP Themes button. From here a stylesheet was created by clicking the Add button and creating an area stylesheet. The stylesheet editor was then opened, and the style was assigned to the country layer. The Batch Generate Rules… button was very helpful in quickly creating categories for the data based on the desired attribute. For example, one map was created using the Population Density attribute. The categories were assigned a style based on a pre-selected colour ramp. Finally, a rule was created to create a grey style for the part of North America that attaches to South America.
Add a Legend
Using the hamburger menu button in the MAP Themes panel, step three included creating a legend for the map. Removing Rule 1 from the list and adding a title (if desired) were the only extra steps necessary here.
Add Labels
In step four, the goal was to add a label for the country names. We used LabelPro for this to make it quick and simple. We enabled leader lines to ensure all countries were labeled even if the label was too large.
Add Finishing Touches
Finally, we added a title and supplemental text and objects to the map. All of these elements were added to the document using native Adobe Illustrator tools.
Our process of creating a map in 5 minutes was recorded and condensed into a 30-second video. See it, and the other resulting maps, below!
Tomorrow is November 1st, which means it’s time to start another year of the #30DayMapChallenge! The challenge is a Twitter-based daily map challenge which involves posting a map that suits the daily theme each day and tagging it with the hashtag #30DayMapChallenge. It was first started by Topi Tjukanov in 2019 and has been growing in popularity ever since. In 2021, the challenge ended up with over 9,000 submitted maps!
The daily themes for the challenge are posted in early October each year, giving participants about a month to get a head start on planning some of their maps. Some examples of daily themes include maps that show colours, hexagons, fantasy, or islands. Some of the themes also function as a challenge, such as creating a “bad” map, the 5 minute map challenge, as well as a map that is created using new tools outside of your comfort zone.
This year, we’ll be sharing some of our own maps created by Avenza employees, and highlighting some on-theme maps from the Avenza Map Store! We’re looking forward to seeing all of the interesting and innovative maps floating around the #30DayMapChallenge hashtag on Twitter. Remember, participants can post as many or as few maps as they wish. At the end of the day, it comes down to engaging in the ever growing community of cartography-lovers.
We’ll see you on Twitter tomorrow for the Day 1 theme: points! Happy mapping!
For more information about the #30DayMapChallenge – including the 2022 daily themes, visit the official website or check out the GitHub repository!
Today we are shifting the spotlight to Geographic Imager, our plugin for Adobe Photoshop. This blog features the usage of the Terrain Shader tool, which was featured in our promotional video at the Adobe MAX conference last week!
Terrain Shader is great for adding dimension to your maps. It is commonly used to perform shaded relief, a method for representing topography on maps in a natural and intuitive way. The tool provides options to apply colourization schema and shaded relief to supported elevation data formats, such as DEM or SRTM files. Terrain Shader has several different settings that users can customize to create a shaded relief that best suits their needs.
In the spirit of Halloween, we’ve decided to show off the Terrain Shader tool by creating a fun shaded relief using a colourization schema that resembles candy corn!
I’m starting with a DEM file covering a portion of Jasper National Park in Alberta. DEMs are imported by default using a black-white gradient, with black representing the lowest elevation and white representing the highest.
Next, you can open the Geographic Imager panel and select the Terrain Shader button.
There are many different settings available in the Terrain Shader tool to customize your design. First, ensure the Colourization schema option is checked and set to “Apply colour map” which enables you to apply colour to your DEM. You can also choose the Method to stretch the colour map over a preset group of values or simply apply your colour ramp from the highest and lowest point on the DEM.
Next, you want to select any Gradient from the list and press the pencil icon to open the Colour Map editor window. From this window, you can set and adjust three different colour stops to represent the three candy corn colours you wish to apply to your map.
When you are finished, be sure to click Save and save it as a new colour map, titled appropriately (in my case, it was “Candy Corn”).
Finally, select Apply shaded relief and adjust the light source angle and intensity if desired. Shaded relief is what adds texture to your DEM to make it look like terrain.
Click OK, and you have successfully created your very own candy corn mountains! This is just one fun way to make use of the terrain shader to add a personal touch to your map. See the final result below, as well as a few other examples of colourization schemas that can be used to add a more realistic feel to your terrain.
For more information about the Terrain Shader tool, check out our related Support Centre articles and tutorial!
We’re excited to announce that the 2023 Avenza Student Map Contest has now concluded. Submissions for the contest were accepted from December 1st, 2022 to April 30th, 2023. Over the last month we have selected the winner. As such, congratulations are in order for the grand prize winner!
Grand Prize Winner
The Impact that Created the Nickel City Justin Jeff Fleming College
From the creator: “My map displays the terrain and geology around the Sudbury Basin that was created by a meteorite impact. Furthermore, it shows the active mines around the Sudbury Basin using a proportional dot technique based on the mines production. Also it shows a timeline of the mining history in the Sudbury area. It will be used to gain insight and understand the significance of the Sudbury Basin.”
Justin used the MAPublisher import tools to import prepared data from other sources for the terrain and mine locations. The MAP Themes tool was used to create proportional dot symbols for the active mines and the MAP LabelPro add-on was used to label and style the active mines. Finally, Justin used the Layout tools to add and style the scale bar.
Congratulations again to Justin! Stayed tuned for the open version of the Avenza Map Contest starting soon…
In this Map Gallery Spotlight, we are highlighting another submission from the 2021 Avenza Map Competition. This bilingual map of the area around the Dubai Healthcare City Metro Station was created by Zain Madathil for Explorer Publishing. It is one of nearly 4,000 individual maps he has created for the Dubai Public Transport Map project.
The map is easy-to-use and informative, providing information in both English and Arabic, and is accompanied by a detailed map index to categorize and highlight important points of interest and nearby attractions surrounding the station. The map utilizes careful design elements to make interpretation easy, including colour-coded icons and building footprints, platform-based direction markers, and a 500m radius walking distance indicator.
Select the images below to see a detailed look at Zain’s map
Making the Map
Madathil received data from his client in the form of points, lines, and polygons, and used the Avenza MAPublisher plugin for Adobe Illustrator to design the map. He used the Multiple Data Import tool to easily get all of his data into MAPublisher with a single import process. MAPublisher maintains the georeferencing of the data imported from almost any source, which allowed Madathil to focus on customization rather than data placement.
With nearly 4,000 maps in the series, the MAP Themes tool was important for Madathil to maintain consistent labelling across all maps in the series. After creating a custom branding MAP Theme stylization, Madathil was able to apply this to each map in the series as necessary. He also used the Map Attributes Panel to aid with customization of the attribute data associated with his map features.
Madathil simplified his labelling process by using our MAPublisher LabelPro add-on, which also allowed him to ensure consistency across the map series. LabelPro allowed Madathil to customize the style of his labels and apply rules to ensure they did not overlap important features or other labels. It also eased his application of both Arabic and English labels on the map.Finally, Adrain added an Index Grid and created an index and legend to complete the reference guide for the map using the Layout Tools.
For more information on using the MAPublisher LabelPro add-on, please visit our Support Centre section for this tool.Check out our other Map Gallery Spotlight blogs here!
We are showcasing another great submission from the 2021 Avenza Map Competition. This heritage-style decorative map of the Barossa Region of South Australia was created by Stewart Adrain of Custom Mapping Services. The map shows the wine regions, vineyards, cellar doors, and topography of the area. It is the final map in a series of heritage-style cellar wall maps Adrain has created of the wine-growing regions of South Australia. The Barossa Valley wine region is particularly notable for its Shiraz variety.
Adrain’s map uses 10-meter contours to display the topography of the Barossa region. Regional wineries are named and indicated on the map, with their locations shown by a point representing their cellar doors. The various localities of the Barossa region are also labelled, and the two main wine regions as well as the High Eden Subregion are displayed using colourful borders. The supplemental text of the map features the total area of vineyards in each wine region, as well as the wine varieties they produce. This map as well as the others in Adrain’s Cellar Wall map series can be purchased for print from Meridian Maps.
Select the images below to see a detailed look at Stewart’s map
Making the Map
Adrain completed his data processing with QGIS and then used the Avenza MAPublisher plugin for Adobe Illustrator as a finishing tool to design the final map product. He used the Multiple Data Import tool to easily get all of his data into MAPublisher with a single import process. MAPublisher maintains the georeferencing of the data imported from other GIS software, so he could quickly turn his focus to the map’s stylization rather than data placement. Adrain used MAP Themes to easily achieve his stylization, which allowed him to automate much of the design process of the map, keeping the theme of this map in line with the other maps in the series.
Adrain simplified his labelling process by using our MAPublisher LabelPro add-on. This allowed him to create label themes based on the layer they were being applied to. Since this map was the last in the series, these themes were already created so he could simply import his settings from his previous maps to save time. The LabelPro feature is convenient for both time-saving purposes and ensuring consistency across maps in a series.
Finally, Adrain added a scale bar using MAPublisher and completed the finishing touches to his map with native Adobe Illustrator tools.
For more information on using the MAPublisher LabelPro add-on, please visit our Support Centre section for this tool.Check out our other Map Gallery Spotlight blogs here!
