17 replies to this topic

[Pete]

Good bad or ugly?

I'm tucked away up north and I don't get to speak to other cartographers often! This was a rushed job and I was wondering what the cartographic world at large thought of my hasty efforts?

Thanks

 map.gif   519.42K   483 downloads

[Charles Syrett]

On what basis do you expect this to be appraised? What is the purpose of the map? There appears to be more than just relief here -- it looks like there are some roads, but no text, so we have no idea what it's trying to portray. Do you have a more complete version you can post? Or at least give us some idea of where this is headed?

Charles Syrett
Map Graphics
http://www.mapgraphics.com

Good bad or ugly?

I'm tucked away up north and I don't get to speak to other cartographers often! This was a rushed job and I was wondering what the cartographic world at large thought of my hasty efforts?

Thanks

[Pete]

Just appraise it for what it is: an example of relief shading.

I made this because someone had seen other maps I had made with the same sort of detail and wanted the same for their project. There is no annotation or other information because they are adding that themselves in GIS (the image they received from me was georeferenced) - I rather get the impression that the map is going to be used for something unsuitable or not at all ...

[Charles Syrett]

Well, as a relief image, it's certainly attractive enough. But it's not really a map, and can't be appraised as such, until the other elements have been added and a context given relative to its purpose. This relief image may work very well, and add to the attractiveness and purpose, of a particular kind of map. But on another kind of map, it may actually work against whatever it is that's being communicated. Until the other map elements are added, it's just that -- an element, like text, linework, etc.

This isn't just theory. Many times, in paid work projects, we're asked by clients to modify relief imagery because it's too strong, or it should be in the client's corporate colours, etc. etc. And yet the relief image by itself may be vivid and attractive.

Actually, the more I look at your image, the more I like it! I really would like to see the finished product.

Charles Syrett
Map Graphics
http://www.mapgraphics.com

Just appraise it for what it is: an example of relief shading.

I made this because someone had seen other maps I had made with the same sort of detail and wanted the same for their project. There is no annotation or other information because they are adding that themselves in GIS (the image they received from me was georeferenced) - I rather get the impression that the map is going to be used for something unsuitable or not at all ...

[Pete]

I really would like to see the finished product.

So would I ! I think this one is going to be a bit of an "unfinished symphony" for me I'm afraid!

Thanks for the input though. I'm not a cartographer but I've infiltrated some seminars in my time - I get what your saying about balancing the background image with whatever the actual map is supposed to show. It's something that seems to come up quite a lot and looking at some of my older maps I've made a few real clangers in my time!

[Charles Syrett]

Glad you "get it", Pete. It's pretty common these days for people not to understand that a map is a communications tool. Some people do understand it -- the current Verizon-ATT scuffle in the USA over the "there's a map for that" ad is an obvious example. Typically this is not understood by some GIS professionals who think that cartography is just a matter of making a "pretty" display of their data.

Charles Syrett
Map Graphics
http://www.mapgraphics.com

I really would like to see the finished product.

So would I ! I think this one is going to be a bit of an "unfinished symphony" for me I'm afraid!

Thanks for the input though. I'm not a cartographer but I've infiltrated some seminars in my time - I get what your saying about balancing the background image with whatever the actual map is supposed to show. It's something that seems to come up quite a lot and looking at some of my older maps I've made a few real clangers in my time!

[Pete]

Typically this is not understood by some GIS professionals who think that cartography is just a matter of making a "pretty" display of their data.

Charles Syrett
Map Graphics
http://www.mapgraphics.com

Oh god, don't! I nearly fell off my seat when I was at an E-Planning meeting and the developers of some webpublishing software proudly proclaimed that once we had uploaded all of our data we could use their desktop cartographic suite to add finesse with no fewer than x-number of hatch fills and y-number of dotted lines! I nearly cried !

I often have work forwarded to me with the instructions to "make it pretty" - maddening so it is!

[Charles Syrett]

That reminds me -- a while back I heard from a friend who's a musician that there's software available that can enable you to compose a symphony to a specified style. All you have to do is insert a theme or two, specify whether you want a Brahms symphony, or Tchaikovsky, or whatever, set a few preferences, and bang -- instant symphony, created by the armchair consumer.

Geez, how did we get by before all this technology?

Charles Syrett
Map Graphics
http://www.mapgraphics.com

Oh god, don't! I nearly fell off my seat when I was at an E-Planning meeting and the developers of some webpublishing software proudly proclaimed that once we had uploaded all of our data we could use their desktop cartographic suite to add finesse with no fewer than x-number of hatch fills and y-number of dotted lines! I nearly cried !

I often have work forwarded to me with the instructions to "make it pretty" - maddening so it is!

[Nick H]

Good bad or ugly?

I'm tucked away up north and I don't get to speak to other cartographers often! This was a rushed job and I was wondering what the cartographic world at large thought of my hasty efforts?

Thanks

Mull area, my turn next. Oops, sorry, wrong thread .

I like it, particularly the colour ramp. Is that tinted bathymetry too? I'd be interested to know what tools you used to do the rendering.

Regards,
Nick.

[dsl]

I worked as a drafter for a while, and one of my colleagues told me a story about when an engineer was showing clients around the office. He got to our department and said "These are the guys that make our drawings look pretty." Not only belittling the entire department, also basically saying the engineers did their own drafting work, which wasn't true either. If they did make their own drawings, we had to spend half our time cleaning up the mess.

Just thought I'd say - I feel your pain

I like the relief image. It's hard to see it in detail with the image. What are the lines that seem to glow throughout the image?

Cheers,
David

[Pete]

Mull area, my turn next. Oops, sorry, wrong thread .

I like it, particularly the colour ramp. Is that tinted bathymetry too? I'd be interested to know what tools you used to do the rendering.

Regards,
Nick.

Hi Nick -

I made the colour ramp ages ago and it seems to work for most areas - regions with higher peaks might want a pale grey colour stop tagged onto the end. It runs from 151,209,119 for low values, through 255,255,191 to 227,214,193 for high values.

There are a few other things going on in the colour ramp to marry up with the other data - where there is water the colours are more intense to suggest more lush vegetation (around the coast, mostly around large rivers, less so around smaller rivers and harly any around small streams), and the areas around roads are slightly yellowed to suggest thinner and poorer cover. I've varied the colour and density of trees with altitude in the past but it wasn't really necessary here.

The bathymetry is completely synthetic but half-ways convincing. I've attached a little animation of how it goes together. It's all based on a pale blue mask of the sea (mainly to cover up the dtm!) with the foreshore in pale yellow. Tidal and inshore water are added at the same time but treated differently: both have a pale-to-darker blue ramp from top left to bottom right to match the lighting of the terrain but the edge of the coastal water is masked to show the foreshore underneath and give the impression of shallow water. Another layer containing tital and inland water is added on top of that - both treated together - coloured light grey, heavily feathered and blended to burn the layers below to give the illusion of deeper water further from the shore. Finally (finally!) a layer of tidal water is added with a broken, lightly distorted edge to suggest waves on the shore.

 bathymetry.gif   688.91K   68 downloads

For a coastal zone policy map I had to digitise the bathymetry for the entire Loch Broom area - Loch Broom and Little Loch Broom. It took about a month of georeferencing Admiralty Charts and digitising to pull it off!

I just use Illustrator to put this sort of map together - all layers, blending modes, effects and opacity masks. It seems to work fine but if the map (or image ) is particularly large I'll use Photoshop to make the background and Illustrator to make the linework and then combine the two.

[Pete]

What are the lines that seem to glow throughout the image?

They be roads - hellish colours and iffy integration but it's what they wanted . Usually, I tend not to draw too much attention to roads unless I'm making a map about roads or where access is an important consideration.

[Michael Karpovage]

I like it!!!

[Nick H]

Hi Pete,

That's a lot of work you've done there and thanks for the animation. Most of all I like the terrain colours, which I have stolen to produce this sample. It's too bright and I've split the ramp into twenty-one colours, but this doesn't use them all.

Regards, N.

Attached Files

•  stolenOS.jpg   57.73K   85 downloads

[Derek Tonn]

I worked as a drafter for a while, and one of my colleagues told me a story about when an engineer was showing clients around the office. He got to our department and said "These are the guys that make our drawings look pretty." Not only belittling the entire department, also basically saying the engineers did their own drafting work, which wasn't true either. If they did make their own drawings, we had to spend half our time cleaning up the mess.

Just thought I'd say - I feel your pain

I like the relief image. It's hard to see it in detail with the image. What are the lines that seem to glow throughout the image?

Cheers,
David

A friend and former roommate of mine after college is a professional painter. Not the house painting kind...the gallery shows type of "painter." Anyway, that was always one of our favorite jokes to play on him back in the day. He'd slave away in the studio for 2-3 months on a painting...and when he FINALLY thought it was finished, he's call us over to have a look. We'd walk in there...maybe wearing turtlenecks and rubbing/scratching our chins for a while in our best "thinking man" impersonations, then finally exclaim:

"I love it...but next time, could you do it in green? The couch in my living room is green, and it would just tie the room together SO much better..."

After subsequently running for our lives and then taking 3-4 punches to the shoulders, we'd all have a good laugh about it. Sadly though, to me, that's a lot of what map design has become. "Next time, could you do it in green?" or "Why not slap a little ________ typeface in there as it's SO pretty!" Drives me insane. Well, maybe the 70+ hour work weeks the past 15 years is what drives me insane...but you get the idea.