Cartographer's Toolkit

Inkscape is a free open source graphics editor. I’ve been using it quite a bit this week and, while it’s just basic graphics work, it’s a lot of fun. Those of us who came to cartography via the traditional way, GIS, have a particular fear of graphics software. Getting over that, though, opens up a whole new world of possibilities. Ever wish it were easier to move labels around and experiment with different fonts? So much easier in Inkscape or Illustrator! Ever wish you could just quickly re-color an entire map so all the colors were lighter or darker, or apply a weird-effect, or change individual colors without having to click in a symbology editor? So much easier in Inkscape or Illustrator! (Though you can also do some great color effects in TileMill without much effort too.) Have an old map that needs a few tweaks but don’t want to open up the GIS project and re-connect all the datasources? Sometimes you can vectorize an old map like that and simply change it in a graphics program. So many uses for a good image editor, we should all be using one regularly.

(Flipside: cartographers who got into maps from the graphic design field can improve their analytical visualizations, ensure projection perfection, and a host of other things by checking out a GIS once in a while.)

Here I’ve used Inkscape’s Filter called “Moonerize” to change the colors of one of my existing LULC maps to something a bit more…out of this world. Yep, I had to say that.

More realistic, is this little exercise in updating one of the maps from the 1st edition of GIS Cartography. Here’s the original map, warts and all:

What is going on there? Yes, its meant to be a thumbnail but anyone can see that whatever those coastal features are don’t line up with the coasts at all. Almost all the 200+ maps in the book are saved as project files in a neatly organized spot so they’re easy to update. This one, though, was mysteriously missing. Thinking I could quickly re-create the thing using public data had me running into two issues (1) most of the government sites are down right now and (2) sea surface current data is pretty hard to find anyway. And, like I said, the data is nowhere to be found on my local machines either.

Inkscape to the rescue! I made the new basemap in ArcMap and exported it as an svg. Imported that into Inkscape. Then I imported the original image (sized the same as the basemap I just made) into Inkscape and converted the sea surface current data, those black triangles, into their own bitmapped layer (Path>Trace Bitmap), deleted that bad background, and simply superimposed the current triangles onto the new basemap. So much better now:

Figure 6.51 you are now good to go!