Red Geographics Feed

FME cursussen

Red Geographics — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 11:06:00 +0100

Red Geographics will be offering two FME training courses in April 2012:

FME Starter, April 12th and 13th

FME Advanced, April 17th

These courses will be taught in Dutch, by Hans van der Maarel of Red Geographics, who is a Certified Trainer and Certified Professional.

If you are interested in attending either of these courses please contact Red Geographics.

FME 2012 is uitgebracht

Red Geographics — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 16:07:00 +0100

FME 2012 is released

The latest version of FME, FME 2012, has been officially released. This new version offers a lot of improvements and new functionality.

A short overview of the most interesting new options:

Reading support for Top50NL In addition to Top10NL the Top50NL data format (used by the Dutch Cadastre) is supported.
Reading support for INPSIRE
ExpressionEvaluator dialog has been improved.
AttributeCreator now offers functionality that used to be spread out over several transformers.
XML processing has improved a lot over older versions.
FME Workbench has received a lot of interface improvements.

For a complete list please visit the Safe Software website.

Of course you can contact Red Geographics if you want more information on FME and how it can be applied to your organisation.

Infomiddag MAPublisher en FME

Red Geographics — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 10:46:00 +0100

Infosession MAPublisher and FME

On March 2nd and 16th 2012 Red Geographics will organise a free infosession on MAPublisher and FME. The recently introduced FME Auto plug-in for MAPublisher allows data to be transferred from FME to MAPublisher right away, removing the need for temporary files. The added benefit is that MAPublisher can now read all of the (vector) formats that FME offers.

This free infosession, which will be in Dutch, will highlight the new options this plug-in offers for a cartographic workflow.

If you are interested in attending, please contact Red Geographics.

Avenza lanceert MAPublisher 8.6

Red Geographics — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 12:15:53 +0100

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 8.6 for Adobe Illustrator. In addition to a large number of new features and enhancements to existing ones, this release is the first version of MAPublisher to offer support for Safe Software FME Desktop product.

With the new (extra cost) MAPublisher FME Auto add-on, users of MAPublisher and FME Desktop can automatically transfer the results of an FME workflow directly to the MAPublisher and Adobe Illustrator environment complete with styling and layout. In addition MAPublisher users can now import the FME FFS file format. The bridge between the data processing environment of FME and the design/publishing environment of Adobe Illustrator and MAPublisher has finally been built.

"We're delighted to release MAPublisher 8.6 and to provide so many new and sought-after features to the Adobe Illustrator cartographic and GIS environment,” said Ted Florence, President of Avenza. “We are extremely pleased to announce our association with Safe Software to bring support for both FME and the FFS file format into the MAPublisher/Illustrator environment. The fact that FME users can now easily and effortlessly move their data into the MAPublisher design environment is an extremely powerful innovation,” he added.

Major New Features of MAPublisher 8.6

Import FFS Format - import support for Safe Software’s FFS file format (windows only)
MAPublisher FME Auto - direct the results of an FME process directly to the MAPublisher environment complete with styling and layout (add-on MAPublisher FME Auto license required. Windows only).
Crop to Shape - improved Vector Crop functionality. Now crop using exact location and dimensions.
Merge Layers - combine MAP Layers of the same feature type into a new MAP layer based on attribute values.
MAP Locations - create temporary spatial place marks for use with other MAPublisher tools and functions.
Area Plotter - create new rectangle or ellipse polygons on MAP layers using page or world coordinates.
Improved KML/KMZ export - easily create waypoint layers for use in the PDF Maps iOS app.
Create Halo - create halo graphic styles and apply halos to MAP layers.
Scale and Rotate by Attribute - scale and rotate art objects using specified values or the target layer's attributes.
MAPublisher Log - view detailed processing information about used MAPublisher tools and operations.
And many more enhancements, user interface improvements and bug fixes.

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 8.6 for Illustrator is available free of charge to all MAPublisher customers with an active maintenance subscription and as an upgrade for non-maintenance users. Please contact Red Geographics for a price quote.

FME Certified Trainer

Red Geographics — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 16:02:00 +0200

Safe Software grants FME Certification to Red Geographics

October 7th 2011, Zevenbergen, The Netherlands: In addition to being a FME® Certified Professional, Hans van der Maarel of Red Geographics is now also a FME Certified Trainer.

The Safe Software FME Certification Program is a technical skill credentials program that identifies high quality, knowledgeable FME consultants and trainers. There are two designations available: FME Certified Professional and FME Certified Trainer. Individuals who receive these prestigious designations have demonstrated deep expertise in FME and the ability to meet the quality standards set by Safe Software.

“I am very pleased, and proud, to receive this recognition from Safe Software and join the ranks of the FME Certified Trainers”, said Hans van der Maarel, owner of Red Geographics, “This indicates that the services offered by my company are highly appreciated and it shows our continued commitment to FME.”

“We are extremely happy to formally recognize Hans’s skills as an FME Certified Trainer”, said Don Murray, Safe Software’s President. “Hans now joins an exclusive network of FME experts around the world, with a proven track record for delivering high quality FME training courses.”

About Red Geographics
Established in 2004, Red Geographics operates in the fields of GIS (Geographic Information Systems), geographical data, Spatial ETL, 3D visualisation and digital cartography, offering consultancy and training, performing data translation and transformation services as well as creating both 2D and 3D maps and visualisations. Our goal is to help our clients optimize the way they work with geographical data and information, thereby increasing gains from using this information.
In addition to these services, we are also a distributor of several software products aimed at the GIS/Cartography market, including FME

About Safe Software and FME
Established in 1993, Safe Software is the maker of FME, the only true spatial ETL (extract, transform and load) platform that enables organizations to use and leverage spatial data in any format or application. Today, FME is used by thousands of customers in over 116 countries in a wide variety of industries.

FME provides the most extensive format support and powerful transformations to help organizations efficiently address the complete spectrum of spatial ETL tasks - from data translation and transformation to federation and distribution. Used by most GIS, CAD, ETL, and DB vendors, FME has emerged as the de facto integrated spatial ETL solution. FME is available in desktop and server solutions, and is also easily integrated into third-party CAD and GIS solutions, as well as most IT environments. Visit www.safe.com for more information.

FME is a registered trademark of Safe Software Inc. All other product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

MAPublisher en FME

Red Geographics — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 15:53:00 +0200

Avenza is currently working on a project that involves integrating MAPublisher into FME Workbench workflow that would allow users that have a licensed FME installation on their machines to export their data directly into MAPublisher.

They are also contemplating adding direct support for Safe's FME Feature Storage format (FFS) into MAPublisher that is not tied to an FME installation on the same machine. This will provide FME users with the ability to import data exported from the FME Workbench into Illustrator / MAPublisher using this relatively lossless format rather than going through other formats such as ESRI shape that have various format-specific limitations.

The MAPublisher users will be able to import FFS files that could be generated on a different machine without having the FME Workbench installed/licensed on the computer that hosts AI/MAPublisher, assuming the data was generated with a compatible version of the Workbench.

If you are a current MAPbulisher and FME user, would you find this additional format beneficial for your workflow?

Cursusaanbod November 2011

Red Geographics — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 14:46:00 +0200

Red Geographics will be organising a number of training courses in November:

November 9th : GML Introduction
November 10th and 11th : GML Hands On
November 17th and 18th : Digital Cartography with Illustrator and MAPublisher

All these courses will be offered in Dutch. For more information, please contact Red Geographics.

Nieuwe FMEpedia

Red Geographics — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 10:05:00 +0200

Safe Software has relaunched FMEpedia, the wiki about their flagship product FME. This new version offers an improved search functionality and the articles are grouped into categories such as samples, documentation, FAQ etc. The new FMEpedia also integrates better with the other systems used by Safe Software.

So head on over and check it out!

Arcering in Illustrator

Red Geographics — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 11:12:00 +0200

How to create hatch patterns in Illustrator

The following instructions will guide you through the creation of hatch patterns in Adobe Illustrator, both horizontal/vertical hatches as well as hatches at a 45 degree angle.

Horizontal/vertical

Draw a rectangle that has the width of a single stripe as well as the desired color. Duplicate it and place the copy at the desired "gap" distance from the original. Repeat a few times.
Draw a square (and it's very important that you use a square, this is how you can ensure a consistent repeating pattern) that goes from the center from one of your stripes to the center of the one on the other end. You can turn on the smart guides to make this easier, and you may have to manually specify the size. Make sure this square has no fill and stroke.
Select the stripes and square and use the Pathfinder "Divide" tool (bottom row, leftmost button) on them. Ungroup and then select the parts of your stripes that fall outside the square.
Select the remaining bits of stripes and drag them to the Swatches pallette. You now have a swatch for this particular kind of hatching.

45 degree angle

Repeat step 1 from above, make sure you have an odd number of stripes. Then select the stripes and rotate them to a 45 degree angle.
Once again draw a square, from the center of your "top" stripe to the center of your "bottom" stripe.
Repeat steps 3 and 4 from above.

Unfortunately these patterns are not editable, so if you want a different color or stripe width, you'll have to repeat this entire process.

Tijdreizen via kaarten

Red Geographics — Thu, 26 May 2011 16:18:00 +0200

As a cartographer, I love poring over old maps and over time, I've built up a nice little collection of old maps and atlases. For me, this is a way of travelling back in time as well as a great reminder of what has happened in the past decades, both politically as wel as scientifically.

Clicking an image will take you to Flickr, where a higher resolution version is available.

No Pluto

Plate from a 1921 (German) atlas, showing a solar system that ends at Neptune (Pluto was not discovered until 1930)

Blank spots on the map

Maps from a 1921 (German) atlas showing large parts of the North and South Pole areas as unexplored (unerforscht)

Short-lived countries

Countries come and go, and some are particulary short-lived, such as the Ukrainian People's Republic, which was in existence from 1917 until 1921.

The fall of the Ottoman Empire at the end World War One sparked a number of short-lived states on the Arabian Peninsula.

For a brief period between 1958 and 1961 Egypt and Syria formed the United Arab Republic. A few years ago I got a 1960 Dutch atlas showing this union as a birthday present from a friend.

Shifting boundaries

Not only do countries come and go, they often changed shape in the process. After World War One, Germany lost territory to Poland, France, Denmark, Belgium and Russia. The 1921 German atlas I recently obtained still includes those territories on the thematic maps.

Colonial Empires

Apart from two world wars, the decolonisation of the second half of the 20th century was another large source of work for cartographers.

This 1960 map of central Africa shows the region in a state of change. Some countries have already gained independence (Kenya), others still not (Belgian Congo), others were right in the process ("Former French Equatorial Africa"

This 1921 (German) map of South East Asia shows both former colonies, colonies changing hands (the eastern half of New Guinea and the Bismarck Archipelago were German but after WW2 administered by Australia) as well as unexplored areas (the interior of New Guinea)

There are many more maps out there that I could highlight, but for now I leave you with these.

Praktijkdag Kartografie

Red Geographics — Mon, 16 May 2011 09:48:00 +0200

I am trying to find out how much interest there is in a Dutch version of the Practical Cartography Day concept, a day filled with presentations by and for cartographers.

If you are a cartographer in The Netherlands, please fill in the questionnaire.

MAPublisher 8.4 opfrismiddag

Red Geographics — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 10:40:00 +0100

On April 15th, Red Geographics will organise a MAPublisher 8.4 refresher session. Through a number of presentations the new functionality of MAPublisher 8.4 will be explained. This event will be in Dutch. More information can be obtained by contacting Red Geographics.

MAPublisher 8.4 is uitgekomen

Red Geographics — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 16:20:00 +0100

Avenza Systems Inc., producers of geospatial plugins for Adobe Creative Suite, including Geographic Imager for Adobe Photoshop, is pleased to announce the release of MAPublisher 8.4 for Adobe Illustrator. The latest version of this mapmaking software used to produce high quality maps from GIS data for both print and electronic distribution now includes a powerful thematic mapping feature called MAP Themes. Like the name implies, it produces dot density maps and uses stylesheets to symbolize choropleth maps based on various types of data classification. In addition, it can easily create custom charts using data attribute values.

"We went back to the drawing board and redesigned how styles are implemented in MAPublisher,” said Ted Florence, President of Avenza Systems. “MAP Themes is an exciting way to help you visualize GIS data. It offers a lot of flexibility in mixing graphic styles, swatches, symbols, rules and attributes. In addition, we've introduced support for new import formats including ArcGIS map documents and personal geodatabase for Mac OS. This has expanded the use of MAPublisher as a premiere cartographic and map-design platform.” he added.

New features and enhancements of MAPublisher 8.4 for Adobe Illustrator

New thematic mapping features including support for pie and bar charts and dot density maps
New import services: Web Feature Service (WFS) and Web Map Service (WMS)
New support for import formats including GPX and Microsoft Excel
Import support for Esri ArcMap documents (.mxd)
Esri Basic Personal Geodatabase format support is now available for Mac
A new MAPubilsher Image feature type makes importing georeferenced raster imagery easier
New Text Utilities feature that performs many text actions such as correcting upside down text, separating multiline text into single line and cropping text path to text length
New Join Areas geoprocessing feature that dissolves multiple areas into larger ones and still retains data attributes
A new option to customize scale bar labels; override labels for units, scale ratio, map scale with custom text
A new MAPublisher Tool called MAP Contour Tagger to quickly add labels to contour lines
Import support for data-rich Adobe Illustrator files exported from Cartographica (www.cartographica.com)
MAP View Editor enhancements and optimizations
Various other user interface improvements and performance enhancements to improve usability

More about MAPublisher for Illustrator

MAPublisher 8.4 for Illustrator is available free of charge to all MAPublisher customers with an active maintenance subscription and as an upgrade for non-maintenance users. Contact Red Geographics for more information on pricing.

Artikel over het runnen van een kartografisch bedrijf

Red Geographics — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 11:11:00 +0100

The latest (digital!) issue of Cartographic Perspectives, the journal of NACIS, features an article on running a small cartographic business written by Hans van der Maarel of Red Geographics, in cooperation with Derek Tonn of mapformation. The inspiration for this article is a panel session that Hans and Derek did, along with Dennis McClendon of Chicago Cartographics and Alex Tait of International Mapping, at the 2009 NACIS conference in Sacramento.

The journal can be downloaded, in the form of a PDF, for free here, whether you are a NACIS member or not. With this we hope to support the cartographic community.

Nieuw kantoor voor Red Geographics

Red Geographics — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 11:36:00 +0100

On January 20th, Red Geographics moved into a new office. From this new location we can serve our customers better.

The new contact details are:

Red Geographics
Zuidhaven 9-11
4761 CR Zevenbergen
The Netherlands

Phone: +31-88-6363050
Fax: +31-88-6363051

OpenStreetMap in MAPublisher

Red Geographics — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 11:36:00 +0100

For many areas on earth, OpenStreetMap data is a viable alternative to commercially offered data sources. It is, however, not always very easy to process. This tutorial explains the steps you need to take to load OpenStreetMap data into MAPublisher.

Download and install QGis, this is a free GIS application, available for Windows, Mac and Linux computers. Make sure that after the installation finishes, you activate the OpenStreetMap plugin (Plugins -> Plugin settings).
Go to OpenStreetMap.org in your web browser and zoom in to the area of interest. 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 or Cloudmade).
Go to the export tab and pick OpenStreetmap XML. Save this file as map.osm (it may take a while)
Open map.osm in QGis. Tick all options. Note: this uses the "Load OSM from file" option in the OpenStreetMap plugin.
This results in 3 layers: points, lines and polygons. Note that the OpenStreetMap export will not crop objects, but you can do this later on in MAPublisher.
Export these layers one by one by right-clicking and choosing "Save as shapefile" (I have a Dutch language version of QGis installed, so it says something different in the screenshot)
This will get you 3 shapefiles. These can be imported into Illustrator using MAPublisher. After reprojecting, scaling and cropping we've ended up with the raw OpenStreetMap vectors in Illustrator, with all attributes still attached.
We can now set up a MAPublisher stylesheet to connect Illustrator styles to selections on the OpenStreetMap data. These stylesheets and styles can, once defined, be reused indefinately. This will save you a lot of time in the future and will also help enforce a consistent look across multiple maps.
Stylesheets can be used for points, lines and areas.
MAPublisher can also do automatic labelling thanks to the extension LabelPro
LabelPro tries to place the texts from attributes (in this case street names) so that they don't overlap, using a set of user-defined rules.
The end result. Not a fully finished map yet, but if the styles and stylesheet rules are predefined, a trained operator can produce this from scratch in about 10-15 minutes.

Using these steps you can quickly set up a base map that can then be further refined by a cartographer.

Speciale aanbieding LabelPro

Red Geographics — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 14:37:00 +0100

Avenza has announced a special offer on their LabelPro text placement solution for MAPublisher:

Fixed licenses (applied to existing MAPublisher licenses with current maintenance) - €360 (was €570)
Floating licenses (applied to existing MAPublisher licenses with current maintenance) - €795 (was €1400)
New MAPublisher and MAPublisher LabelPro Fixed licenses - €1330 (was €1450)
New MAPublisher and MAPublisher LabelPro Floating licenses (applied to existing MAPublisher licenses with current maintenance) - €2660 (was €3000)

All prices are excluding VAT. This offer is valid until December 31st 2010. If you want to make use of this offer, please contact Red Geographics.

What is LabelPro?
LabelPro is an extension on top of MAPublisher which allows you to automatically place text labels based on feature attributes. It uses a set of (user-specified) rules to ensure that no text labels overlap eachother. When properly used this can save you many hours of manual text placement.

Geographic Imager 3.2

Red Geographics — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 13:59:00 +0100

Avenza has released version 3.2 of their Geographic Imager plug-in for Adobe Photoshop. This new version introduces a number of enhancements, such as:

Geospatial PDF export (Geospatial PDF's created with Geographic Imager can be viewed on an iOS device using PDF Maps)
Terrain shader functionality to create hypsometric tints and shaded relief
Photoshop CS5 and MacOS X 64-bits support

Geographic Imager is powerful software for working with spatial imagery in Adobe Photoshop that leverages its superior image editing capabilities and transforms it into a powerful spatial imagery editing tool. Work with satellite imagery, aerial photography, orthophotos, and DEMs in GeoTIFF and other major GIS image formats using Adobe Photoshop features such as transparencies, filters, and image adjustments while maintaining georeferencing and support for hundreds of coordinate systems and projections.

Geographic Imager 3.2 is a free upgrade for all clients with a valid maintenance contract.

Avenza introduceert PDF Maps

Red Geographics — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 17:08:00 +0200

Avenza Systems Inc., producers of MAPublisher® cartographic software for Adobe Illustrator® and Geographic Imager® spatial tools for Adobe Photoshop®, is pleased to announce the official release of PDF Maps, the first and only geospatial PDF reader for Apple iOS devices including the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch.

I have had the pleasure of trialling a beta version of the app and I was very impressed by the speed with which it renders even quite large maps.

Cursus Digitale Kartografie met MAPublisher en Illustrator, 16 en 17 December

Red Geographics — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 10:01:00 +0200

On December 16th and 17th, Red Geographics will organise a training course on the subject of digital cartography with Adobe Illustrator and Avenza’s MAPublisher. The goal of the course is to teach participants how Illustrator and MAPublisher can be used jointly in the production of high quality maps.

Content
Through the use of a number of sample projects, the entire cartographic production process is covered:

Document setup
Import GIS data
Projection / scale
Visualising GIS data through Stylesheets
Text placement with LabelPro
Combining raster and vector data
Producing an index
Export for print and web purposes

Aside from a full overview of MAPublisher’s capabilities there will be plenty of coverage of time-saving Illustrator tips and tricks. There will also be time to cover specific questions.

This is a hands-on course. Computers, data and required software (the latest versions of Adobe Illustrator and MAPublisher) will be provided.

Who Should Attend

Cartographers using GIS data
Existing MAPublisher users who want to experience the new features of MAPublisher 8 or who want to get the most out of their MAPublisher license
GIS professionals who want to produce better quality maps
Anyone making maps that wants to leverage the benefits of Illustrator and MAPublisher

Course leaders
This course will be led by Hans van der Maarel and Joke Rerink. Both have many years of experience working with Illustrator and MAPublisher. The course will be held in Dutch, but if you would like to get this course in English, please contact Red Geographics for more information.

Location
The course will be held in the KaartUitVeghel Cartographic Instruction centre, Veghel, The Netherlands.

Pricing
The price for attending this course is €800 per person, excluding VAT.

More about MAPublisher
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 and Macromedia FreeHand, MAPublisher leverages the superior graphics capabilities of these graphics design applications.

Sign-up
Contact Red Geographics to sign up or if you have any questions.

AttributeExistenceChecker voor FME

Red Geographics — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 15:26:00 +0200

This is a custom transformer for FME that checks whether an attribute actually exists and routes features accordingly. This is useful because certain formats only attach attributes to a feature if the feature actually has a value for that attribute. This sometimes causes problems with transformers such as the Joiner. Hence by using the AttritubeExistenceChecker you can find out which features are affected, and deal with them seperately.

Click here to download the custom transformer. Unzip it and place the file in your My Documents\FME\Transformers directory.

Download OpenStreetMap met FME

Red Geographics — Mon, 24 May 2010 14:30:00 +0200

One of the problems with obtaining OpenStreetmap data is that it's not possible to get large chunks of data in one go, unless you download state- or countrywide files from Geofabrik or Cloudmade (but they don't seem to offer the full OSM datamodel). So I've set out to come up with an easier solution, using FME.

It's a combination of 3 FME workbenches:
osm_manager.fmw is where you set the parameters. These include the bounding box coordinates of the area you'd like to download the data for as well as a 'chunk size'. Since the XAPI that is used is limited in the number of objects it can return you can only get larger areas by cutting them up into smaller chunks. How high the chunk size should be is a bit hard to guage, the default of 0.05 (that's degrees) seems to work. The manager divides the area you've specified up in those smaller chunks and then fires them off to a second workbench one by one, using a WorkspaceRunner.

This second workbench, osm_fetcher.fmw is doing the actual downloading. Basically it's a HTTPFetcher that gets fed urls and writes out the result as text files (containing the raw OSM XML data). Once that's all done control is handed back to the manager, who then fires off the last workbench, osm_writer.fmw. This workbench reads in all the OSM files, clips them to your original bounding box coordinates and writes the result out to shapefiles.

Since the OSM XAPI will not perform any clipping, the osm_writer workbench removes any duplicate objects it can find. The added benefit of that is that there will not be any noticable artifacts of the tiling process.

Some possible improvements of this process include reprojection upon output (it's all being done in WGS84) and adding in parameters to direct the output to another directory (currently all .osm files are being stored in the workbench directory, all shape output in a subdirectory)

You can download it here. Unzip it and open osm_manager.fmw in FME Workbench, set the parameters and run it.

Straatlengte vs lengte straatnaam

Red Geographics — Fri, 21 May 2010 14:48:00 +0200

An all too common problem: a short street with a long name needs to be labelled. When you’re doing this manually, this generally calls for a lot of abbreviation, splitting across multiple lines, a smaller font or even just numbering. In short, it’s a hassle.

When you’re using an automated labelling process, such as Label Pro within MAPublisher or Maplex within ArcGIS you can often get better results if you can tell the software to treat these streets a bit more strict. For example one thing I like to do is tell Label Pro to use a condensed font, allow it to reduce text size more often and use arrows if at all possible.

But how can you find those streets? Well, I came up with an easy formula to calculate whether or not the street would be long enough to place the entire street name. Obviously this depends on the scale you’re mapping at as well as the font style and size. So first of all place a lowercase a in the font style and size you want to use for your street names, and measure its width in map units. Let’s assume for this example that my lowercase a is 12 meters wide in map units. The formula to calculate the ratio is then going to be [number of characters in street name] / ( [length of street] / [width of lowercase a] )

Formula for calculating street length to street name length ratio

This yields a number, if it’s smaller than 1 you have enough space for the street name. If it’s 1 you’ve got exactly enough space and if it’s larger than 1 you’re in trouble. I tried this on an OpenStreetmap dataset of central Mechelen in Belgium and the ratios went from 0.1 to almost 20 (the 14 meter long “Oscar Van Kesbeeckstraat”).

Moving on, I decided to split my streets in 2 layers. Streets with a ratio less than 1.25 would be labelled with a standard font (Frutiger 55 Roman), streets with a ratio more than 1.25 would be labelled with a condensed variant of that font (Frutiger 57 Condensed) and got a few extra rules regarding size reduction and multi-lining.

End result of Label Pro labelling

The result looks quite promising. Still not perfect of course, but based on my previous workflow (which did not use this calculation but instead had me go through the unplaced text manually to try and fit them in) it once again saved me a significant amount of time.

So give this a shot next time you’re auto-labelling a street map. It’s worth a try and it’s almost guaranteed to save you time.

Geographic Imager 3.1 is uitgebracht

Red Geographics — Thu, 20 May 2010 17:31:00 +0200

Right after MAPublisher 8.3 Avenza has released the latest version of Geographic Imager. This is an update, currently only available for Windows, that enables the use of Adobe Photoshop paths to create a Map View in MAPublisher, as well as support for Photoshop CS5. The Mac version is expected to follow shortly.

MAPublisher 8.3 is uitgebracht

Red Geographics — Wed, 19 May 2010 09:53:00 +0200

Avenza® Releases MAPublisher^® 8.3 for Adobe^® Illustrator^®

- Powerful cartographic suite now supports the new Adobe Illustrator CS5 -

Toronto, ON, May 18, 2010 - Avenza Systems Inc., producers of MAPublisher cartographic software for Adobe Illustrator and Geographic Imager spatial tools for Adobe Photoshop, is pleased to announce the release of MAPublisher 8.3 for Adobe Illustrator. MAPublisher 8.3 is the latest version of this powerful mapmaking software used to produce high quality maps from GIS data for both print and electronic distribution which now offers support for the new version of Adobe Illustrator, CS5.

MAPublisher 8.3 for Adobe Illustrator is a full product upgrade that is free of charge to all current MAPublisher Maintenance Program subscribers and replaces the current shipping version of MAPublisher, version 8.2, for all new customers using Adobe Illustrator CS3, CS4 and CS5.

"We have once again listened to the requests of our users and implemented a host of new features with MAPublisher 8.3,” said Ted Florence, President of Avenza, “In addition to support for Illustrator CS5, this new and exciting MAPublisher version now offers the ability to transfer map objects between documents, automatically create knockouts for text objects, and contains an enhanced JavaScript API and dozens of other features which together significantly advance this powerful and widely used cartographic and map-design platform.” he added.

MAPublisher 8.3 includes all the significant functionality introduced in earlier releases of MAPublisher as well as the following new features and enhancements.

New Features of MAPublisher 8.3 for Adobe Illustrator

Compatibility with Adobe Illustrator CS5 for both Mac and Windows
New Line Plotter function to create polylines by entering coordinates or the distance and bearing values between points
Import MAP Objects to copy MAP objects between documents, including Stylesheets and MAP Selections
Enhanced MAP Selection functionality offering additional selection options including spatial, art and attribute
New knockout function for easily creating knockouts for text objects
Buffer Art function to create area objects around points and lines
MAP Attribute Panel enhancements and optimizations
New Layer Notes functionality to record information including original dataset path, format, co-ordinate system, object count and date
Enhanced export to Geospatial PDF functionality now offers control over exported layers with attributes, ability to easily assign attribute values to be used as object names, item sort order and round-trip data control
MAPublisher spatial database import system for ESRI geodatabases now included (Windows only)
New MAPublisher JavaScript API functionality including various runtime operations
New functionality to create MAP Views from Adobe Photoshop paths (Geographic Imager license required)
Various other user interface improvements and performance enhancements to improve usability

More about MAPublisher for Illustrator

MAPublisher 8.3 for Illustrator is available free of charge to all MAPublisher for Illustrator customers with a valid maintenance subscription and as an upgrade for non-maintenance members. Please contact Red Geographics for pricing details.

New training course Digital Cartography with Illustrator and MAPublisher

Red Geographics — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 15:42:00 +0100

On June 10th and 11th, Red Geographics will organise a training course on the subject of digital cartography with Adobe Illustrator and Avenza’s MAPublisher. The goal of the course is to teach participants how Illustrator and MAPublisher can be used jointly in the production of high quality maps.

Content
Through the use of a number of sample projects, the entire cartographic production process is covered:

Document setup
GIS data preparation
Import GIS data
Projection / scale
Visualising GIS data through Stylesheets
Text placement with LabelPro
Combining raster and vector data
Producing an index
Export for print and web purposes

Aside from a full overview of MAPublisher’s capabilities there will be plenty of coverage of time-saving Illustrator tips and tricks. There will also be time to cover specific questions.

This is a hands-on course. Computers, data and required software will be provided.

Who Should Attend

Cartographers using GIS data
Existing MAPublisher users who want to experience the new features of MAPublisher 8 or who want to get the most out of their MAPublisher license
GIS professionals who want to produce better quality maps
Anyone making maps that wants to leverage the benefits of Illustrator and MAPublisher

Location
The course will be held in the KaartUitVeghel Cartographic Instruction centre, Veghel, The Netherlands.

Sign-up
See http://www.redgeographics.com/nl/illustrator_mapublisher_cursus.php for more information.

Useful geodata links

Red Geographics — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 14:43:00 +0100

I’ve been asked recently about sources of useful (free) geodata. Since I thought it might be nice for other people to have as well I’ve decided to make a blog post about it. So here goes.

Natural Earth Vector – Deserves to be mentioned first. A global cartographic (!) dataset at scales 1:10M, 1:50M and 1:110M, both vector and raster. Made possible by Tom Patterson, Nathaniel Kelso and a small army of volunteers. Made by cartographers, for cartographers.

Geocommons Finder – Offers a wide range of thematic datasets.

GIS Data Depot – Requires registration but again a good source of data. VMAP / DCW per country, many US datasets per county.

SRTM data – Elevation data in 90 meter resolution (30 meters in the continental US) data in 1×1 degree tiles, or go to the CGIAR site for corrected data in 5×5 degree tiles. SRTM only covers the earth from 60 North to 60 South and does not offer bathymetry. Viewfinder offers manually corrected data for significant mountain areas as well as manually created data for areas not covered by SRTM.

Aster Global DEM – Higher resolution than SRTM, but I’ve heard mixed reports about the data quality.

MapStor – Old USSR topographic maps, either free (download one by one) or dirt cheap even for large areas. While most of these maps are by now quite outdated (they were, after all, produced before the collapse of the Soviet Union), in many parts of the world they are the only easily obtainable source of reference data. If you speak Russian of course… I’ve personally used this to track down villages in India that Google doesn’t show. The maps come with a georeference in OziExplorer format. Global Mapper can read this and can also automatically remove the collars.

Global Land Cover Facility – Offers various raster datasets, including Landsat, for download. Much of the data is offered in seperate bands, so you’ll need to do a bit of research to use it.

Geonames – USGS board on geographic names. Note that the data is not without errors, so always doublecheck.

True Marble – 250 meter (free) and 15 meter (paid) satellite data. Automatically generated out of Landsat data. Some artifacts here and there but overall a good dataset.

David Rumsey collection – Not geodata per-se, but a vast collection of old maps.

Perry-Castañeda Library – Large collection of reference maps offered by the University of Texas.

Cloudmade and Geofabrik offer shapefile extracts from the OpenStreetmap database by continent/country/state.

EarthExplorer and the Seamless Server are two USGS sites offering data for download. Mainly US data as far as I can tell.

US TIGER – vector data of the US offered by the US Cencus Bureau. Its quality is not always 100%, see this post on Cartotalk for an explanation.

US National Atlas – Many thematic datasets for the US.

Geographic Imager 3.0 is released

Red Geographics — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 14:44:00 +0100

Yesterday Avenza released the latest version of Geographic Imager, their plug-in for Photoshop. New features include support for the BigTIFF, ESRI BIL and NITF image formats, as well as Photoshop x64 (on Windows).

In addition to that, the 3d options that were introduced last year with Geographic Imager 2.5 have been expanded. This brings georeferenced 3D visualisation into Photoshop. Another good thing is that all of the Geographic Imager tools are now compatible with scripts and actions, which will be a big plus for automating repetitive tasks.

Spatial databases once more

Red Geographics — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 14:44:00 +0100

or a while I’ve been meaning to try out more stuff with spatial databases. I’ve been using them for a few years actually, but so far that’s always been MySQL Spatial thanks to a simple install package produced by the good people at Apachefriends.org. It’s easy to set up that way but… MySQL Spatial isn’t very widely supported, in fact the only application I have that actually reads/writes it is FME…

So, wanting to try something different I went ahead and installed PostgreSQL with PostGIS. This should be wider supported, of the software that I use on a regular basis FME, Manifold and ArcGIS should be able to read/write it. Well, FME certainly does, no problem there. Having a bit more trouble getting Manifold and Arc to talk to the database though. Apparently they require an ODBC connection and that seems to be tricky to set up. Hopefully I can get that sorted out soon.

– Update January 21st –

Well, as Jeff has pointed out, I should not worry about Arc…

I’ve continued hacking away at this and managed to get both FME and Manifold talking to a PostGIS database. Funny enough Manifold only does that in the 32 bit version, though it appears there’s some extra dll’s for the 64 bit version that can be used to get that one working too. Also, veteran Manifold user (rock star I should say) Art Lembo of Gisadvisor.com has a training video on setting up an enterprise spatial database with Manifold and PostGIS that looks rather interesting.

Anyway, I have opted to install the databases on a brand new (and rather cute) Compaq ultraportable. For playing around with databases in a network environment it appears to be just fine (which is good, because I’m short on space)

The Auto-Mapic

Red Geographics — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 14:51:00 +0100

Found this in a used book store the other day, I just had to have it…

It’s a plain brown cardboard box, slightly taller than an A4 piece of paper, slightly narrower too. On the front there’s just the word AUTO-MAPIC in big friendly letters. When I opened the box I found it contained a heavy plastic contraption with maps.

That’s where the fun started. The plastic container had 8 tabs on either side, and a clear see-through section on either side showing a map. By moving the tabs up and down, different maps became visible. 8 tabs times 2 sides means there’s 16 different maps (in this case a roadmap of the Benelux on 15 sheets with 1 overview/legend sheet.

Apparently the maps are cut into narrow strips which are glued to the plastic shutters (for lack of a better word). The effect is quite good provided you move the tabs as far as they go.

From what I’ve gathered, these Auto-Mapics were produced in Austria in the 1970s. This one indeed says it’s made there, and judging by the style and content of the map that appears to be just right.

If anybody has more information on these things, how they were produced and how popular they were, I’d be very interested to hear about it.

Natural Earth Vector is here!

Red Geographics — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 14:56:00 +0100

Those of you who follow the cartographic news will undoubtedly have heard of this already, but Natural Earth Vector has finally been released. This is a royalty-free vector dataset for the entire world at scales 1:10M, 1:50M and 1:110M. Existing datasets tend to be way too detailed for these scale levels (VMAP0, for example, is meant for scale 1:1M… OpenStreetmap is aimed at even smaller scales).

Many volunteers (including yours truly) have put in a lot of time and effort to create this dataset. Many thanks to everybody who contributed.

If you want to take a look at the data, please visit

Rainfall maps for buienradar.nl

Red Geographics — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 14:59:00 +0100

A few weeks ago I was approached by buienradar.nl, a popular Dutch weather website, to redo the base map for their website.

This is the standard map background that they project the realtime rainfall data on. Style-wise I was limited to their color usage, but my updated version features rivers and the borders are much improved. Also, thanks to Derek Tonn’s Graphics Optimization I managed to shave a few kilobytes off the total filesize without making any concessions to the overall look of the map. Given that buienradar receives millions of hits per day, this saves an awful lot of bandwidth and energy.

In all, I am very proud I got to work on this map. Now let’s hope nobody will blame me for the bad weather here

Looking back at NACIS 2009

Red Geographics — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 14:58:00 +0200

The 2009 NACIS conference is behind us already, so it’s time to look back. As always, it was a wonderful gathering of cartographers and other map-minded people. Interesting presentations, fun social events, you name it.

Some things that stood out to me were the work that Axis Maps is doing on Indiemapper. It looks like this may be the way cartography and GIS apps will be moving in the future. Away from the desktop and on to the Internet. I haven’t been able to play with it myself yet, but I’d like to give it a spin as soon as I can. It outputs to SVG so the results can be edited in Illustrator.

Another highlight was Elbie Bentley’s presentation on a narrative atlas she produced. This mapped out the progress of a mapping party for the Pacific Railroad and she faithfully recreated the visual style of the 1800s maps, including manually hachuring 20 map sheets. Of all the people currently alive, she may just be the one who knows most about hachuring now.

On a personal level, the panel discussion that I organised on running a cartographic business was very well received. Together with 3 co-panelists (Derek Tonn of mapformation, Dennis McClendon of Chicago Cartographics and Alex Tait of International Mapping) we sat down and answered questions from the audience for an hour and a half. Large audience and we filled up the entire time slot we had, plus many people came to us afterwards with additional questions. Stay tuned because I want to do/write more on this subject.

NACIS 2009 – Practical Cartography Day

Red Geographics — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 15:00:00 +0200

This year’s Practical Cartography Day at the NACIS conference in Sacramento, California, was quite interesting. The three presentations that I personally thought were the most useful were, in no particular order:

Tom Patterson and Nathaniel Vaughn Kelso who were speaking of the upcoming Natural Earth Vector dataset. I like this one a lot because I was one of the volunteers who worked on it, but also because in the past I’ve had to deal with the issues of combining datasets with differing accuracies and levels of generalisation.
Jill Saligoe-Simmel of Mapdiva was speaking about Ortelius, desktop mapping software specifically for Mac and designed by cartographers. I’m not sure whether I’ll be making much use of it myself, seeing how much energy I’ve invested in learning Illustrator and MAPublisher, but some of its features are just pure genius. The Linear Select feature, to insert a bridge on a road, is a prime example of that.
David Heyman of Axis Maps did a presentation on their online map tool Indiemapper, which even takes away the need to have software installed on a local machine. Very interesting work and I can’t wait to give that a try myself.

As usual there is a poster session with a number of very cool map designs, great to browse through and talk to the cartographers.

MAPublisher training videos are released!

Red Geographics — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 15:00:00 +0200

It’s taken a long time (months of recording as well as preparing a EULA and having DVDs printed), but finally they’re ready to be released: my MAPublisher training videos.

It’s 5+ hours of instruction covering all of MAPublisher, comparable to a 2-day hands-on training course, along with all necessary source data on DVD and they’re available right now, either through my company, Red Geographics, or through resellers such as Avenza in Canada and Screen + Paper in Germany.

The videos are spoken in English and use an English version of Adobe Illustrator, on a Mac.

I’m very glad they finally see the light of day. All in all the project has taken much longer than I anticipated (recording the instructions took a surprisingly huge amount of time, it’s very easy to fumble words or mis-click somewhere…)

5 years of Red Geographics

Red Geographics — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 15:01:00 +0200

Just a quick post to share the news that today marks the 5th anniversary of Red Geographics, my company. I am of course very pleased with reaching this milestone and would like to thank my family, friends, suppliers and of course clients. Without them this would not have been possible.

Data preparation for LabelPro, and why it matters

Red Geographics — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 15:01:00 +0200

Recently I got to work, as a subcontractor, on a street map for a US educational institution. My task was to label street centerlines, using MAPublisher and LabelPro. This was my first real project using LabelPro so this would be a good test case.

I loaded up the road centerline data, which was not classified by type, and set up some rules for this. Using 9 pt Helvetica Neue, 55 Roman, as font.

When I examined the results of this first run, I noticed that it seemed to be very “leader line happy”. I have not shown the unplaced labels in this particular sample (for the sake of the argument that I’m trying to make, they don’t really matter that much anyway).

It quickly became obvious that if I’d want the best results out of LabelPro, I would have to prepare my data. a “one set of rules fits all” approach clearly wasn’t going to work. I decided to split my data into 4 different categories.

These categories are then each set up with a different set of rules, so that I can more accurately influence the way they’re being labelled.

Interstate – There’s one interstate running through this area. Its segments have a road name, which basically is the interstate number. I simply don’t label this one at all, instead I will be manually placing an interstate shield later on. Note that I can do this with LabelPro as well, but since there’s only one, it would take more time to set up the rules for it than it would to manually place 2 or 3 shields. So I manually select the interstate and its on- and offramps and put them on a new layer.
Major roads – There’s several major roads present. I want to make sure they’re labelled the clearest, with the highest priority. So again it’s manual selection and putting them on a new layer. This one gets labelled with a higher initial font size and no leader lines.
Regular streets – No leader lines either, plus I’m going with a condensed font rather than the regular roman version. Unfortunately you can not instruct LabelPro to try and mix both versions of a font.
Short streets – Selecting on the Length attribute that MAPublisher automatically generates allows me to seperate the short streets from the regular ones and set them up with a different set of rules. Again a condensed font, but it’s even smaller than the regular streets and now leader lines are allowed. Hopefully this will reduce the amount of leader lines cluttering up the map. I’ve set the treshold for short roads at 400 feet.

The rulesets I created for these layers are as follows:

Major roads:

Regular roads:

Short roads:

The main LabelPro interface, where I’ve specified the priorities and fonts to be used, looks like this:

Finally, the result that we’ve all been waiting for. As you can see, there still is a need for some manual editing, but the overall image is a lot less cluttered than the first run.

I did change the color for the streets for legibility. Instead of 100% black it’s now only 75%.

Reducing the number of roads where leader lines are a valid option makes for a much clearer result. In retrospect, I think I might even want to limit it to dead-end streets and cul-de-sacs.

I think it’s important to keep in mind that LabelPro is a tool, not a magic box that’ll deliver perfect cartographic text placement. Even with the manual editing that’s necessary to make this map look finished, it’s still saving me a lot of time. Also, since the label text is taken directly from the attributes, there’s less chance of typos or other mistakes (assuming the source data is good of course). Of course the rules you have to set are very much influenced by the local topography and what I’ve done here may not apply to your maps. Still, it pays to experiment.

You paid for it?

Red Geographics — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 15:02:00 +0200

Interesting conversation in the elevator yesterday… I had picked up the Times Comprehensive atlas at a bookstore and was obviously quite happy with it (it is, after all, a great example of cartography). When I stepped into an elevator somebody noticed the €179 price tag and asked if I had actually paid for it. My response was “of course”.I guess he thought it was too much (then again, what is too much? A tiny satnav device is still more expensive…)

Even though free maps and data are becoming more and more prevalent these days, I have absolutely no problem with paying money for good maps, and I would take those over Google or Bing maps any time.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that a good atlas is something that should be in every home or office.

Natural Earth Vector

Red Geographics — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 15:04:00 +0200

Ever since Tom Patterson started offering Natural Earth, a public domain raster dataset of the entire Earth, I’ve been a big fan of it. In fact, the base layer for the Oolaalaa globes is based on Natural Earth I (with added bathymetry and increased contrast).

After releasing 3 raster datasets this way, Tom has recently teamed up with Nathaniel V. Kelso to create a vector product that also will be released into the public domain: Natural Earth Vector. Nathaniel has invited me to participate in this as well, and to be honest I think it’s a wonderful project. So far I’ve been involved in extracting road data from OpenStreetmap and identifying rivers in Europe.

Processing the OpenStreetmap data, using FME, reinforced my slight aversion of XML/GML based data. When downloading the data, you have the option of getting the .osm data, which is in an XML format, or shapefiles. FME does support the .osm format, but processing the files takes a terrible amount of time. Processing the shapefiles for Europe, Asia, Oceania, Africa and South America, just filtering out the major highways, takes about 11 minutes. I don’t dare to do that with the .osm data, but I fear it may take days. It’s nice that XML is so open and free, but for large amounts of data it’s simply unsuitable.

Anyway, to get back to Natural Earth Vector, it will be officially unveiled at the NACIS conference in Sacramento this october and I for one am looking very much forward to that.

FME vs Global Mapper

Red Geographics — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 15:07:00 +0200

So for a long time I’ve been saying I generally don’t use FME for raster work because it’s slow. This was all based on some bad experiences way back with FME 2006 (the first version to support raster data if I recall correctly) and the infamous 37-Gigabyte temporary file that was left on my hard drive after a mosaicking operation crashed. So I’d mostly been using FME for dynamically making a clip out of a larger raster file, which I would invariably produce with Global Mapper.

Recently, Dale Lutz of Safe Software had suggested that I’d give FME another chance, because they had made a lot of progress in the handling of raster data. So I decided to give it another go, pitting the FME 2010 “UC” beta against Global Mapper 10.02.All tests were done in Windows Vista x64 running through Bootcamp on my Mac Pro with 10 Gb of ram. All data was present on the local hard drive.