QGIS compositing is not limited just to between layers, but also for elements in the Print Composer. How is this useful? Every want a non-rectangular map? With 1.9 alpha, you can use an SVG to affect the elements under it. On the right, the svg. On the left, the map element inside the Print Composer. Overlay the two with “Blending Mode” set to “Normal” and … Continue reading Quantum GIS Compositing Continued
Ok, how come no one told me this? Blending modes in QGIS? I’m running the nightly build for 1.9, so I have no idea if this is new or old, but a little compositing in QGIS is very welcome… : Now, how the heck do I set transparency? Continue reading Compositing lands on the desktop– QGIS
TileStache (and some adaptation of great pre-built cartography from others more artful than I) results in this: Continue reading Compositing in TileStache
In the category of moderately new features in WordPress, I really appreciate the new WordPress Country Stats, with the nice touch of flags of the nations, and a map. As an inveterate map snob, however, the map drives me crazy: Why? Because choropleth maps are bad for showing count data, unless all the polygons are the same size. Look at the map above– France and … Continue reading WordPress Country Stats, a cartographers complaint
I have long lived in the desktop realm of ESRI, and expect ESRI products to be a part of my workflow for a long time to come. But, the time has come to delve in deeply with Quantum GIS. I’ve read from many sources that it has come of age as a desktop GIS. I tried it 4 years ago, along with its competitors in … Continue reading Using Quantum GIS for real work…
Just pretty pictures today. Continue reading Cartographically Pleasing Vegetation Boundaries– with PovRay, PostGIS, and LiDAR
My favorite cartography book is Eduard Imhof’s Cartographic Relief Presentation. A few years back I picked this book up (translated to English) from ESRI press for $75 if memory serves me. Now it can be gotten for much cheaper. Imhof spends a lot of time on feature simplification and separation, a problem which keeps me up at night. For example, if you have a lot … Continue reading Going deeper into web cartography: future=past? (and Swiss cartographic genius)
In a previous post (I feel like I say that a lot), I wrote about rotating address points to match nearby roads in replicate the effect of USGS quads that represented small buildings with little squares that followed the nearby road alignment. The function was effective: but deadly slow when applied to all 500,000 address points. And so we iterate. First, I’ll show you our … Continue reading Cartography and USGS — Fake Building Footprints in PostGIS now with distance operator
Quick and fun post tonight. Remember in USGS quads all the little building footprints that represented civilization? We (me and my colleague John Stein) were contemplating how to pull off something similar with address points. Here was our first attempt: It looks ok, but may be a little crude to be considered cartography (click on it to see it bigger– you’ll see those buildings don’t … Continue reading Cartography and USGS — Fake Building Footprints in PostGIS now with distance operator
In my previous post, a long 24-hours ago, I proposed some automatic modification of line for cartographic reasons. I had some flaws in my code. The points were over-rotated by 45 degrees. Can you spot why? Tip: it’s a basic trigonometric mistake. Here’s the corrected code (though there may be a better way): An alternate approach is to only move those points that are too … Continue reading PostGIS Cartographic Effects– Cartoonify Nearly Coincident Lines
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