With that under my belt, I went out and tried to duplicate the style that Trains used in the early 1990s. I will also be able to do a better job with the coast line next time too. If I were to redo this one I would use slightly larger and more readable fonts, improve the contrast for the state labels and turn the basemap onto the north-south access. Opening these in a new window, by right clicking on it it and selecting the first option in the drop down menu, produces an image only abut 5% larger, but with much better appearance. First off, saving the SVG as a PNG file reduces the size and pixilates the image, then posting to WordPress further reduces the size. Looking at it in the light of day, I see a bunch of stuff I’d do differently now that I know more about the tools and how it looks when posted through WordPress.
#Inkscape tutorials maps software#
That I was able to do something like this almost from jump street speaks to how easy the software was to learn to use (or at least learn to use when you really want to learn). I hit pretty close to the mark I was aiming for. Below you can see what I was able to come up with.
For base maps, I used a snip of Norfolk Southern’s 2016 system map as the primary map and also fitted an old map of the anthracite fields over it so I could outline those areas. On this one, I watched some YouTube tutorials as I went along and learned some short cuts. With the basics under my belt I then put together a map for my blog post.
#Inkscape tutorials maps how to#
With that done, I had a much better idea on how to attack a more serious project. Every step took some effort to work through, but I got it done. AC&Y is about as simple a railroad to map as can be imagined a good choice. I followed along and created a map of the Akron Canton & Ohio’s line across the Buckeye State. I read a little about the basics of Inkscape and then found a tutorial for hobby map making online at Deviant Art. Created shapes can be further manipulated with transformations, such as moving, rotating, scaling and skewing. Embedding and optional tracing of raster graphics is also supported, enabling the editor to create vector graphics from photos and other raster sources. These objects may be filled with solid colors, patterns, radial or linear color gradients and their borders may be stroked, both with adjustable transparency. rectangles, ellipses, polygons, arcs, spirals, stars and 3D boxes) and text. Inkscape can render primitive vector shapes (e.g. Other formats can be imported and exported.
#Inkscape tutorials maps free#
Inkscape is a free and open source vector graphics editor used to create vector images, primarily in Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) format. I went looking for a freeware replacement for Adobe Illustrator and found Inkscape. George Sebastian-Coleman of Trains says they use Adobe Illustrator, which I’m sure is great but you need to pay a monthly subscription to use. With that I went out looking for something better to use. Although the results would have been good enough, I was really sick of working with Paint. A week later I needed to create some maps for work. I attempted a version in Paint and junked it because it was going to be too much work for a lousy result. In my post on anthracite coal, I really wanted to include a map to illustrate the various tariff routes between the coal region and the B&A. I had, for years, done lousy work using Paint to illustrate concepts, while it gets the point across, the results are really unprofessional. In the railroad business it is “no map, no meeting” according to the famed railroader Jim McClelland. I’ve always loved studying and drawing maps. I fell down another rabbit hole recently and finally figured out how to make nice maps.