The other day I started working on a cartography project that I have been thinking about for some time: A Personalized Map of Portland, Maine. I've only spent a couple hours digitizing off of aerial imagery from
MEGIS. Originally, I wanted to use 3-inch resolution imagery, but it just was too much data, so I reduced the 3-in mosaic to a 12-in resolution mosaic. The 12-in image was better, but the image dimensions exceeded Illustrator's size limits on placed images, so I proportionally reduced it in Photoshop, so it's now about 14-in resolution imagery. In any case, I started digitizing I have two draft results:
Next I wanted to experiment with some more detail, so I started working on a map of the University of Southern Maine's Portland Campus, I have roughed out green spaces and buildings in about two hours. The draft results look a little too cartoonish, which might work in the school paper for orientation week, but is just not the look I was going for, so I need to spend some more time tidying up and generalizing; — it also needs labels.
