Photo 4 of 4 from Aeonore

Photo Comments

1. 
   bartmoss - 07-20-2011, 06:49 AM

   I like the map but intuitively I'd expect light gray areas to be higher than dark gray areas.
2. 
   negative2pi - 08-17-2011, 09:55 AM

   @bartmoss. I played around with a bunch of different color combinations and finally settled on these for a couple of reasons. When creating the maps I had several criteria: (1)The maps had to be clear and avoid excessive clutter. (2)They needed to be visually appealing, and (3) they needed to be fairly easily created (This image is just a small portion of one map which is one of about 200 planned maps in the series). Conventional USGS topographical maps transition from dark greens at lower elevations through lighter shades, into light browns and get darker as elevation increase so I'm not sure your that what you intuitively perceive is a universal observation. I steered away from the darker colors at lower elevations because of the desire to include vegetation on the maps (forests, swamps, farm land, etc.). I didn't want to hide the topographic data so I added this info by adding semitransparent color overlays that would not mask elevation cues. Hence it wasn't practical to use dark greens for lower elevations since they would interfere with the additional information I wanted to present, which primarily occurred at lower elevations.
   What you can't see, since I didn't provide a key in this image, is that the colors do progressively get darker as elevation increases, there are several more gradations of grey at higher elevations. But that being said, the dark brown is a bit of an anomalous color choice, being of much higher intensity than the colors immediately around it. I had tried alternatives but was never really satisfied with the outcome. Might revisit it again at a later date. One of the advantages of vector graphics is the ease with which one can change these kinds of details.
   Thanks for the feedback.