[Award Winner] Atlas Walkthrough [Fractal Terrains & Illustrator]

[HandsomeRob]

Hi all,

In this thread I will walk you guys through the production of one of my atlas maps. I plan to cover it in pretty good detail, but as always feel free to jump in if I'm rushing through something or if you have a better method for handling anything that comes up.

We're going to work on the last of six regional maps for the continent of Jalaun, which just happens to be entitled "Central Jalaun."

Step 1. Setting up the Projection
My regional maps all use the Lambert Azimuthal Equal-Area projection, as it is easy to work with and relatively distortion-free for regional areas. I have my world file saved in Fractal Terrains, and I'll use that to set up my projection. First of all I want to know the extent that I'd like to map; for this map it's approximately from 144°W to 165°W, and from 3°N to 16°N. All you need for a Lambert Az is a center, so I'll pick a center close to the center of my coverage: 159°W, 10°N. I also make sure that the entirety of my coverage is shown in the map window; it's fine if there's extra showing, but I don't want to underrun. When I've got the projection set correctly, I'll save the FTW file as "CentralJalaun.ftw" for later reference.

Step 2. Creating the Basemap
Now that my projection is set I can export the images I will need from FT. First I want an image that has land in one color (I use white) and water in another (I use blue). I don't want this to have any relief shading, and I also want to make sure the graticule is turned off. The first attachment here shows the settings I use. I'll save this map as a jpg, and I'll make sure it's pretty large (I use 4800 pixels wide and highest jpg quality).
Secondly, I want an image with relief. I'll set the land and water to white and turn the shading for the land on. (I've made the water white here in case there is any misregistration of the land/water polygons; if the water was blue there might be tiny little slivers of blue along the coast, which I don't want). The second attachment shows these settings; I've saved this image as well, using the same 4800 pixel size.
Finally, I want an image that shows the graticule. The third attachment shows the graticule settings I use; I also set the land to white and water to blue again, and turn the shading off. This image I can make smaller, so I save it with a 2400 pixel size.

I've set up my Illustrator file with a black box showing my final map size (10" x 16" for me). I place the three jpgs I've generated in FT here, setting the land/water image at the bottom, then the graticule image (set to multiply) and finally the relief image (set at 25% opacity).
Next I use Illustrator's nifty Autotrace feature. Select the land/water image and push the Autotrace Button. The fourth attachment shows the settings I use. Expand and ungroup the result, select everything that's white (the land) and delete it. This leaves a nice set of polygons for your water fills, which you should color whatever color you like your water to be. To smooth out some of the wierd FT-derived angles, I go to Object > Path > Add Anchor Points and then Filter > Stylize > Round Corners (0.5 pt). I then copy all of these water polygons into a new layer, stroke them, and remove the fill (this is my coastline layer). The fifth attachment shows where we are now, which is a good place to stop for this lesson.

-Rob