Does anyone here know more about Natural Earth? What does it take to make a map? I've been looking for a good source, but not for something that requires serious commitment. Their website sounds great: https://www.naturalearthdata.com:
Natural Earth was built through a collaboration of many volunteers and is supported by NACIS (North American Cartographic Information Society), and is free for use in any type of project ....
The carefully generalized linework maintains consistent, recognizable geographic shapes at 1:10m, 1:50m, and 1:110m scales. Natural Earth was built from the ground up so you will find that all data layers align precisely with one another. For example, where rivers and country borders are one and the same, the lines are coincident.
Most data contain embedded feature names, which are ranked by relative importance. Other attributes facilitate faster map production, such as width attributes assigned to river segments for creating tapers.
you can make a variety of visually pleasing, well-crafted maps with cartography or GIS software
The last quote raises questions for me: How much investment in software and time is that?
> The last quote raises questions for me: How much investment in software and time is that?
Not much at all as long as you're just interested in hosting a script that serves a community tile set. You can make it more interactive by using Leaflet.js. Also look at https://github.com/visgl/deck.gl.
It gets a lot more complicated once you start creating your own tile sets, making interactive applications, or just in general working with large amounts of spatial data.
Source: I work in academia and use a fair amount of ESA satellite data for social research.
Thank you. I'm afraid I'm lazier than that. :) I just want a service or maybe some software where I can create accurate maps to spec without great investment in time or setup. National Geographic's 'Map Maker' seemed promising, but the available data layers are very limited. I also found Nystrom World but didn't have time to examine it further; I suspect it's K-12 and maybe not the level of sophistication I want?
It's for my own purposes. For example, I'm studying on my own a topic relating to Greece, and (among others) wanted a map of labeled natural features to a certain level of detail (mountains, rivers, plains, bodies of water, islands, etc.), preferably with names from a specific time period, in both Greek and English. I spent a lot of time looking around and found nothing reliable or anything like the desired info, though I have to think others would want it. I wish I could quickly find quality maps, and modify them to my needs (e.g., add the older names as I learn them).
Maybe what you are telling me is that such a thing only exists if I host it myself.
Does anyone here know more about Natural Earth? What does it take to make a map? I've been looking for a good source, but not for something that requires serious commitment. Their website sounds great: https://www.naturalearthdata.com:
Natural Earth was built through a collaboration of many volunteers and is supported by NACIS (North American Cartographic Information Society), and is free for use in any type of project ....
The carefully generalized linework maintains consistent, recognizable geographic shapes at 1:10m, 1:50m, and 1:110m scales. Natural Earth was built from the ground up so you will find that all data layers align precisely with one another. For example, where rivers and country borders are one and the same, the lines are coincident.
Most data contain embedded feature names, which are ranked by relative importance. Other attributes facilitate faster map production, such as width attributes assigned to river segments for creating tapers.
you can make a variety of visually pleasing, well-crafted maps with cartography or GIS software
The last quote raises questions for me: How much investment in software and time is that?