Geography 353 Log: Entry #9
Entry 9, Nov 30
Lab 8: Layouts and File Exports
Now I am beginning to realize that all this time and effort spent into organizing and making constant changes to my maps pays off. All 47 maps are ready to go and I am satisfied with the colors I have chosen, though I have not yet looked at them on the projector screen, one of my final mediums. They appear to be fine on the computer, at least! I had an enjoyable time choosing a layout for each of the four different types of maps. ArcGIS has a lot of options to choose from and many things that I can include to support my map. They have north arrows of various styles, they have an extendable scale bar for distances, and a few other things. I always enjoy this part of any large project, putting the final touches on it.
The interface for creating a legend is just counter-productive as the properties and symbology tabs for the map data. If I wanted to make an adjustment to one aspect of my legend, say the size of the text, I would have to make sure I changed everything again and again, because it would always revert back to the default settings, at least for me anyway. However, once I was able to set my layouts for the fist one of each category, the rest were just copy and paste.
Professor Krygier said that it would be easier to export the legend separately, then add it to each image when working in Photoshop. I actually didn’t do it that way. I kept the imbedded legend in ArcGIS and just made adjustments on its size and style from the legend tab. It worked out well, and when I got to the cropping step in Photoshop, all the legends were in the same place. I did have to go back and move the states around a bit because they somehow got dragged and were about 2 pixels off on a few of them. It’s always a pain to get them all finished and find that one in the middle is off center.
Here are finished layouts for all four types of maps (they are a little blurry, navigate towards my animation page for better quality):
At this point I am ready to animate my maps. I’ve never used an animator tool before so I looking forward to it.
