Cartographic Software Art 2

Wanting to make more cartographic art in the vein of my previous post, I recently got in touch with with my old GIS/Cartography professor to try and determine exactly which operations I may have performed within the ArcMap software to reach such a colorful result. He was extremely helpful, and suggested that I may have (while fooling around in the computer-lab instead of doing actual work) run an aspect operation on the roadway vector data, generating the "road_dir" attribute field that was so visually stimulating.

Excited, I jumped to trying to recreate this operation. Unfortunately, I no longer have access to the industry-standard ESRI Arc software, and can only use the open-source alternative software QGIS, which has a very similar set of tools, but with some challenging omissions and caveats. One of those caveats being that the general aspect operation cannot be performed on vector data, only on raster type data. Bummer. However, this challenge has presented the opportunity to explore other methods to reach not only my desired result, but also other, different, visually stimulating results.

I started by rasterizing a subset of vector roadway data, in this case the area of Nashville and its surrounding suburbs. This then allowed me to perform operations, like the aspect operation, on the raster representation of that roadway data, skirting around the limitations of QGIS. In this example I used the raster distance operation to produce a gradient of values emanating from the roads. Then by adjusting the symbology of those values, I was able to produce a variety of effects that create dynamic color and texture. Each of the effects were given their own layer and the transparency of those layers adjusted to create a composite image. Then, by running a hillshade operation on the original roadway raster image, I was able to achieve a similar depth effect to the previous images created in ArcMap. That layer was then integrated into the composite image.

The result is a very different from the previous "ArcArt," but is similarly compelling as a visual representation of a geographic area, and has the potential to be much more thematically interesting.

Original composite image

As with the previous "ArcArt," I downsampled the original files, before using an online AI image upscale program to blend, morph and create a more painterly image at a much greater resolution. In this case, I was particularly taken by how the AI interpreted the texture layers of the original images.

Image after AI upscaling

I'm a big fan of the pixelated aesthetic created by the texture layer. I'll post some additional variations using the same Nashville area below.

Very interesting interpretation of the texture details by the AI in this one. I also included the original roadway vector layer in white, to provide smoother lines for the roads, as opposed to the more pixelated rasterized version.

This one was rendered without the texture layer of the previous ones, resulting in a much smoother appearance, a more pronounced depth effect, and allowing the AI to blend some of the colors more.

Over the coming weeks I plan on building a catalog of these types of works centered on major cities and areas of interest, developing new methods within QGIS and traditional image software to produce visually interesting results, and looking into creating a small business producing these digital cartographic themed art pieces. I get the feeling that one of these would look really cool in a large print format, where one can really see all the interesting details.