How to make custom maps

Dr. Steven Zucker: [0:02] …is devoted to how to make a map. These are maps that we use at Smarthistory that may be useful in the classroom. There are lots of different ways to do this, but we’re going to walk you through our method.

[0:15] [pause]

Dr. Zucker: [0:22] Before we begin, I just want to call out some really terrific resources for finding historical maps. These are some of the most extraordinary collections.

[0:32] I want to especially call out the David Rumsey Map Collection and the Rumsey Map Center at Stanford University. The map collection is especially extraordinary and just [a] really rich collection. If you haven’t explored it and you like maps, it’s a great place to go. As you’ll see in our discussion, finding historical maps is an important part of the process.

[0:59] I’m putting up here four different maps that we’ve used on Smarthistory for essays, for videos. The map on the upper left is the map that we’ll actually be producing today together, that we’ll walk through. As you can see, it calls out the Republic of Florence, the Republic of Siena, the capitals of those city-states, and uses as an underlying image Google Earth, which all four of these do.

[1:28] The map on the upper right was produced specifically for our series of books, and we wanted to call out the proximity of art centers, especially near Tuscany, in Tuscany.

[1:40] The map on the lower left is a little bit different again. You’ll see that there are no borders, and this was purposeful because this was made for a video that was looking at a Safavid object. We were talking about the fluidity of borders, and the purpose of this map was different. It was simply to show the Safavids in between the Ottomans to the west and the Mughal Empire to the east.

[2:07] So all of these maps are very, I think, defined. They’re very much trying to provide only specific kinds of information. The map on the lower right is different again. Here we do have a hard border, and what we’ve done is we’ve created a kind of scrim to differentiate the Roman Empire at its greatest extent in 117 C.E. Four different kinds of maps for four different purposes.

[2:35] [pause]

Dr. Zucker: [2:47] Okay. We’ll just go ahead. We’re going to go through a five-step process. We’re going to grab a base image and clean it up.

[2:58] You can see on the left an image straight off of Google, and on the right, that cleaned up Google Earth view. We’re going to correlate it with a historical map. In this case, this is a map from 1911 that we’ll use in our process.

[3:19] We’re going to use that to trace the borders of the republics that we’re interested in here, in this case Florence and Siena. We’re going to be doing this with some Photoshop functionality that allows us to adjust the opacity and to create layers.

[3:40] Then we’ll finally just put a little shadow behind the letters to increase the legibility. That’s a five-step process: cleaning up the base image, correlating it with a historical map, adding the regions and cities, increasing the legibility, and then finishing touches — in this case, just this little legend here, “Florence and Siena circa 1494.”

[4:09] Let’s get going. In order to do this, I’m going to share my dirty laundry here for a second and unshare my screen so that I can share Photoshop.

[4:21] [pause]

Dr. Zucker: [4:23] All right, let’s see if I can share my Photoshop. Here we go, okay.

[4:36] I should mention that we’re going to take questions and answers afterward, and please use the Q&A section of the webinar, not the regular commenting area. We’ll get to your questions right after I finish. When I was talking to Beth about this process and what I was going to be demonstrating, she had a great analogy.

[4:57] This is a little bit like a cooking show where they cheat, where they have the beautiful pie or cake in the oven, and then they just show the person mixing in the bowl, and somehow it becomes this beautiful thing. I have the entire map produced here, and we’re going to reverse engineer this a little bit, and show how this was constructed.

[5:22] The first thing I want to do is, I want to…actually, I’m going to unshare my screen again. I’m going to share my entire desktop now, and I’m going to go to Google and I’ve found Italy.

[5:42] Now, I’ve made a couple of decisions here that I just want you to be aware of before I begin. I’ve not zoomed in too much. Even though I’m focusing on Florence and Siena, I thought it was important for my students that I actually show the entirety or nearly the entirety of the boot of Italy, because that’s such a recognizable geographic marker, so that they know where they are.

[6:04] I think if I zoomed in too much, they would lose that geographic sense of where they are. It’s a bit of a compromise. I want to do a couple of things now. I want to switch over to Google Satellite, to Google Earth. I’m going to do that by clicking here.

[6:21] But there’s too much information here and this is going to be distracting for my students. I don’t want the roads, I don’t want Arezzo, and certainly I don’t want this panel. I’m going to just go over here and turn the labels off and that’s cleaned this image up considerably.

[6:39] I’m going to then just close this panel, and I’m going to take a screenshot by hitting Shift, Command, and 4 simultaneously. That’ll give me crosshairs, and I can drag across and get what I want. Now, one of the things that I do want to make sure I always get is the information down in the lower-right corner.

[6:58] In this case, it says, “Imagery Copyright 2020 TerraMetrics.” That copyright information is essential if you’re going to use a Google map. Google also wants you not to obscure their logo and so that’s the deal we’re making. I’m going to use their map, but I’m going to make sure that I’ve included that material so that everybody is happy.

[7:28] Now, once I’ve got that — I’m going to just stop this screen share and go back to…I apologize for the jumping around…go back to Photoshop. And what I’ve done — I’m just going to turn off all these layers now for just a sec — is I’ve brought this into Photoshop.

[7:56] This is that same image, and now I want to understand where to put Florence and Sienna. Now, you might ask, why don’t I just use a historical map? I’ve dug up a historical map that is useful for me, or a map that speaks of a historical moment at least. I could show this to my students, but I find that there’s too much information here.

[8:25] My students are not interested at the moment in the Visconti, they’re not interested in the Ottoman Empire, the Adriatic Sea…it’s just simply too much information.

[8:35] Really what I want is just this information, but even that area is too dense, and so I’m going to create my own map that displays only the information that I want. Now, what I’ve done is I’ve created a series of layers. I’ve brought this historical or this atlas map in, and I’ve also brought in my base map. The base map is a layer just on top.

[9:01] This allows me to do a couple of things that are important. I’m going to use this opacity function, which is right here, to decrease the opacity of the image that’s on top so that I can actually see through it and see both images simultaneously.

[9:18] What I’ve done on my own, and this is a little bit the cooking show analogy, is I’ve sized the two so that they’re the same. I’ve turned the base, the historical map a little bit so that it aligns fairly well. You can see that the coast that I’m interested in here by the Republic of Florence and Siena is right on.

[9:42] Both maps are quite accurate and it matched up perfectly. However, when we get over to the Adriatic coast, you can see that the alignment is not so good, and it gets even worse as we get down to the heel of the Italian Peninsula. But that’s okay. I’m not worried about that. I’m interested in this area right here.

[10:03] I think you can see right off the bat that what we’re doing is no more complicated than what you did in elementary school when you took a piece of tracing paper and began to copy something. That’s all we’re going to do. I’m going to create a brand-new layer for everything I want on this map.

[10:22] In essence, what I’m going to do now is I’m going to produce these two layers, but let me do that from scratch just so you can see how it’s done. The way I create a new layer is I press this little plus sign that’s within a square, and that’s created a new layer. I’m going to now make sure that that’s selected. I’m going to just use my Brush Tool here.

[10:48] I’m going to choose a color that will read against this. Let me use this turquoise here. Choose my brush, and I might zoom in a bit. I’m going to simply begin to color this in. Now, I’m not going to take your time and do this with you sitting there, but let that little spot suffice. I’ll create another layer.

[11:15] Let me choose another color, maybe pink this time for Siena, and I’ll abut that as well. I would do this obviously much more carefully on my own. Let me now get rid of these. Whoops. Let me get rid of these two new layers that I have just produced that were mock-ups and go to the proper layers that I was a little bit more careful about. Here we go.

[11:50] Actually, let me do these one at a time. When I first produce them, this is what they look like.

[12:01] [pause]

Dr. Zucker: [12:07] That is, they were completely opaque. If I back off the underlying historical map by increasing the opacity of the Google map, this is where we are. Certainly, you can see very clearly where Florence and Siena are, but — it’s where the republics are — it is to my eye at least too garish and I would like to see some of the topography underneath. I’m going to use the tools that we had used previously, that is, the opacity, to just back off a bit so that they become a little bit more transparent, and I can see under them. You can also fuss with the fill underneath, which can have very nice results.

[13:00] Now that looks to my eye like it belongs much more to the map underneath it, and so I’m quite pleased with that. The next thing I’m going to want to do is decrease the opacity of the Google map one more time, because I want to make sure I can see where the actual capital cities are.

[13:20] If I do that, I can look here and I can just make out the city of Florence is here and the city of Siena is here, and I want to mark those off. I’m going to create a layer to do that, and I’m going to make sure that that layer is on top of the regions that I’ve created. I’ll go over to my Marquee Tool here.

[13:43] The Marquee Tool is often a rectangle, but if you press down on it, you can choose the elliptical, which is what you want. I’m then going to just click and drag while I hold my finger on the Shift key, and that will make sure that I get a perfect circle. Now, it’s going to be a little bit hard for you to see this, but I’ve created a little marching ants that are a circle right over where I want it.

[14:07] I’m going to make sure that white is chosen by just clicking there once and then Option+Delete. That’s become a solid white. Now I want to drop those marching ants, which you can do with Command+D to drop the ants. There’s the city of Siena.

[14:26] I would repeat that for the city of Florence, but I’m going to once again get rid of this and just reveal the dots that I’ve already produced that are in exactly the right place.

[14:38] Okay, so I’m happy with what I’m seeing here so far, but now I need to call them out. I need to add yet another set of layers that have the titles of the city-states, and I’m going to create another layer. I’m going to put it on top of my regions again. Now, I’ll go over to my text and — my little Text Tool over here on the left column. I’ll bring it over here and I’m just going to type.

[15:11] I’m going to replace “Lorem Ipsum” with the words “Florence.” Generally, when we make a map, we try to be consistent. We try to use upper and lowercase for cities and for, perhaps, seas, and use uppercase-only for countries.

[15:32] Of course, because Florence is an independent republic, this is a little bit of a tricky issue, and so you might want to choose uppercase in this case. Once I’ve got that, I can go to my Pointer Tool, and I can place it where I want.

[15:45] I’m going to, once again, jump ahead. I’m just going to reveal now the text boxes or the text layers that I’ve already produced. I want to talk about this for just a moment. I’ve decided not to stack Republic of Florence over the Republic of Siena.

[16:05] They would be very close together and I think it would be a little bit difficult to read. I often find that staggering the names can be very effective, especially when they’re close together in a case like this.

[16:17] I’m pretty happy with what I’m seeing now. I want to go back to my Google layer and increase the opacity to 100 percent so that the historical map vanishes. I can really look at this and make sure that I’m pleased with everything. It’s looking good.

[16:34] There is one more step that I want to take here, though, which is because…especially the Republic of Siena is reading over the pink and the turquoise and this dark green, it’s a little bit hard to see. What I think would help is if I put a different layer below this and — below the text, a kind of shadow, to make that text pop, and that’s pretty easy to do. I’m going to create a layer.

[17:00] I’m going to make sure that it’s under the letters but over the regions. Then I’ll go over to my Brush Tool. I want black in this case, and I’m going to place the circle for my brush just over the letters. I’m going to hold down Shift so I get a straight line going across.

[17:27] I’ll do that again for Florence. I’m going to include that little circle. I’ll do that here as well. Obviously, it’s reading very clearly now but it looks terrible, at least to my eye. What I want to do is I want to back off on the opacity again here until it almost vanishes, but it will still really, I think, help with the readability of this.

[17:55] I’m going to just turn this on and off you can see the difference. That’s without the shadow and that’s with the shadow. The shadow is almost not noticeable, but it really does help those letters to pop.

[18:06] I’m going to get rid of this, and I’m going to replace it now with the shadows that I produced that are really almost invisible. Again, without them, it doesn’t read as well, at least to my eye.

[18:19] Lastly, the thing that I want to do is I want to make sure that this map is set in time. These are the borders for these republics at the end of the 15th century. I would build myself just a little white rectangle, we’ll put this little white field here and put some letters on top of it there. Voilà, this is a map that I would use in my class.

[18:50] I hope that was helpful. I’m happy to take any questions that you might have, that you might have. I hope you build maps that are clear and efficient for your students and share them broadly. Thanks so much.

Dr. Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank: [19:02] …see, I’m popping in to help facilitate the questions and it looks like we had someone who raised their hand. Maybe since it went by very quickly, you could either unmute yourself or you could ask the question in the Q&A for people who want to see the questions also.

[19:27] [pause]

Dr. Kilroy-Ewbank: [19:27] Let’s see, the raise hand goes by so quickly that by the time I go to unmute you, I forget who it was.

Dr. Zucker: [19:39] Oh, well, while people are gathering, I should just mention that although I used Photoshop, there are lots of different programs you can use to produce maps. You can use Pixelmator, you can use any of the photo-editing tools are perfectly up to the task. I happen to be comfortable in Photoshop. That’s what I use.

Dr. Kilroy-Ewbank: [20:03] It looks like that was our first question, free alternatives.

Dr. Zucker: [20:05] Yes.

Dr. Kilroy-Ewbank: [20:08] I will just also mention to piggyback off what Steven said, if you want to learn more about some of the free alternatives and just how to work in Photoshop, Steven also ran a wonderful workshop a few weeks ago about improving your images that’s available up on the website.

[20:23] [crosstalk]

Dr. Kilroy-Ewbank: [20:23] It looks like we have…oh, someone was asking about whether you thought this could be used in PowerPoint, if you could do something like this in PowerPoint.

Dr. Zucker: [20:36] You could absolutely show this in PowerPoint, which is in fact what I did just a moment ago, or at least Google Image or Google Slides. I’m not sure that you could build this in PowerPoint, but you could certainly display it easily in PowerPoint.

[20:52] I also wanted to make the point that the tools that we just went over — although this was for map-making — you can use these same tools — really just the opacity, the brush, the type — to produce any kind of annotation. If you want to diagram an image for your students, for example, all of these same tools would be perfectly useful for that kind of project.

Dr. Kilroy-Ewbank: [21:24] It looks like maybe we could point out again where we could find good historical maps.

Dr. Zucker: [21:29] Absolutely. Let me stop sharing this and let me see if I can find my little PowerPoint again. Bear with me for one sec. I have too many things open. Here we go. These are just some of my favorite places to…let me just get back there.

[21:59] These are some of my favorite resources. Again, just a call-out to David Rumsey’s map collection. David Rumsey is an avid map collector who’s really tried to give back and digitized, at a very high resolution, a number of his maps.

[22:18] He also has this wonderful ability in many of his historical maps to overlay them accurately over contemporary maps. It’s just a wonderful resource that you should definitely explore. Just Google “David Rumsey map collection” and you’ll find it, or you can go to the Map Center at the library at Stanford University, but that’s a different site.

[22:43] The New York Public Library’s Map Division is amazing. It’s one of the world’s great map collections as well. The Library of Congress is amazing. Gallica, the Bibliothèque Nationale, has an extraordinary array as well. Europeana has great maps.

[23:02] Then there’s an old website, an old online website, which is still really good, which is simply called Old Maps Online. It not only has an amazing collection of high-resolution old maps, but it also — can you tell I love maps? — allows you again to justify them to contemporary maps, which can be really wonderful and useful tool.

[23:27] The US Geologic Survey not only is actively mapping the world, but they also make historical maps available, and it’s a really rich resource. You have to dig a little bit. It’s a government website, so it’s a little bit of a mess, honestly, but when you get in there, there’s incredible resources. Then I put this very consciously at the end of the list, Google still a good place to look. [laughs]

Dr. Kilroy-Ewbank: [23:52] That’s great. It looks like we have a question about your thoughts on animating map regions to appear one by one.

Dr. Zucker: [24:04] Absolutely. That would be a very easy thing to do with layers. You could absolutely animate that in a video context. You could even do that in PowerPoint.

[24:15] Because you’re building each component of your map layer by layer, you have complete control over that. In fact, that’s the way we produce many of our annotations and graphics on Smarthistory. Just as an aside, we’re in the middle of producing a video on Gloucester Cathedral.

[24:36] Gloucester Cathedral has this amazing vaulting that is wildly complex. We took on the ridiculous task of trying to isolate the different vaulting types. We did that with different colors in Photoshop as layer types.

[24:52] We do, in a sense, animate that in our video so that they come up one by one with annotations describing them, and of course the voiceover as well. Yes, absolutely. I think that the layering process gives you the control that you need to be able to do that kind of animation. That’s a great idea.

Dr. Kilroy-Ewbank: [25:10] Yeah. Also, just to pop in to say that in a recent map that we made for an essay on the Mexican-American War, we used the Knight Lab Juxtapose, which is a free software where you can basically put in two images. It doesn’t have to be maps, but it essentially allows you to embed it and you can slide over and see how the image is, in this case maybe a map, changes over time.

[25:35] It looks like we don’t have any other questions unless there’s some final ones right at the end here.

Dr. Zucker: [25:40] I think that’s okay because we’re just about out of time.

Dr. Kilroy-Ewbank: [25:43] That is true.

Dr. Zucker: [25:44] I want to thank everybody and I want to really just reiterate, invite everybody to come join us on…here it is, on January 6th, January 21st, and every two weeks thereafter. This is going to be a great series and we’d love to see you there. Thank you very much. Have a wonderful holiday, and think we’re all looking forward to 2021.

Dr. Kilroy-Ewbank: [26:08] Sounds good. We’ll put some of those resources online.