OpenSourceCartography

Workshop:

"Cartography with QGIS & Inkscape" presented at FOSS4G 2017, Boston, MA, USA.

Description:

Maps built in the map composer of any GIS program often have the signature look of their software of origin. With some help from graphic design software, maps can have the signature of their cartographer instead. Participants in this workshop will leave with a clear understanding of how to use Inkscape to refine static cartographic works started in QGIS. This workshop will give participants hands-on experience with the workflow presented at the 2016 FOSS4G North America meeting for using QGIS-generated SVG files in Inkscape, including how to build a basic map in QGIS, import it into Inkscape, and work with tools such as fonts, design elements, and alignment tools, to make a map that is truly their own style.

Graphical Plan

Inkscape: Make Map Symbols --> QGIS: Compose a Map --> Inkscape: Finishing, Design Work

Outline

1. Getting Started

2. Intro to Inkscape

   1. Demonstration: You Already Know This!
   2. Hands-On: Make a Pin Icon in Inkscape

3. Working in QGIS

   1. Use Custom SVG Markers
   2. Export to SVG

4. Finishing Details in Inkscape

   1. Grouping
   2. Layers
   3. Text
   4. Copy & Paste
   5. Clip
   6. Other Things to Consider
   7. Export

5. Example Map

Getting Started

You should already have installed:

• QGIS (2.18)
• Inkscape (0.92)

Data

Data to use in this workshop is in the Data Folder

Other potential data sources for your maps: Michele's List of Data Sources

Intro to Inkscape

Demonstration: You Already Know This!

1. Concept of vectors (points, lines, polygons) vs. rasters (images)
2. Window Overview
3. GIS-Similar Concepts
   1. Merge/Clip/Union/Etc.
   2. Layers
   3. Fill & Stroke = Symbology

Hands-On: Make a Pin Icon in Inkscape

Let's learn to use Inkscape while making something we can use later: an icon to represent a point. I'll walk you through how to make a map pin icon, but feel free to make your own version! Something to remember: SAVE OFTEN! Just like GIS, vector illustration programs can be a little unstable. Save every time you think you might want to.

Open Inkscape. Let's learn a little about the interface.

There are a lot of toolbars. Here's a cheatsheet for the main ones: I'll assume you can use this image to help you locate tools. If I don't explain how to find a tool, use this image to help you find it in the interface.

Draw a circle in the middle of your canvas using the Cirlce & Elipse tool. Hold down Ctrl while drawing your circle to make a perfect circle (instead of an elipse which is longer in one dimension). Save.

Select your cirle with the Select & Transform Objects tool and then Open the Fill & Stroke dialog. You can set the fill & stroke either in this dialog or on the pallette at the bottom of the screen. Set the fill to an orange color and the stroke to a darker orange. Save.

Now use the rectangle tool to draw a skinny, tall rectangle. Make the fill a medium gray and the stroke a dark gray. Save.

Before this will look like a pin at all, we need to do some arranging. Open the Align & Distribute dialog. Select your circle with the Select tool, then hold down Shift and select the rectangle. Now both the circle and rectangle are selected. Change the drop-down in the Align dialog to "First Selected" and the click the button to "Center on Vertical Axis" (hover over the buttons to get a tool tip with the name of the buttons). Now your rectangle should be in the middle of your circle. Save.

You'll probably want to move the rectangle so it's near the bottom of the circle. Select the rectangle and use the arrow keys on your keyboard to move it down. Hold Shift with the arrow keys to move objects in larger jumps. Save.

Looking better! But the rectangle should really be underneath the circle. Select the rectangle. On the left side above the canvas, you'll see that the tool bar has options to raise and lower items relative to each other. Use "Lower Selection to Bottom" to put the rectangle below the circle. Now it's really starting to look like a pin! Save.

We could use our drawing just the way it is, but let's add a few more elements to make it look more realistic and to learn a few more tools. First, let's give the pin's stem some dimension by rounding the end of the rectangle. Select the rectangle and read the text at the bottom of the screen: "Rectangle in layer Layer 1." This tells us that the type of object we've selected is a rectangle. To edit the rectangle more than just changing it's size, we'll need to turn it into a Path. With the rectangle selected, click the Path menu at the top of the screen and select "Object to Path". Select the Node Editing tool , then click on the rectangle. You should see that each corner now has a little diamond-shaped node.

With the node tool still active, click on the line segment between the bottom two nodes. The two bottom nodes will be highlighted to show they are selected (they turn blue on my personal computer, but that might vary depending on operating system and such).

The tool menu above your canvas has changed to show tools relevant to working with nodes. Click the button to "Make Selected Segments Curves" . Little circles will appear to indicate the Bezier curve handles, but they are hard to see since they are inline with the bottom of the rectangle. Zooming in with the zoom settings in the lower right corner of the screen can help. Click one handle and drag it to see how it affects the line segment. Adjust both handles to make a relatively symetrical curve at the bottom of your pin. Save.

Let's make the pin look shiny. This will be a good opportunity to test out some of the things you've learned. Using the Pen (Bezier Curve) Tool , draw an elongated triangle along the upper left side of the pin - one click for each corner of the triangle and a final 4th click on the first corner to close up the polygon. Select your new triangle with the selection tool (the arrow) to make it active, then change the fill to a light orange. You can either remove the stroke or set it to the same light orange color. Save.

Using the Node Tool like before, round the two longer sides to make the pin look curved. Save.

And add some shine to the pin stem with a smaller rectangle of a lighter gray on top of your pin's stem. Curve the top and bottom edges to make it look 3 dimensional. Save.

Adjust the page size: In the File menu, click on Document Properties. In the Custom Size section, expand the "Resize page to content..." section by clicking on the little + sign. Make sure nothing in your drawing is selected by clicking in a blank space. Click the "Resize page to drawing or selection" button. The page boundary should now hug the edge of your drawing. Save one final time, close Inkscape, and you'll be ready to use your new pin marker in QGIS!

Working in QGIS

Open QGIS

Load Data

Import the vector data you would like to work with.

• From this repository's data folder: FOSS4G_Locations.geojson (locations of all of the FOSS4G conferences) and either the FOSS4G_Lines.geojson (straight lines between the conference locations) or FOSS4G_GreatCircles.geojson (great circle lines between the locations).
• From the internet: Natural Earth Country' 1:110m Cultural Admin-0 Country Boundaries and any other data you would like to add to your map (such as the Admin-1 States & Provinces Natural Earth data).

Order your layers with the countries on the bottom, then the lines, and points on top. Save your work.

Use Custom SVG Markers in QGIS

I will assume you know how to change the colors of vector data in QGIS, so we won't go over that. Instead, we'll focus on using custom SVG markers built in Inkscape.

Let's use the pin marker we made earlier:

1. Open the layer properties for the point layer and click on the Style tab on the left side of the window.
2. In the main part of the properties window, you'll see that your point layer was set by default to a "simple marker". Click on the "Simple Marker" text in the white box to access options for changing the marker type.
3. In the "Symbol layer type" drop down, select "SVG marker". You will probably need to scroll down to see the SVG Groups and SVG Images section of the dialog. Click the "..." button and navigate to where you saved your pin SVG file. Select your file and click the "open" button. (Alternatively you can put it in your User Symbols folder for QGIS to see it in the User Symbols SVG Group tree.) The marker preview at the top of the window should have changed to a pin.
4. Click "Apply" to see how it looks on your map. Adjust the size of your pin marker to any size you like. You can always make adjustments later. Click "OK" to exit the dialog.
5. Save your work.

You can also use SVG markers for lines. The process is similar to what you just did with your point markers: make the SVG marker in Inkscape, load it into QGIS in the layer properties dialog, and set some parameters. To save some time, I pre-made an SVG for you to try with your lines layer that looks like a single twist of rope. You can use this to make your line look like string.

1. Find the Rope_Segment.svg file in the Pre-Made SVGs Folder of this repository. You'll also see that there's a pin svg in case you want to see what my version looks like. Alternatively, you can make your own rope segment in Inkscape using the skills you just learned with the Pen Tool and Node Editor to make a similar shape. The key to success is to make sure the left and right side of the shape fit together well when the image is repeated next to each other. It's fiddly so I made one for you.
2. Open the Layer Properties dialog for the lines layer and go to the Style tab, just like before.
3. In the white box, click on the "Simple line" text.
4. In the "Symbol layer type" drop-down menu, pick "Marker line". Notice that you have a longer tree of layers in the white box.
5. In the white box, click the "Simple marker" text.
6. Change the "Symbol layer type" drop-down menu selection to "SVG marker".
7. Similar to what we did before, use the "..." button to open the dialog to find and select your Rope_Segment.svg and click the "Open" button. It may be hard to see since the rope segment colors are similar to the dialog box, but you should see what looks like a tan dashed line in the preview.
8. Adjust the size of the segments in the "Size" parameter box. For now, pick something like 4 milimeters to be able to see the segments. They don't fit together yet, but we'll fix that next.
9. Up at the top of the dialog, in the white box, click on the "Marker line" text. The radio button next to "with interval" should be selected. Change the spacing to make no space between the segments. 1.6 milimeters worked for me. Apply these changes to the canvas with the "Apply" button. If you like what you see, click "OK" to close the dialog, otherwise, make some more adjustments. NOTE: A process similar to what we just did can also be done in Inkscape, but it tends to work better on gentle curves.

At this point, you'll want to get an idea of what your final map will look like. I sometimes use a Google Image search to get some ideas. For example, if you want to continue with the map pin board theme, try googling related keywords to see what kinds of map pin boards there are. Do you want to label the locations? Do you want lines for states and provinces? Maybe you want some city names or graticule lines? Get everything into the canvas you think you'll need for your final map. It doesn't have to look nice at all yet, but unless you want to add it by hand later, you'll want to put it in now.

Helpful Links:

• Multiline Labels in QGIS from Anita Graser
• QGIS Training Manual Print Composer Tutorial

Export SVG

Using the Map Composer, create a layout that generally looks the way you want it to. Set the extent and scale of the map to roughly what you anticipate needing for the final product. When in doubt, pick a larger scale (more zoomed out) because we can always trim away extra, but we can't add it back easily in Inkscape later.

When you've got the layout generally how you want it, click the "Export to SVG" button. Ignore the warning. (You'll see what the warning is talking about soon, but it's not really a problem... and perhaps it's even a feature once you know how to deal with it.) Navigate to where you want to save your file, name it, and click the "Save" button. Uncheck "Export map layers as groups" and "Render map labels as outlines", then click "Save".

Now we're ready to start refining this map in Inkscape!

Finishing Details in Inkscape

Open your map file in Inkscape:

1. Start Inkscape
2. File menu -> Open
3. Navigate to your file and then click "Open"

Your map may look a little rough right now. Mine, for example, has text running off the page and the colors are not probably going to stay the way they are. That's ok. Now's a good time though to think again about if there's anything else you'd like to add. It's easier to make a new file in the QGIS Print Composer now than to try to add things later.

Unlike the previous sections of this workshop, finishing your map in Inkscape doesn't have a prescribed set of steps. Next we'll go through some tools and suggestions for how they can help, but how you apply them and the order in which you apply them is largely up to you and your artistic sensibilities.

Grouping Grouping and ungrouping are useful tools. Grouping objects allows you to treat multiple objects as one until they are ungrouped. Typically, .svg files exported from QGIS have all of the vectors grouped into one massive group with subgroups.

Before we can edit anything, we'll need to ungroup the big single group: Using the Select Tool , click on some part of the drawing on your canvas. Look at the bottom of the window and verify that you've selected a group. The text on the bottom of the window will say something like "Group of 15000 objects in root". Now ungroup using the Ungroup tool . It may take a while for this process to finish because we have so many nodes. Save.

Layers Another helpful feature of Inkscape is the ability to put items into different layers. This concept is very similar to what you're already familiar with in GIS. Layers higher in the list sit on top of layers that are lower in the list. Layers can be turned on and off to limit what you see but also to reduce the loading time as you work on items in a different layer. Usually .svg files saved from QGIS don't have any layers assigned. I like to make one layer to start and move everything into this layer. Then I add more layers as needed to issolate different elements of my map. For example, I typically put all the labels in one layer, all the country polygons in another, and the text and title in another.

Let's make that first layer to hold everything until we decide to move it:

1. Open the Layers dialog. If it docks to the side of the window and the dialog is too small, hover your mouse cursor over the bottom edge of the dialog below the Opacity slider to see the cursor that will let you click and drag to expand the window.
2. Click the + button to add a layer. A pop-up will ask you what you want to call it. I like to call mine something like "Everything Else" since I'll be moving some items out but maybe not everything.
3. Nothing is in this layer yet, so let's move all the items in the canvas into it. Select everything with either Ctrl + a on the keyboard or "Select All" from the Edit menu. Right click on any item, and select "Move to layer" from the menu that comes up. This option can also be found in the Layer menu at the top of the screen. Pick the layer you want to move the items to - in this case "Everything Else" - and click the "Move" button. Inkscape may take a minute to finish this process. Save when it's done. You can confirm that the items have moved into this layer by click on the the button that looks like a tiny eye to turn off the visibility. If everything disappears, it moved. Turn it back on, and everything should be visible again.

Add layers as you need them. Right now, similar things tend to be grouped because that's how QGIS exports them. For example, you can easily select all of the country polygons right now because they are in one group, which makes it easy to move them into their own layer right now. Once they are ungrouped, if you don't want to have to select them all individually, there's a handy trick: Right click on one of the items and click "Select Same" from the menu that appears. Pick the option that will select all of the similar items. For example, my country polygons all have the same fill. Once they are all selected, you can move them into a new layer.

Text

Fortunately now when you export .sgv files from QGIS, the labels now import into Inkscape as text. Text, like polygons, in Inkscape can have both a fill and stroke (use the Fill & Stroke Tool ) and the text can be edited to make adjustments. Be careful not to ungroup text. If you ungroup text, it will turn into a path, which has advantages if you want to get creative, but you won't be able to change the letters by typing into a box any more.

Edit existing text by selecting it and then opening the text dialog.

Add new text by using the text tool. Text you might want to add to your map includes things like a title, cartographer information, data credit, and maybe some information about the points.

Copy & Paste

It might seem obvious that you can copy, cut, and paste in Inkscape (of course you can!) but there's also specialized options for graphics that you won't find in other programs:

• "Paste in Place" - File menu or Keyboard Shortcut: Ctrl + Alt + v - paste an object copied to the clipboard in exactly the same place that it was copied from. I use it for making halos around text. Copy the text, paste it in place, make the copy white (or the color you want), give it a blur in the Fill & Stroke dialog, then lower it below your regular text.
• "Paste Style" - File menu
• "Paste Size" - File menu - has a variety of options for which dimension to paste
• You can also paste a color into either the Fill or Stroke of an object either by copying it from Inkscape or using a tool like the Colorzilla extension for Chrome and Firefox.
• Use the Eyedropper tool to select a color on your canvas to automatically copy into the Fill or Stroke (hold shift when you click)

Clip

Clip is helpful for dealing with those polygons that didn't get clipped properly in the QGIS export. You'll find the Clip tool in the Object menu at the top of the screen. Select the item or group of items you want to clip, along with the polygon you want to clip with, then set the clip. One of the nice things about Clip in Inkscape is that you can set and release it, so if you need to make adjustments later, undo it by releasing your clip.

Clip can also be used on images to cut out any polygon shape. It works just like clipping a raster in a GIS.

Other Things to Consider

• Move your labels around so you can see them all clearly
• You might need to move some of your pin markers to make them move visible (the pins in the US' midwest are almost on top of each other).
• Maybe your strings need a drop shadow. (Group all your segments, then Filters menu -> Glows & Shadows -> Drop Shadow)
• Explore the Filters and Extensions menus.

Export

When you're all done, you'll want to save your map in an image format.

In the File menu at the top of the screen, you'll find the "Export PNG Image" option. In this dialog you have choices about what part of the drawing to export (the extent of the page, the extent of selected objects, etc.). Pay attention to this because if you have something selected, it might assume you want to use this extent for your export.

Another option for different file types is the "Save As" option in the File menu. There are a multitude of options here including PDF.

Example

Here's an example of a map I created with the same data you're working with. I liked the idea of the textured string, but it was just too cluttered for my map, so I left it out. I've included annotations on my map so you can learn how the effects were done. None of it is fancy or difficult. It's mostly just layering items.