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Technical Specification

Mountain High Maps is published as a set of 4 CD-ROM discs, and is available for use on computers running Macintosh Operating System - HFS format file names indicated purple - or Microsoft Windows and Unix or SGI platforms environments - ISO 9660 format file names in black.

 

The 4-disc Mountain High Maps collection contains:

1. 78 high-resolution (300ppi), relief maps in four variations of colorization, plus vector paths and a variety of bitmap masks. The high resolution maps are all identified by the suffix ".JPG" or ".TIFF" as in "5.08 Greece-base.JPG" on Macintosh or "508GRE3B.JPG" in Windows The relief maps feature ocean floor relief as well as land relief. These are identified as follows:

Number: each map and all masks relating to that map are prefixed by a number, as in "5.08 Greece" on Macintosh or "508GRE" in Windows

Colorized maps, physical "A" (land and ocean floor relief colorized according to elevation): "PHA.JPG" as in "5.08 Greece-PHA.JPG" on Macintosh or "508GRE3A.JPG" in Windows

Colorized maps, physical "B" (land and ocean floor relief colorized according to vegetation): "PHB.JPG" as in "5.08 Greece-PHB.JPG" on Macintosh or "508GRE3Y.JPG" in Windows

Colorized maps, political (land relief colorized according to international boundaries): "POL.JPG" as in "1.01 Africa-POL.JPG" on Macintosh or "508GRE3P.JPG" in Windows

Base relief maps (land and ocean floor relief in grayscale): "base.JPG" as in "5.08 Greece-base.JPG" on Macintosh or "508GRE3P.JPG" in Windows

Masked relief maps (land relief in grayscale, with white ocean areas): "mkd.TIFF" as in "5.08 Greece-mkd.TIFF" on Macintosh or "508GRE3W.TIF" in Windows

2. 39 high-resolution (300ppi), globe views with corresponding ocean/land bitmap masks, identified as follows:

Grayscale globes (land relief with oceans white, TIFF format): "mkd.TIFF" as in "7.04/0-135E/mkd.TIFF" on Macintosh or "704EQU3W.TIF" in Windows

Colorized globes (15 globes with fully colorized land relief and blue oceans, JPEG format): "COL.JPG" as in "7.04/0-135E/COL.JPG" on Macintosh or "704EQU3Y.JPG" in Windows

3. Five full-color backgrounds of the stellar sky for use with the globes, plus a cloud mask for adding a touch of realism.

4. Low-resolution (72ppi) versions of all of the relief maps and masks, in JPEG format. These are identified by "L.JPG" as in "5.08 Greece-base L.JPG" on Macintosh or "508GRE7B.JPG" in Windows

5. Corresponding outline versions of the maps (not globe views) in Macromedia FreeHand format (version 7 or later). These are identified by the suffix ".FH7". The FreeHand 7.0 files provide fully-editable outlines of each map, with each country placed on a separate layer for easy location and editing. Additional layers include rivers, major cities, graticules (lines of latitude and longitude), and scales. Each graphic and typographic element of every map has been assigned a "Style" to make specific changes even easier. All paths are continuous (FreeHand 7.0 now allows up to 30,000 points in a single path) and closed paths have been assigned colored fills. The FreeHand files also include a layer onto which the corresponding relief map TIFF file has been placed and a tint color applied (40% cyan/40% yellow) - this can be modified as desired.

6. Corresponding outline versions of the maps (not globe views) in FreeHand format (version 3.1). These are identified by the suffix ".FH3". The FreeHand 3.1 files provide fully-editable outlines of each map, with each country placed on a separate layer for easy location and editing. Additional layers include rivers, major cities, graticules (lines of latitude and longitude), and scales. Each graphic element of every map has been assigned a "Style" to make specific changes easy. All long paths are split into smaller chunks (FreeHand 3.1 only allows a maximum of 1,000 points in a path) and areas have been "tiled" with colored fills to assist in printing. The FreeHand files also include a layer onto which the corresponding relief map TIFF file has been placed and a tint color applied (40% cyan/40% yellow) - this can be modified as desired.

7. Corresponding outline versions of the maps (not globe views) in Adobe Illustrator eps format. These are identified by the suffix ".eps". The Illustrator files provide fully-editable outlines of each map, with each country placed on a separate layer for easy location and editing. Additional layers include rivers, major cities, graticules (lines of latitude and longitude), and scales. All long paths are split into smaller chunks - although Illustrator allows documents to have paths with more than 1,000 points, it will not print any fills applied to those paths, so areas with colored fills have been "tiled" to assist in printing. The Illustrator files also include a layer onto which the corresponding relief maps can be placed.

8. 38 animated globes in QuickTime® format on Macintosh or .MOV and .AVI format for Windows, plus the Strata Vision 3d™ files (on Macintosh only) and supporting texture maps used to create them.

9. View Catalog containing useful technical information about the maps.

10. Hints & Tips files containing advice on using the maps with some of the most popular applications. These appear on each disc.

11. A selection of chevron arrows in FreeHand and Illustrator formats, for adding graphically dramatic flow lines to your maps.

12. A selection of colored "map pins" as a QuarkXPress "Library" file for adding graphic location identifiers to your maps.

The FreeHand and Illustrator file formats provide fully-editable outlines of each map, with each country placed on a separate layer for easy location and editing. Additional layers include rivers, major cities, physical features, graticules (lines of latitude and longitude), and scales. The FreeHand files also include a layer onto which the corresponding relief map TIFF file has been placed. The Illustrator files can be placed directly into any word-processing or page layout application which accepts the EPS file format (FreeHand files can also be placed, but they must first be converted to EPS format within FreeHand).

The TIFF images are best used with image-editing applications such as Adobe Photoshop and Corel Photo Paint, but they can also be used within page layout and drawing applications, where color can be applied directly.

 

Using the maps

The Mountain High Maps TIFF and JPEG formats can be used either on their own, or with the Illustrator or FreeHand files.

Download the free Map Tutorial written with detailed step by step Photoshop instructions on how to build a promotional artwork image using MOUNTAIN HIGH MAPS including some stock imagery also provided.

Note: Unless you have version 6.0 or higher of Illustrator, TIFF images must first be converted to EPS format before they can be placed within Illustrator.

This map combines a FreeHand file (for the coastline, country borders, rivers, cities, and graticules), a TIFF grayscale relief map image (for the land area, cloned and re-colored to highlight a country), and its corresponding TIFF mask (for the sea area).

Files sizes

The map and globe images occupy 4 CD-ROM's with a uncompressed file size of approximately 10 Gbytes. The grayscale high resolution maps range from 3 Mbytes to as high as 17 Mbytes uncompressed, averaging around 5 Mb grayscale and colorized maps between 10 to 50 Mb in RGB. Individual map images differ in size, averaging around 2,000 to 2,500 pixels in height and width; the largest world map is sized at 5,500 x 3,500 pixels. Issues relating to the quality and size of images are covered in Frequently Asked Questions page.

Map scales

Horizontal scales range from 1:250,000 up to 1:45,000,000, giving on the ground pixel resolution varying from 200 metres to 12 km. Typical resolution for European countries is 500 metres, for US 1,000 metres, continental views range from 3 km to 6 km. Vertical scales range from 1:50,000 to 1:1,000,000, with contour intervals varying from 50 to 1,000 feet. To emphasize relief, the elevation scales have been exaggerated 5 to 30 times. The maps use many projection systems including Mercator, Gall, Lambert's equal-area, conformal conic, simple conic and zenithal.

Political accuracy

Mountain High Maps Version 2.5 has been revised for all known and ratified political border decisions as of March 1997 - updates since that date can be downloaded on request by registered users from this web site. The regulating authorities whose advice has been sought in the preparation of the Mountain High Maps material are the Office of the Geographer at the US Department of State, Washington DC and the International Boundaries Research Unit (IBRU) at the University of Durham in England. A list of unresolved border disputes is documented in a disc based documentation tool, and where appropriate disputes have been clearly identified in Illustrator and FreeHand files as purple border lines.

Studio Edition Version 2.5

Studio Editions comprises Mountain High Maps V.2.5 along with four of Digital Wisdom's desktop publishing CD's into one 8 CD-ROM package at a substantial price reduction. Check our Studio Editions page for more details.

Continental Editions Version 2.5

Continental Editions divides the Mountain High Maps V.2.5 collection into four competitively priced CD's for designer's who only need a few maps in one continental region of the world. Check our Continental Editions page for more details of the Continental breakdown of the maps.

Request literature

If you like to have our Mountain High Maps literature package mailed to you, please click here for details.

Upgrade to Version 2.5

Preferential terms are available to existing owners of MOUNTAIN HIGH MAPS versions 1.0, 2.0 and 2.1. Check our upgrade page for details.

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