“The beauty of Mountain High Maps is its simplicity… …it has become a required part of the graphic designer’s armoury…” – Computer Generated Imaging
The sample map on this disc includes the full set of files relating to the map of Greece from the Mountain High Maps® collection:
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1. High-resolution map with land/ocean floor relief, physical colourisation, version A.
2. High-resolution map with land/ocean floor relief, physical colourisation, version B.
3. High-resolution map with land relief showing political colourisation, oceans flat blue.
4. High-resolution map with land/ocean floor relief in greyscale.
5. High-resolution map with land relief in greyscale, oceans white.
6. Photoshop paths files for use with the relief maps.
7. High-resolution masks, in TIFF format.
8. Low-resolution versions of the relief maps, with masks, in JPEG format.
9. FreeHand version 3.1 vector file.
10. FreeHand version 7.0 vector file.
11. Illustrator EPS vector file.
In the Sample Map folder you will find:
1. High-resolution (300ppi), relief maps of Greece in four variations of colourisation, 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” The relief maps feature ocean floor relief as well as land relief. These are identified as follows:
Number: the Greece map and all masks relating to it are prefixed by a number, as in “5.08 Greece”
Colourised map, physical “A” (land and ocean floor relief colourised according to elevation): “PHA.JPG” as in “5.08 Greece-PHA.JPG”
Colourised map, physical “B” (land and ocean floor relief colourised according to vegetation): “PHB.JPG” as in “5.08 Greece-PHB.JPG”
Colourised map, political (land relief colourised according to international boundaries): “POL.JPG” as in “5.08 Greece-POL.JPG”
Base relief map (land and ocean floor relief in greyscale): “base.JPG” as in “5.08 Greece-base.JPG”
Masked relief map (land relief in greyscale, with white ocean areas): “mkd.TIFF” as in “5.08 Greece-mkd.TIFF”
Photoshop paths, features (vector paths of features such as rivers and coastlines, plus borders): “Features paths.JPG” as in “5.08 Features paths.JPG” Why separate path files? Because the complexity of the data in these files may present problems in low memory situations if we incorporated them into the high res colour files – this way you just select the path layers you need.
Photoshop paths, names (vector paths of place and feature names such as towns, cities, mountain ranges, etc.): “Names paths.JPG” as in “5.08 Names paths.JPG”
Bitmap masks: these are identified by their purpose, as in “5.08 Ocean.TIFF”
2. 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”
3. Corresponding outline versions of the maps 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 coloured fills. The FreeHand files also include a layer onto which the corresponding relief map TIFF file has been placed and a tint colour applied (40% cyan/40% yellow) – this can be modified as desired.
4. Corresponding outline versions of the maps 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 coloured 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 colour applied (40% cyan/40% yellow) – this can be modified as desired.
5. Corresponding outline versions of the maps 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 coloured fills have been “tiled” to assist in printing. The Illustrator files also include a layer onto which the corresponding relief maps can be placed.
Using the maps
The Mountain High Maps® relief maps can be used without modification, or they can be manipulated with image-editing applications such as Adobe Photoshop, or used with the Illustrator or FreeHand files or with other drawing or page layout applications where, in some cases, colour can be applied directly.
 
This map combines a FreeHand file (for the coastline, country borders, country fills, rivers, cities, and graticules), and a greyscale relief map, re-coloured in FreeHand to highlight a country.
