@jslayton - I think it should be possible to get this result with most maps where the MAP BORDER green rectangle coincides exactly with the background and if you hide the decorative frame (if there is one). I'm very convinced that it happens as a result of antialiasing the edge of the map, and because the usual drawing area and/or SCREEN is white.

EDIT: yes - I can make the map I have open do it if I hide the frame I gave it and export a rectangular section. In this case the antialiasing (set to 66%) has mixed the line of pixels at the outermost edge with the white of the screen and turned them all noticeably paler. If the AA was lower it would be probably be even more noticeable.

Here is the same thing again with only 20% AA

I had to re-show the layer boundary in GIMP so you could see it against the pale background there.

But maybe it's nothing to do with the AA (proving the first part of this comment is actually wrong). Here it is again without any AA

I think this may be why most styles have at the very least a black outline rectangle as a visual frame.

The other thing I've only just noticed after 5 years mapping with CC3 (I always usually have a decorative frame so don't ever see this normally) is that there are 2 pixels of white on the top and left hand sides, where there is only one pixel of white on the bottom and right hand sides.

Another thing I've only just noticed is that despite there being no AA at all on this last image the white isn't pure. It contains tints of the colour from the map. Here (below) I have manipulated the Gamma to show these up clearly for what they are - apparently random colours.

A further experiment proves it is the screen the render is capturing, even though the rectangle being picked is exactly the map extent. Here I have kept the same settings as before but turned the screen black.

Ok Joe. Thanks for the explanation.

You could do the same thing in GIMP, using Select all, and then shrink the selection by 2 pixels and do a Crop to selection.

Oh you won't get any practical help until after 20 June, when I hand everything over for MD ;)

But after that I have breathing space to be more generous.

Hi Everyone! :D

In this week's Live Mapping session tomorrow (Thursday 24 June) Ralf will be giving us a rundown of how to build our own star ships using the Starship Deckplan issue of the 2007 Cartographer's Annual.

(No Cosmographer required!)

All are welcome to come along and join in with questions and suggestions :)

Thanks Daisho :)

If you think of more, be sure to add them as a new comment or I might not see them.

@ArgoForg - On point 3, you can use Resize Drawing Area in the File menu right now if that is still an issue for a map you are working on.

Ok. I think that will probably be a bit too small to look good.

I've trimmed it to work as a symbol, but I'm not sure it will look all that great on a background that is different to the one it began its life on, but if it works it works, and if not, it doesn't.

And there I was thinking it might be some kind of colour thing...

Try playing with the colour of the grass and soil. I think the grass is a bit too blue, and both the grass and the soil are a bit too colourful. That's not the same as too pale. The colour is just a bit too intense.

I don't think the badges would look silly without a station name, unless this wasn't the only station in existence.

The resources required to build such a thing would make it unlikely that there would be more than one.

The first thing would be to consider the power that created this monster - and it would really have to be a large and powerful country, or even a united world. On a smaller scale (and as an example) Ocean vessels from the UK always have an "HMS" prefix, which is the acronym for His/Her Majesty's Ship. So you have HMS Victory, HMS Intrepid, etc. SS used by America stands for Sailing Ship.

After the political/royal prefix the name itself can be anything at all. Ocean vessels of the past were usually named with rather impressive names like Victory, Intrepid, Explorer, etc. I'm not sure why that should be, but they certainly sound a lot more serious than a ship called Lucy, or Sue, or Georgina. And that's the other thing! Most ships are for some reason either impressive or female, and referred to usually in the third person as "She". Well, they are in the UK ;)

If you are having trouble with names here is a handy random generator you could use.

The other thing to remember about names is that after a while they do one of two things. No matter how impressive sounding a name is, or how average they are, with something like this the fame of the name can go either way. Even if you call it HMCS Freddie, if the station becomes famous for doing great and wonderful things it will likely be known affectionately as "The Freddie". If there is a lot of evil done in it's name it will probably lose it's actual name and just be known as any kind of expletive word with "The" tacked onto the front end.

This is unofficially known as Transparency Acne, and is an artefact caused by the rendering engine when it fails to recognise pixels in the upper sheet that happen to be exactly the same colour as the underlying pixels.

This causes little virtual holes (holes) in the upper sheet, and effects are applied around the edge of each of these holes. In this example the bevel is being applied, resulting in this pitted effect.

Add a new sheet just underneath the upper sheet and copy the the polygons from the upper sheet onto it, then hide everything except the new sheet and use the Change Properties tool to make the new polygons on the underlying sheet a solid fill and some colour that you can be fairly sure isn't included in the texture. Colour 227 is a good one.