Adventures in mapmaking: the search for grayscale tiles
The author shares their tileset journey, starting with Stamen Toner and transitioning to WMS TopPlusOpen gray due to cost concerns. They later repainted OpenStreetMap tiles into grayscale for desired aesthetics.
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The article discusses the author's journey in finding suitable tilesets for mapmaking. Initially using Stamen Toner, a commercial black-and-white tileset, the author later switched to the free WMS TopPlusOpen gray tileset provided by the German Federal Agency for Cartography due to cost concerns. However, this tileset had uneven coverage at different zoom levels in various regions. Subsequently, the author explored repainting OpenStreetMap tiles into grayscale using a plugin and CSS, achieving the desired aesthetic efficiently. The article highlights the challenges faced in selecting appropriate tilesets for map creation, acknowledging the contributions of Stadia Maps, LeafletJS, and OpenStreetMap in enabling mapmaking endeavors. The author expresses satisfaction with the final choice of using OpenStreetMap tiles displayed in grayscale, emphasizing the importance of accessibility and customization in map design.
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8 commentsThis would also let you set the grayscale on the tiles using imagemagick convert.
Neat project and thanks for the write up.
Instructions for self-hosting a PMTiles file are available here: https://docs.protomaps.com/.
Another option would be self hosting vector tiles(or finding the most generous free tier vector tiles) and using a custom grey scale styling that you could tweak to your needs.
Maputnik is a great tool for building custom vector stylesheets. (1)
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