Here is a map of Switzerland done in an Eduard Imhof-inspired style.
The topography uses an impressionistic palette of greens and ochers for the terrain lighting and shading, and has an atmospheric perspective shift to muted green tones in lower elevations. Similar to a previous version, but with an updated style resource and additional features. Here’s how to do it…
Download this style, for ArcGIS Pro. This style was updated for the making of this map to include Imhof-like point features, tweaked hillshade color schemes, a glacier hillshade color scheme, and a vignette effect.
The elevation data comes from NASA SRTM images (you have to create a nasa account, but that’s a small price), mosaiced into a single DEM. Then with the Raster Functions I made a traditional hillshade, a multi-directional hillshade, and a slope map. Then I applied the Imhof style’s color schemes to these layers, and applied the “mist” color scheme to the DEM and drag it to the top. Beneath everything is an imagery layer, to provide base colors and contextual texture in low-relief areas.
No surprises if you’ve ever followed this method before. One subtle tweak was to tease out low-relief features (like in Switzerland’s lowlands) a bit more using a “slope” map, also available in the raster functions set. I learned this trick from Sean Fleming. Looks like this now:
I shamefully never included an ice hillshade in the original Imhof style. I sampled colors from his glacier maps and added that color scheme to the style. I applied it to the DEM when masked for glaciers.
Then I added canton borders (states) and cities. I gave the cities a point style that I recreated based on some samples of Imhof’s. And applied a label to match.
Lastly, I created a not-Switzerland polygon (here’s how to do that) and gave it a faded fill effect to serve as a perimeter vignette.
And that’s pretty much it. If you would like a bit more detail, check out this how-to. Or if you’d rather just grab the source project and open it up for yourself, you can download that here.
Happy Mapping! John