How to Make a Map using QGIS3

hello guys welcome to another tutorial in this tutorial i'm going to show you how to use qgis in order to create a comprehensive map starting from just a couple of layers that looks like this and how to end up with a map that looks just like this [Music] so we are going to take our time and dive into each and every step in detail so that you guys can also utilize these techniques in order to generate a map which looks just like this all right so without further ado let's go ahead and get started with the tutorial all right guys i hope you guys have opened qjs already now as you can see over here i have loaded in three layers the the topmost layer is basically my study area it's actually some area in the central region of france and over here i do have my dem and in the background i have loaded an openstreetmap layer now in case if you do not know how to add openstreetmap as a layer into your working space it's quite straightforward actually you can just go to plugins and go to manage and install plugins and from there you can search for quick map services and you can do a very straightforward installation once you have done that it will appear over here under this web option you can go to quick map services and under osm you can simply add the open street map standard which i have added already over here all right now when you're creating a map the first thing that you have to do is you have to first do the types of styling that you would like to actually do before you move into the mapping window so in order to make this map a bit attractive what i'm going to do is i'm going to first actually change the color scheme of my dem which i can simply do by going by right clicking over here and we can go to properties and under symbology instead of selecting single band gray i'm going to go with single band pseudo color now by default you won't get anything it will be sort of an empty window like this what you can do is go to open go to color ramp and from here select create new color ram of course that's if you're not okay with these color ramps which are available by default i'm going to go with a bit of a vibrant scheme uh than what we have over here which you can access easily by going to this create new color ramp and from here you can select catalog cpt-city and the type of data that i'm working here is digital elevation data maybe i'm going to go with this the 75 most popular cpt gradients color scheme and i'm going to go with this bcyr of course you can go with the other available types of color schemes as well and over here i'm going to actually go with this quantile and it also allows me to make certain divisions of this across this color ram i'm going to have maybe about 12 12 divisions like this and i guess that's about it and when i click apply and okay you can see that now the higher elevations and the lower elevations are represented in different colors which you can see exactly from here these lowest elevations corresponding to about 133 which is represented in blue color whereas the high elevations about 1408 are represented in red color as you can see over here and the elevation distribution varies across these different types of colors that you can see over here now just to keep the things simple i'm just going to now go ahead and open this new print layout which is basically the layout which we have to open in order to create our map and i'm going to end enter a name let's say just going to name this as map all right now once you have this the first thing that you have to do is you have to decide whether you would like to work in a portrait or a landscape orientation and just along with that you can also decide your page size which you can simply do by right clicking somewhere over here and go to page properties and on your right side you can select your page size i'm still going to stick with a4 but for this map i'm going to change the orientation from landscape which is the by default option to portrait like this and now if you would like to actually zoom this page to fit into your entire screen you can simply go over here and select a fit layout just like this all right now the next thing that you can do is you can go to this ad map option over here you can actually go to add item and select add map from here as well and after that you can basically draw the rectangle in which the the map will get placed just like this and when you place it it'll actually appear something like this and you can simply use this select move item button to move the map like this and right now you can see that when you move this actually just the window moves but nothing happens to the contents inside the window after you fit the map according to your preferences let's see now of course this is not actually a full fit so i would like to do certain changes to the appearance of this map as well which i can simply do by selecting this first and we can go to this move item content now if you try to move this you can see that no long the window moves but instead the contents inside the window moves now as long as you have turned this or toggle this one on whatever you do will be sort of get applied into this map that you have over here now what if you would like to zoom this one in one of the easiest ways to do that would be simply use your scroll wheel just like this i zoom it out and just like this i can zoom that in as well but of course if you would like to fit the the map perfectly into your screen you can use this scale option over here for example let's say if i go with let's say if i go with uh 450 000 you can see that it enough enlarges maybe i'm going to go with 400 and let's say 70 000 or maybe about 90 would also be fine yeah and after that i can change and fit the map accordingly now there are actually other things that you can do to this this map layout for example you can see the main properties over here which contains the scale things like the scale the map rotation information like that which i'll be discussing also from time to time now if i squeeze all of these you can see that there are other options as well for example if you would like to add a frame into this you can see that you can easily select the color i'm going to stick with black and you can even increase the thickness just like this and accordingly you can see that the thickness also increases once you feel confident that you have done all the sort of changes at least for the time being that you have done all the necessary changes to this primary map in order to switch this capability of moving the things off inside the map layout because now when you're just moving around you might accidentally do something like this and move the map to a place where you would not want it to be isn't it what you can do is you can simply select this pan tool again and that will sort of toggle this one back off and now if you try to move this you can see that actually the contents inside the map layout doesn't move and even if you try to take your move tool you can see that the thing that moves is not really the contents inside but just the window itself which is quite handy by the way i'm undoing everything by using the regular undo command which is control z now the next thing that i would like to do is i would like to add the regular components that we have in a comprehensive map i'm going to start with the scale bar now i can go to this add item and select add scale bar and usually we place the scale bar in a place like this so what i'm going to do is i'm going to draw this rectangle like this and by default the scale bar which gets drawn is actually not according to the to the scale that we want so you can manually drag this like this but you will see that it will not really change its extension according to what we what we're doing over here uh in order to do that you make sure that you as you have selected this move or select button after that you can right click over here and go to item properties and immediately you will be on the scale the item properties of the scale bar and there are different types of styles which you can choose from now i'm going to go with the single box option and over here you can even change the units now if you would like to use meters you can see that it's actually get getting populated a bit more when you use scale like meters so it's better to go with kilometers just to keep the numbers clean over here and you can even change the number format over here but what i'm interested in is actually extending the scale to the right side so what you can do is you can simply go to this segments and increase the number of segments just like this now after that you can move this one back in yeah just like this i think this is quite good enough now the next thing that i'm going to do is i'm going to add one not arrow which is quite crucial for a standard map well i'm going to place the note arrow in some somewhere over here and of course you can change the size of the note arrow like this and from this option which gets opened as soon as you place the note arrow you will have a wide variety of icons actually not just uh types of node arrows which you can simply paste into your mapping window i'm going to go with arrows option over here which will actually give me some node arrows and from here let's say i'm going to go with this change the dimensions like this well every time when you open a new window over here all the options which correspond to that will be open over here you can see that there are so many options which you can which you can tweak in order to make your note arrow look the way you would like to have it well as per now i'm not going to actually make any make changes to all of these options but i'm definitely going to change the color the fill color to be black instead of this white and the straw color i think let's let's have it to be about some sort of a gray a shade of a gray just like this i guess this is good enough for me and the next thing that i'm going to do is i'm going to add a legend for this because right now no one is able to interpret this map just based on these colors because these colors actually do not mean anything right now unless you explain to the viewer what these colors actually do mean and the easiest way to do that would be by adding a not by adding a legend over here now you can see that we have limited space somewhere over here we have some space and somewhere over here we also we do have some space so when you're making a map it's actually a skill to utilize all the remaining spaces to your advantage and right now i'm going to show you how we can do that so first you can go to add item and from here you can just go ahead and add the legend now even to add the legend you can simply drag this drag this rectangle and drop it like this which will display the legend like this but of course at the very first glance i see that there are a number of things which i would like to change in this legend now the first thing that i would like to do is i would like to get rid of this osm standard and if you if you happen to have many many of the other layers all of those will actually appear over here as long as you keep this auto update option ticked on so the first thing that you that you have to do is you have to take control of this legend and you can do that simply by turning off this auto update option and after that as soon as you do that you can see that all of these buttons are frozen right now which means you cannot make any manual changes to the legend i mean it's just like this but when it's turned off you can see that now you can add layers you can delete layers you can actually swap layers so what i'm going to do is i'm going to remove this osm standard layer because i do not want it as an element of the legend uh definitely not so i'm going to select that particular layer and i'm going to click on this minus sign now you can manually make changes to these items of this legend as well now you can see that we have quite a number of decimal points and i would not like to have actually that much of decimal points because the elevation variation is quite high if you were talking about only a range of just a couple of meters then these decimal points might matter but now we are talking about a range of more than more than 1000 meters so so these decimal points would not really matter much what you can do is you can simply double click on each of those items and you can manually delete this unwanted parts this might take about a minute and as i'm doing this you can see that the legend on the left side gets updated simultaneously which is actually quite useful because you can get an instant view of what you're doing or the changes that you're making into this legend now i would like to do a couple of other things as well for this sa actually sa stands for study area so i can do the same thing simply by clicking double clicking over here and i'm going to type this to be study area and this one maybe i'm going to name this one as elevation all right you can see that now things changed accordingly over here now when you select this legend you can actually add a title to the legend so normally it's customary to have a title called legend just like this all right now what i would like to do is well maybe this one elevation i would like to add the units as well meters above mean c level all right now you you might think that we it's it would be good to make some changes to the font sizes as you can see over here uh that's quite simple as well if you just scroll down like this you can go to fonts and text formatting and over here you can change the font type the font sizes and all sorts of things like that i'm not going to change the font type but of course i'm going to make some changes to the size so the legend i'm going to actually increase it to about maybe 18 and i'm going to go to configure format and i will say ball that legend for me now you can see that just the legend option this legend text got bald and the next thing that i would like to do is i would like to go to these item labels and go to configure format and i'm going to make it bold so you can see that actually the items got turned into into a ball text and this subgroup headings i'm going to make it bold as well just like so all right now you can see that utilizing the available space is also a challenge as it seems well before i explain that part i'm also going to add a border for this so which is quite simple simply by going to this frame activate the frame and i'm going to use the default border like this well what i was saying is that right now i told you that it's important to utilize the available space in order to represent the information that you would like to represent without any issue so just by looking at this one suggestion that i could make is that if you could split this legend into maybe two columns i think we will be able to find some space over here in order to put that over here because it's not customary to actually put the legend on the top right side that's one thing but leaving that aside i would like to keep this space for something else which i will be explaining to you guys in a minute so what i'm going to do is i'm going to try to split this column into maybe two or three two or three different columns which i can do simply by going to these columns and i can increase the count like this but then i have to take this split layers option now you can see that actually the columns did split into two parts let's see how three columns would look yeah i think this one looks quite all right to me all right now what i'm going to do is i'm going to go back to the to the main map now before i do that let's see that if you're just afraid that you might accidentally move any of these parts like this while you're trying to make the other adjustments you can always lock these items which you can simply do from here for example if you would like to lock this the scale bar you can click on this lock button over here and now you can see that i'm not even able to move the scale by any anymore similarly if i would like to lock the legend i can tick over here and now the legend is frozen similarly i'm going to lock the north arrow as well and similarly i would like to lock the map one as well now you can see that i cannot even click inside this mapping window because it's all locked now if you would like to again click on this what you can do is you can unlock from here well now what i'm going to do is i'm going to add a key plan so what i mean by a key plan is basically a zoomed out weave of of a larger area which highlights my study area maybe in a red color rectangle or something like that so that for someone who might not be familiar with this area immediately they can just look at the key plan and get some kind of a rough idea where my study area is geographically located and that can be a very very useful tip especially when you're presenting this map to somebody who has basically never seen this kind of a map before and that i'm going to do simply by again going to this add map option you can also go to add item and select add map and that is something that i'm going to actually place over here all right now you can see that we added a key plan just like this now of course there are a couple of changes which i would like to do now before i do that i would like to sort of freeze all the changes which i have done into this map into this map one now you can see that when i select this map2 is highlighted but if i select this you can see that map one gets highlighted so what i'm going to do is first let me just go back to map 2 and in order to distinguish this from the other i'm going to add i'm going to add a frame like this maybe make this one a bit more thick yeah after i fill it like this i'm going to select on this map one again and i'm going to go i'm going to go to this layers option and i'm going to lock layers just like this and after that i can actually go to this restore down option and now i'm going to select this map too and now i'm going to actually make the changes in a way that i how i would like to display this map to first of all i would not like to display the dem like this i would only like to keep this study area boundary just like this maybe i can increase the the thickness of the border a bit just like that and the next thing that i would like to do is i would like to actually zoom this one out so that when we have the open street map in a wider scale like this someone can immediately recognize that this is actually part of europe and this is basically france so it's almost close to the central part of france which we're talking about over here and for the timing i'm going to keep this one like this and i'm going to switch back to this map and i'm going to make i'm going to select on this move item content and and when i select this move item content i can easily adjust the scaling of the of the map inside here what i'm going to do is i'm going to zoom this one out just like this well i would like to adjust the scaling simply by changing the number over here yeah now at least one can immediately recognize that this is france and in addition to that i would like to add one of these overviews over here you can simply add an overview by clicking on this button and i'm going to add the overweave to map one and now you can see that it actually highlighted this in sort of red color so that it it's immediately noticeable for someone who who is not really familiar with the extent of this map which exact geographic location we actually referring to now if you would like to zoom this one in a bit more let's see how 16 looks yeah i think that one looks looks good enough and after that you can simply select on this pan in order to deselect this map to which you have selected over here all right now what i'm going to do is i'm going to actually highlight something well let me pull this one down a bit and also let me go back and select this map too and i would like to drag this one also down just a bit yeah like that because i'm going to add two types of texts first i'm going to go to add item and i'm going to add add a label you can always set the label somewhere else i would like to name this one as key plan and of course you can center this one out like this and increase the font size and make it bold as well which is basically going to be the minor heading well let's add a little bit of a border to that as well all right now i'm going to add something like a major title which i can simply do in the same way by going to add item and i'm going to add another label which is going to be something like let's say digital elevation map of this study area something like that well i think now it's it might be a good time to maybe change the font let me go with ariel you can even add some kind of a background color let's see what fits i would not also like to make the map look too dramatic as well with so many colors so i think something like this would be good enough so once you're done you can move this back in yeah reduce the font size just a bit yeah and maybe we can add a frame to this as well yeah just like this and finally before i wrap up this i would also like to add some coordinate information now one of the easiest ways to add the coordinates would be by adding a set of grids now you can simply select this map one over here and you can go to grids and add a set of grids and once you add this to this window you can modify the grid simply by specifying the x and y interval now you can see that from the scale bar from here to here it's about 7.5 kilometers so let's just say that i would like to add the the grids in the x direction with a with an interval of 10 kilometers let's say now just make sure that your map is in meters now if it if it was in decimal degrees then the store is going to be different my dm and my study area boundary layer everything is actually in utm so and the corresponding units of the coordinate system is meters so because of that i can very confidently just go ahead and specify the interval in meters over here so just now i mentioned i would like to add the grids at intervals of 10 meter season isn't it sorry 10 kilometers isn't it so 10 kilometers in meters is going to be 10 000. and similarly in the y direction let's say in the y direction i'm going to go with the 15 000 that means 15 kilometers intervals just like this now if it's too flashy what you can do is you can simply go back to the grids and go to modify grid and we can change the line style and from here you can decrease the stroke width to be about 0.2 yeah i think i'm okay with something like this and now i'm going to go ahead into this frame style option and i'm going to add exterior ticks so that you can see that the ticks actually extended beyond this outer border as you can see over here and i'm going to draw the coordinates just like this now you can see that actually the text appears over here if you zoom in like this well of course we have some decimals over here as well so what i can do is i can first scroll down and under this draw coordinates you can see that the coordinate precision i'm going to set the precision to be zero because i'm okay with this this whole number that we have over here and i'm going to actually slant this by 90 degrees in the left side and the right side so on the left side you can go to this option and select vertical ascending now you can see that it actually switched to to the vertical side and similarly for the right side i'm going to select this one to be vertical descending just like this yeah i think now this map is good enough to be published of course if you do want to add more information you can always try to make adjustments and you can even change your page size from maybe a to a4 to a3 so that you get more area to sort of you know add more information and finally before you export this map you can always select the map one and go to this layout option and from here you can set the export resolution now 300 dpi is actually quite high i'm going to change this one to be about let's say 90 dpi and finally once you have once you're done with everything you can go to layout and you can either export it as an image or you can export it as a pdf now for this i'm going to maybe export it as a pdf and see how it looks i'm just going to name this one as map of let's say study area and i can save it and you can simply save this you can see that it takes a couple of seconds for it to export the map and once you have navigated to the place where you exported the map into you can see that the pdf is already there you can just double click that in order to in order to generate the map just like this quite useful isn't it well before i conclude this tutorial i would also like to mention that it's a good practice to specify the type of coordinate reference system which you used when you were generating this map so that when if someone is trying to actually identify certain areas of this map it's going to be very easy for them to identify what each of these numbers actually mean in terms of a geographical special reference because because you already provided them with the coordinate reference system let's say somewhere over here as something like a footnote so keeping that in mind i'm going to wrap this tutorial up right now if you do have any questions and if you do have any further suggestions to make this map much more attractive you can definitely comment them down below uh that'll help me as well as the other other viewers as well because we do welcome your comments and suggestions in order to improve our tutorials as well so thanks a lot for watching guys i'll see you in the next one

Channel: GeoDelta Labs

Views: 26,748

Rating: 4.9304347 out of 5

Keywords: making a map using qgis, QGIS, map, map composer, QGIS-How to create a map using QGIS and map composer in QGIS, legends, scale, map and northdirection, gridinqgis, how to create a map using QGIS, QGIS print composer, QGIS contex map, print composer QGIS, map composition, Map layout QGIS, Create map layout QGIS, creating a basic map, how to create a basic map using QGIS, gas station contamination, resolution satellite image, QGIS Map, How to make a map using QGIS, QGIS3, qgis, qgis 3

Id: WjvEnVuhKFE

Length: 30min 20sec (1820 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 18 2020