Basemap: High resolution output & cutout marks on contours

Hello all,

I’m playing with Matplotlib & Basemap for the first time, and attempting to render data from the NOAA GFS models. With joy I finally got something on screen, however I was wondering what I might be able to do, to better improve the contour rendering of the final map. To better illustrate my problem, here is a screenshot with added red lines pointing to the odd slicing I get around the contours: http://www.bigoceans.com/slices.png

Is there any way to rectify that?

Also, part of my project is to output massively high resolution images of this work, which I’ll be using to display in a number of mediums which are of particular aesthetic importance (I’m not a scientist, I’m producing something more in the realm of infographics). I decided perhaps the best method to achieve this is as a PDF/Vector output, which I could generate bitmaps at a later date at any resolution I choose to render the PDF as (upwards of 8000pixels). Would anyone be able to best recommend how I can achieve the highest possible contouring, country borders and other things related to detail? I have attempted to use the resolution=full keyword, however my computer balked and failed to respond after five minutes. What is this keyword actually doing? What can I do to get the greatest resolution of coastline & map representation?

Thanks so much, Nick

A low-tech option is to plot first all the oceans in light color, then
overplot the next color for all values (corresponding to that one an
higher) and so on.

For your performance issues, make sure you are not displaying the
image, but saving it directly to disk.

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On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 11:36 AM, nickj <nickjaffe@...287...> wrote:

To better illustrate my problem, here is a screenshot with added red lines
pointing to the odd slicing I get around the
contours: http://www.bigoceans.com/slices.png

Hello all,

I'm playing with Matplotlib & Basemap for the first time, and attempting to render data from the NOAA GFS models. With joy I finally got something on screen, however I was wondering what I might be able to do, to better improve the contour rendering of the final map. To better illustrate my problem, here is a screenshot with added red lines pointing to the odd slicing I get around the contours: http://www.bigoceans.com/slices.png

Is there any way to rectify that?

Nick: Are you using matplotlib 1.0.0? I'm not sure, but I think there were some improvements to contour in that release which fixed this problem. If you are using 1.0.0, could you post the script so I can try it?

Also, part of my project is to output massively high resolution images of this work, which I'll be using to display in a number of mediums which are of particular aesthetic importance (I'm not a scientist, I'm producing something more in the realm of infographics). I decided perhaps the best method to achieve this is as a PDF/Vector output, which I could generate bitmaps at a later date at any resolution I choose to render the PDF as (upwards of 8000pixels). Would anyone be able to best recommend how I can achieve the highest possible contouring, country borders and other things related to detail? I have attempted to use the resolution=full keyword, however my computer balked and failed to respond after five minutes. What is this keyword actually doing? What can I do to get the greatest resolution of coastline & map representation?

The default is ='c' (or 'crude' which gives very low resolution coastlines). Moving upward in resolution, there is 'l','i','h' and finally 'f', which is probably overkill for a domain of this size (it will be very slow and use a lot of memory).

-Jeff

···

On 10/4/10 3:36 AM, nickj wrote:

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