Why you (yes, YOU) should start using QGIS instead of Inkscape or GIMP (+ GIS mapping advice thread)

[NeonHydroxide]

I used Inkscape for my AH maps for literal years, and from what I've seen on the Map Thread and elsewhere, a lot of you all do too. Inkscape is a great tool. But I have now switched entirely over to QGIS, and I wish I had done it years ago. Here's why you should make the switch too, no matter what your current skill level is:

1. It will save you a LOT of time.

If your workflow is anything like mine was, about half of the time spent making any given map in Inkscape is tracing - especially coastlines and rivers. Another big bulk is spent on borders, and I never used to even bother with lots of cities because of all the time it took. QGIS will instantly remove 95% of this kind of work by letting you add physical features, all OTL political features, and a lot of historical features to the map. All you have to do manually is trace any features you can't find online and get the styling to look how you want it to.

For reference, this map, one of the last ones I made before using any GIS, took me about ~6 hours in total to make. And this is a pretty simple one - there isn't much detail, and I only used one basemap for it. In comparison, this recent Turkestan map - which is much, much more detailed - took about the same amount of time, time saved from not having to manually input nearly any of the features.

This can also make it feasible to do projects which would have been an impossible amount of work before. Can you imagine how long it would have taken me to trace all the streets for this DC map? I would never have even tried to start it before. QGIS made it possible, and now it's one of my favorites of my maps.

2. It will make it easy to add all sorts of details.

The nice thing about GIS technology is that nearly all data you find out there is compatible with everything else. Before QGIS, if I wanted to add elevation, rivers, cities, or anything else to a map I was making, I needed to go and find a basemap, awkwardly stretch it to fit the projection of what I had already traced, and then manually copy all those features over. Now, I just download a file and reproject it at a whim. The best example of this is the land cover colors on my recent Ukraine, Turkestan, and UAE maps. I never even tried to get this sort of effect on my pre-QGIS maps - it would have taken way too much time and effort. Now, it takes less than ten minutes, and I think it makes the maps look much, much better than if they had a colored or blank background.

Similarly, take a look at the yellow urban areas on those three maps. Before, I never would have taken the effort to trace all those tiny little cities. Now, it took literally under five minutes to download the data, get the style looking right, and make some minor tweaks to account for changes in the timeline. IMO, these little details are a big part of what makes AH maps look 'real', and using QGIS makes it worth the time to add them in.

3. You can still just use it for parts of the map until you get comfortable.

I am now making my maps entirely in QGIS, but for a long time I only used it as a timesaver for details. For example, in my Sealion map, I only used QGIS to generate the coastlines, borders, and elevation, and did all the layout in Inkscape. Because QGIS can export to svg, this is a completely valid thing to do which can still save you a lot of effort while you are still getting used to QGIS' features - especially the print layout.

4. It makes it possible for anyone to use your work.

QBAM is popular for a reason - if you see a map with a cool border or effect you like, you can easily download the image and copy over that patch to use in your next map. People put a lot of work into borderpools and river and lake resources because they are universally applicable resources. There isn't much opportunity for this kind of collaboration with vector maps because of the different projections different basemaps use. But because QGIS automatically reprojects resources, you can trace resources from basemaps or create entirely new AH borders, and anyone can use them in a map of any projection. I've posted a couple of resources I've made in my GIS resources thread , and if you trace some interesting historical or AH borders, you can now use them again in the future on a different projection or post them so anyone can use them.

5. It can get you a job.

Making maps is my favorite hobby. Since high school I have spent an honestly unhealthy amount of time on it. Before using QGIS, I really couldn't justify that time as productive. I've used my Inkscape skills a handful of times for school and work projects, but it is a small, niche skill which doesn't count for a whole lot given that graphic design professionals mostly use expensive software like Photoshop.

GIS is different. Many businesses and non-profits use QGIS for day-to-day work, and I can say from experience that QGIS is similar enough to ArcGIS (the paid version used mostly by governments) that the experience is definitely transferable. QGIS proficiency - even if you've only used it for AH maps! - is something you definitely can put on your resume and apply to the working world.

I got into GIS a little too late for me to think about pursuing a career in it, but if you are in high school or early in college - and especially if you are also interested in Python programming - think about this seriously. GIS can give you the opening to turn your hobby into a real, decently-paid career. Given the amount of time we all spend on work in our lives, I think there's not much that's more valuable than finding work you can take real interest and pride in.

---

How do you get started? I first learned GIS software by taking a college class, which I would definitely recommend to anyone who is able to do it - especially if you want to learn about what GIS as a career looks like. That said, there are gobs and gobs of free tutorials for QGIS out there, and although it looks complicated, it isn't that difficult to learn and start doing really cool things with once you get the hang of it. The time you invest will pay off within your first map.

Once you do learn the software, take a look at my GIS resources thread - there are links to just about all the data you could need to get started there.

 

[black_sn0w_]

Thanks for giving this push. I've been using Paint.NET and was reluctant to learn Inkscape, but now that I've seen your even better QGIS maps, I'll definitely give that a shot.

 

[PolishMagnet]

I'll look into it. I'm fairly good with inkscape and gimp, but I agree a lot of mapping things are time consuming and repetitive.

 

[Deleted member 108228]

Bruh

Slight issue to all of that; QGIS is extremely user-hostile (I should know, I've been using it since 2019) and requires a lot of patience and effort that a lot of people- who do AH for fun- simply don't have. A major help to those who want to learn would be a tutorial, but the last person who tried gave up out of wanting it to be an elitist tool. That person being Ksituan, but enough about him.

If you genuinely want to help people get into QGIS, please don't just state why someone should learn the program, rather offer help in any way possible. A tutorial or helping those who desire to learn would be more than optimal. This isn't me trying to put you down, but rather a constructive attempt to highlight the issues that need to be fixed. Hope this helps.

 

[NeonHydroxide]

"""Bruh"""

So I obviously disagree. QGIS is a more difficult program to learn than, say, Inkscape or GIMP, but that's because it is much more versatile, not because it is designed to be 'user-hostile'. FWIW I found it much easier than Arcmap, its main competitor.. As I noted in the original post, there are bajillions of QGIS startup tutorials in both text and video form and I don't feel that the fact that I'm recommending it obliges to me to make yet another one. In my experience, yes, it is a longer upfront learning curve, but in terms of time it takes to complete a map once you get the hang of it, it is significantly faster. Judging on how long it used to take me to make maps, I know I wouldn't have enough time for them if I hadn't learned QGIS. If you feel that it's too complex for you to learn, that's your decision to make and it's not 'elitist' or the fault of people for whom it works for any more than your method is 'elitist' to people who are making maps in Paint.

Re: your specific questions of course I am happy to help with that.

1. Re: topography, there's nothing special there, for the most part they are the raw country DEMs (digital elevation models) from the DIVA site listed in my resource thread. I put them above all the vector layers but below the label layers and use these settings:

The three main things you have to tinker around with here are the z-factor (how exaggerated relative to real height it appears), the multidirectional tickbox (gives it a slightly more modern, computery look), and the color rendering. I used to use just Overlay but I almost always use Hard Light these days with a decrease in brightness and gamma which will depend on what your underlay layers look like. You should play around with that to see what works best for you.

2. Again no plugin, just the built-in QGIS layout maker.

As above, this was one part of the program which took me time to get used to, just because it sort of looks like other layout programs I had used in the past, but doesn't really behave like it.

The nice thing about it, though, is you can save the items as a template and just move around the features for whatever map you are doing next, so you only have to do the painful part of getting your fonts and stuff looking how you like them once.

3. No, at this point I don't plan to make a tutorial, both because I think it would be a lot of work, and because as I have said there are a lot of tutorials out there on the Internet already by people with a lot more experience in the software, and I don't feel that I could do better. I'm a happy amateur.

 

[Sojourner85]

Hello, sorry, new to AH.com. Is this a good place to ask a question about using QGIS, or should I go elsewhere?

 

[NeonHydroxide]

Hello, sorry, new to AH.com. Is this a good place to ask a question about using QGIS, or should I go elsewhere?

I don't think there's another dedicated GIS thread, so I'd be glad to try to help if you have a specific question.

 

[Sojourner85]

I don't think there's another dedicated GIS thread, so I'd be glad to try to help if you have a specific question.

Is there a way for custom lines/polygons/other multi-point user-added features to "lock" perfectly along lines set by other shapefiles? (i.e. rivers/watersheds/graticules)

Or do I have to just painstakingly zoom all the way in, manually place every single point, zoom all the way out, repeat...

 

[NeonHydroxide]

Is there a way for custom lines/polygons/other multi-point user-added features to "lock" perfectly along lines set by other shapefiles? (i.e. rivers/watersheds/graticules)

Or do I have to just painstakingly zoom all the way in, manually place every single point, zoom all the way out, repeat...

There are two ways to get the result you want, depending on the circumstances.
Option one if its a line feature like a river or a graticule is select it and use Split With Lines from the processing toolbox and then just delete the other half of the polygon which is on the wrong side of the line. If its another polygon like a watershed just copy it over into your main layer and use Clip from the top toolbar ( pink square with a bit out of it - might be a plugin but unsure atm) to get rid of the part of your polygon which crosses that border.

Note that for split with lines the line feature need to completely and continuously cross the polygon, so if your river file is broken up into segments you might need a plugin which merges line features by connecting their ends.

 

[skozik]

There are two ways to get the result you want, depending on the circumstances.
Option one if its a line feature like a river or a graticule is select it and use Split With Lines from the processing toolbox and then just delete the other half of the polygon which is on the wrong side of the line. If its another polygon like a watershed just copy it over into your main layer and use Clip from the top toolbar ( pink square with a bit out of it - might be a plugin but unsure atm) to get rid of the part of your polygon which crosses that border.

Note that for split with lines the line feature need to completely and continuously cross the polygon, so if your river file is broken up into segments you might need a plugin which merges line features by connecting their ends.

There is actually a third way that I personally find a lot easier and more flexible, and it's to use the snapping tools, which are for some reason not visible by default but can be made visible by right-clicking the toolbar and checking "Snapping Toolbar" (Figure 1).

Figure 1.

From left to right:
- The magnet toggles snapping on and off.
- The stacked lines are an option to trace features from all visible layers, only the active layer, or a user-defined arbitrary combination of layers.
- The V shape (actually by default a triangle of dots, the icon changes depending on the setting) an option for which pieces of geometry you'd like to snap to: vertices, segments, areas (not sure how this works), centroids (ditto), segments' midpoints, and/or lines' endpoints.
- The number and unit selector determines how close the cursor must be to a vertex/whatever before it snaps to it; I'd recommend leaving this at its default value unless you find yourself annoyed by the level of precision required.
- The Y shape is a toggle to "enable topological editing"; allegedly this works so that changing a polygon also changes polygons with which they share an edge, but I've never successfully used it.
- The overlapping blobs are a toggle to avoid overlap, making it so that when drawing new polygons, they're automatically intersected with preexisting ones on the same layer (Figure 2a, b).
- The X shape with the dot is a toggle to snap to intersections, which I'd strongly recommend having on.
- The lightning bolt and line toggles tracing, which is immensely useful, making it so that you can click on two vertices on a line or on the edge of a polygon or series of polygons and all vertices in between will automatically be added to the line or polygon you're drawing (Figure 3a, b), though the algorithm occasionally needs babysitting, especially with complex geometry or a lot of overlapping layers. The little triangle next to it can be used to specify an offset from the line being traced.
- The lines and pencil toggle self-snapping, making it so that when drawing a line or polygon, you can make it snap to its own vertices before the shape is finalized.

Figure 2a. Just drawing a rectangle from extent...

Figure 2b. And it automatically matches the existing border.

Figure 3a. The pink square indicates that you're in snapping radius, and to which point.

Figure 3b. This shape took ten clicks total to make, and only because I wanted to demonstrate that you can place non-traced points in the middle of tracing simply by clicking away from a line (or toggling something in the menu mid-polygon creation!) This also demonstrates being able to trace multiple polygons on multiple layers in one step.

 

[NeonHydroxide]

There is actually a third way that I personally find a lot easier and more flexible,

Wow, super cool! Thank you for sharing this - this'll be way faster than what I had been doing.

 

[HillbillyJake]

There is actually a third way that I personally find a lot easier and more flexible, and it's to use the snapping tools, which are for some reason not visible by default but can be made visible by right-clicking the toolbar and checking "Snapping Toolbar" (Figure 1).

View attachment 735133
Figure 1.

From left to right:
- The magnet toggles snapping on and off.
- The stacked lines are an option to trace features from all visible layers, only the active layer, or a user-defined arbitrary combination of layers.
- The V shape (actually by default a triangle of dots, the icon changes depending on the setting) an option for which pieces of geometry you'd like to snap to: vertices, segments, areas (not sure how this works), centroids (ditto), segments' midpoints, and/or lines' endpoints.
- The number and unit selector determines how close the cursor must be to a vertex/whatever before it snaps to it; I'd recommend leaving this at its default value unless you find yourself annoyed by the level of precision required.
- The Y shape is a toggle to "enable topological editing"; allegedly this works so that changing a polygon also changes polygons with which they share an edge, but I've never successfully used it.
- The overlapping blobs are a toggle to avoid overlap, making it so that when drawing new polygons, they're automatically intersected with preexisting ones on the same layer (Figure 2a, b).
- The X shape with the dot is a toggle to snap to intersections, which I'd strongly recommend having on.
- The lightning bolt and line toggles tracing, which is immensely useful, making it so that you can click on two vertices on a line or on the edge of a polygon or series of polygons and all vertices in between will automatically be added to the line or polygon you're drawing (Figure 3a, b), though the algorithm occasionally needs babysitting, especially with complex geometry or a lot of overlapping layers. The little triangle next to it can be used to specify an offset from the line being traced.
- The lines and pencil toggle self-snapping, making it so that when drawing a line or polygon, you can make it snap to its own vertices before the shape is finalized.

Figure 2a. Just drawing a rectangle from extent...

Figure 2b. And it automatically matches the existing border.

Figure 3a. The pink square indicates that you're in snapping radius, and to which point.

Figure 3b. This shape took ten clicks total to make, and only because I wanted to demonstrate that you can place non-traced points in the middle of tracing simply by clicking away from a line (or toggling something in the menu mid-polygon creation!) This also demonstrates being able to trace multiple polygons on multiple layers in one step.

This is probably a stupid question but how did you import Google Maps onto this?

 

[HillbillyJake]

So I obviously disagree. QGIS is a more difficult program to learn than, say, Inkscape or GIMP, but that's because it is much more versatile, not because it is designed to be 'user-hostile'. FWIW I found it much easier than Arcmap, its main competitor.. As I noted in the original post, there are bajillions of QGIS startup tutorials in both text and video form and I don't feel that the fact that I'm recommending it obliges to me to make yet another one. In my experience, yes, it is a longer upfront learning curve, but in terms of time it takes to complete a map once you get the hang of it, it is significantly faster. Judging on how long it used to take me to make maps, I know I wouldn't have enough time for them if I hadn't learned QGIS. If you feel that it's too complex for you to learn, that's your decision to make and it's not 'elitist' or the fault of people for whom it works for any more than your method is 'elitist' to people who are making maps in Paint.

Re: your specific questions of course I am happy to help with that.

1. Re: topography, there's nothing special there, for the most part they are the raw country DEMs (digital elevation models) from the DIVA site listed in my resource thread. I put them above all the vector layers but below the label layers and use these settings:

The three main things you have to tinker around with here are the z-factor (how exaggerated relative to real height it appears), the multidirectional tickbox (gives it a slightly more modern, computery look), and the color rendering. I used to use just Overlay but I almost always use Hard Light these days with a decrease in brightness and gamma which will depend on what your underlay layers look like. You should play around with that to see what works best for you.

2. Again no plugin, just the built-in QGIS layout maker.

As above, this was one part of the program which took me time to get used to, just because it sort of looks like other layout programs I had used in the past, but doesn't really behave like it.

The nice thing about it, though, is you can save the items as a template and just move around the features for whatever map you are doing next, so you only have to do the painful part of getting your fonts and stuff looking how you like them once.

3. No, at this point I don't plan to make a tutorial, both because I think it would be a lot of work, and because as I have said there are a lot of tutorials out there on the Internet already by people with a lot more experience in the software, and I don't feel that I could do better. I'm a happy amateur.

I'm attempting to emulate this for my Bizarro America TL, and I'm having trouble with DIVA. The USA elevation download from that site refuses to slot into QGIS for some reason, the ZIP was 12 separate files, and I'm not sure where to go from here. If you want to see the whole project file so far I would be happy to email it to you, I'm just unsure where to go from here :/

 

[skozik]

Wow, super cool! Thank you for sharing this - this'll be way faster than what I had been doing.

Happy to help

This is probably a stupid question but how did you import Google Maps onto this?

Not a stupid question!! Go ahead and enable the Browser toolbar if it's not already enabled, scroll down to "XYZ Tiles", right-click on it and select "New Connection", then in the window that pops up input https://mt1.google.com/vt/lyrs=r&x={x}&y={y}&z={z} into the URL field and change the Max Zoom Level to 19, and also name it something ("Google Maps" being the obvious option, but I'm not your dad).

After that double-click on the new "Google Maps" (or whatever you've named it) option now directly below "XYZ Tiles" in the browser, and it'll be added as a layer.

 

[NeonHydroxide]

I'm attempting to emulate this for my Bizarro America TL, and I'm having trouble with DIVA. The USA elevation download from that site refuses to slot into QGIS for some reason, the ZIP was 12 separate files, and I'm not sure where to go from here. If you want to see the whole project file so far I would be happy to email it to you, I'm just unsure where to go from here :/

You want USA_1.vrt. The gri and grd files are for other applications and wont open in qgis, and the 2,3,4 are separated areas to save space in between, Alaska, Hawaii, and the Aleutian Islands which cross the intl date line iirc. Let us know if that still doesn't work.

 

[HillbillyJake]

You want USA_1.vrt. The gri and grd files are for other applications and wont open in qgis, and the 2,3,4 are separated areas to save space in between, Alaska, Hawaii, and the Aleutian Islands which cross the intl date line iirc. Let us know if that still doesn't work.

I tried again and it gave me files with the format "USA(N)_alt.vrt," with (N) being replaced by the specific numbers. This is after going to the DIVA link in your other thread and downloading the United States elevation option. I didn't select the mask sub-option, and the USA1_alt.vrt file refuses to be loaded into QGIS. If it helps, I'm on a Macbook running QGIS 3.16 LTR.

 

[NeonHydroxide]

I tried again and it gave me files with the format "USA(N)_alt.vrt," with (N) being replaced by the specific numbers. This is after going to the DIVA link in your other thread and downloading the United States elevation option. I didn't select the mask sub-option, and the USA1_alt.vrt file refuses to be loaded into QGIS. If it helps, I'm on a Macbook running QGIS 3.16 LTR.

That's really strange. The vrts work for me. Maybe its a mac thing. You should think about asking on Stackexchange or Reddit.

 

[Dagoth Ur]

So I'm at the start of Module 3 of QGIS's online manual. It's pretty neat. Before I get deeper, is there really so much data online available to use? And if I need to use data that definitely wouldn't be out there (alternate borders, completely fictional city streets, etc.), how difficult is it to create or draw that data? Though from what I've seen so far, you can't really draw anything unless you use Inkscape or something then import as svg I guess.

 

[Dagoth Ur]

So I got as far through the manual I want to go, and I saw your resource thread. Wow, what a time saver this'll be. Using QGIS's original training manual and probably 18 or so hours of time I'd say I'm proficient. Not an expert by any means, but I can get around. And I can see why tutorials are hard to find, they're completely unnecessary since QGIS provided their own training manual.

 

[Dagoth Ur]

Crossposting from the map thread. Thoughts?

No legend, etc., etc. but there are bigger problems here. Why does the ć character result in ? when rendered on the map, when QGIS can handle the character fine in attributes text fields prior to rendering? Why do the battles listed have "0" next to them as the date, when by the formula below I should clearly be pulling a good year from the attribute (see at the bottom for example, "1379" for "Battle for Ragusa", yet "0" next to it on the map)? How can I conditionally format the map so every symbology, no matter the layer, outside the green polygon gets opacity 0% (invisible).
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