There are many online map makers and map providers that provide "street maps" in various sizes and styles. This makes it hard to sift through the countless print providers and insure you are getting quality prints on quality media. A lot of these online print shops focus on prints that depend on low resolution, web based maps that are built for interactivity instead of cartography. Web based maps are great for displaying maps on a website or interacting with a map on your phone for directions, but not great when you want a high resolution printed map of your favorite city or place.

 

" We curate all global map data, design every map style, map feature, and map layout ourselves. This gives us the ability to print high resolution, highly detailed maps at large sizes. Not a lot of other map print shops can say that. "

 

This is why we decided to do things differently. Our maps are never printed from low resolution web maps. We do not rely on third party web map developers to design and stylize our maps for us. We curate all global map data, design every map style, map feature, and map layout ourselves. This gives us the ability to print high resolution, highly detailed maps at large sizes. Not a lot of other map print shops can say that.

 

Another important distinction between our City Maps and other print shops is our maps increase in detail with map size. For example, many online print shops will take small static web map images and scale it up to provide larger sizes. This has major adverse effects on the final print, resulting in one a loss in detailed map features, and two a loss in resolution. Because of this, many of these print shops cannot provide high resolution prints larger than 18in x 24in (46cm x 61cm) that don't look blurry.

 

" We never scale up our maps to provide larger sizes. All of our maps are rendered at 300dpi and printed in at the same 300dpi. This results in a crisp, high resolution print that never looks pixelated. "

 

We never scale up our maps to provide larger sizes. All of our maps are rendered at 300dpi and printed in at the same 300dpi. This results in a crisp, high resolution print that never looks pixelated. Our maps increase in detail and map features with map size. Basically because the map extent is larger, we can fit more details in that larger area. This is how we can provide a unique map for every map size. In other words, our largest map print sizes are not just scaled up versions of our smaller print sizes. Map features and details are actually unique to each size!

 

Take a look below at some of our printed City Maps compared to other online map creators and decide for yourself!

 

SterlingCarto Print of Denver Colorado

Map features are crisp and distinguishable from other features. Individual roads, water bodies, trails, natural areas, are clearly identifiable.

 

 

 

Other Print Shop

 

 

 

SterlingCarto City Map Zoomed In

Small details such as individual buildings are clearly visible.

 

 

 

 Other Print Shop Zoomed In