• giuliomagnifico 3 days ago |
    Nice! Thanks
  • doophus 3 days ago |
    Why are big chunks of Sam Francisco missing (eg around the bridge) missing from the example?
    • Sajarin 3 days ago |
      Those smooth chunks are all (mostly) public park land. Known as Presidio and part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.
      • originalankur 3 days ago |
        You know your city.
    • originalankur 3 days ago |
      python create_map_poster.py -c "San Francisco" -C "USA" -t sunset -d 10000

      -d should be approx. 10k to 14k given the size of the city. You can give it a shot.

  • cinntaile 3 days ago |
    It says there are examples but I can't see them?
    • originalankur 3 days ago |
      Please check on desktop, the table is hiding images in responsive mode - You can see the images on X here https://x.com/getpy/status/2009255303775174684
      • cinntaile 3 days ago |
        Thanks, I didn't notice there was another column that I could sidescroll to!
  • mft_ 3 days ago |
    I believe (from a quick code check on my phone) it should be possible to output the images to SVG with a little tweak, thanks to your use of matplotlib?

    Is there a reason you’ve defaulted to PNG that I’m missing?

    • originalankur 3 days ago |
      Valid Point @mft_ plt.savefig(output_file, format='svg', facecolor=THEME['bg']) should do it. I will add a --format parameter and make the change.
    • Footprint0521 3 days ago |
      Holy heck exporting to PDF/SVG for large cities is laggy, just patched the repo and did it for one over half a million people and it’s insanely slow lol
      • originalankur 3 days ago |
        There is throttling in the code when making api request to respect the map provider as per their terms and conditions. Can make few thing parallel but it's a hobby project how many posters would one person want to generate?.
  • tianqi 3 days ago |
    That's splendid. I've long wanted to make a jigsaw puzzle out of Sydney's road map, so I can familiarise myself with the layout of roads while having fun. That way I can reduce my reliance on nav app and become one of those old-school drivers.
    • bobnamob 3 days ago |
      There's a reason Where 2 -> Google Maps happened in Sydney. The sheer number of one-way roads combined with the imposition of the harbour and the messy tunnel system make internalising Sydney navigation a life-long endeavour
  • simonebrunozzi 3 days ago |
    The map of Venice seems to be the only one whose image is "squeezed" horizontally. Wondering why.
    • originalankur 3 days ago |
      need to take into consideration the length and width of the city and choose distance appropriately. I haven't followed my own suggestion here - https://github.com/originalankur/maptoposter?tab=readme-ov-f... will fix.
      • hehe23 3 days ago |
        Hi! I generated a map as well, but indeed, the map is squeezed horizontally. I have here a screenshot from a map and the poster: https://photos.diffop.be/apps/photos/public/h6JKMJImLZCXutcT...

        I have tried adjusting -d, but it only affects the scale.

        Here is the command I used: python create_map_poster.py --city Leuven --country Belgium --distance 4000 --theme sunset

  • emaro 3 days ago |
    I tried it in a python3 venv, but the download data step is stuck at 0% unfortunately.
    • originalankur 3 days ago |
      It will work, give it time. Also default distance is 29000. Give distance of 10000 to see faster results. It certainly is working as many users have generated maps.
      • originalankur 3 days ago |
        Also note that as per their terms and conditions I need to give a user agent, so multiple users will be sharing same user agent right now.
    • NoboruWataya 3 days ago |
      The bar only updates once that entire step is complete (ie, if step 1 of 3 is downloading roads, it won't tell you what % of roads have been downloaded, but rather it will remain at 0% until all roads are downloaded at which point it will jump to 33%).
  • tomashubelbauer 3 days ago |
    Three random themes for anyone who's Czech or likes Prague and doesn't want to set up the script locally: https://imgur.com/a/Ovg8mDW
    • originalankur 3 days ago |
      Looks beautiful. The gold+dark color does justice.
    • xixixao 3 days ago |
      What’s up with the Zizkovska tower highlight?
  • hyperific 3 days ago |
    Also check out prettymapp

    https://prettymapp.streamlit.app/

  • stephenlf 3 days ago |
    This repo is fantastic. The README should be the gold standard for OSS. Not to mention how stunning the outputs are. Thanks for sharing.
  • Kwpolska 3 days ago |
    Pretty cool! It would be great if there was a way to set coordinates manually, since Nominatim can sometimes produce mediocre results. Also, would be nice to have a way to render the same map in all themes, not just one.
    • originalankur 3 days ago |
      The initial version were coordinates actually but then realised people mostly love their cities more than anything and it's easy that way. Will add this feature back as optional parameters.
  • arnavpraneet 3 days ago |
    what are the blue dots? (not water bodies i think?)
    • thamer 3 days ago |
      Yes, the blue and orange dots are from the water and parks Nodes and Ways in the OSM data.

      It doesn't look like the orange and blue colors are part of the theme definitions, so the rendering library may be using some default values. This is why they are rendered in the same color on images using different theme files.

    • Footprint0521 3 days ago |
      I was curious about this too and it’s actually a bug— these blue dots are random parks or park features. Most parks are polygons, but less than 5% or them are points from volunteer mappers who didn’t make them polygons and so these stray points seem to slip through and get plotted as the matplotlib default color…

      If only I knew this before I printed it out and attached it all together with rasterbator lol

  • m-hodges 3 days ago |
    Etsy sellers devastated
  • Helmut10001 3 days ago |
    San Francisco looks nice, but there seems to be a problem with the projection in some of the sample images. It looks as if it isn't UTM but a global sphere projection, which isn't suitable for local renders. It's suspicious that the word 'projection' isn't mentioned in the Readme.
    • jasongill 3 days ago |
      This is an artistic project to make a fun and artsy poster, so it's not at all "suspicious" that the map projection is not critical to the artwork.

      It also appears to be open source, so perhaps you can open a pull request with your improvements based on your cartographical experience.

      • Helmut10001 3 days ago |
        You are absolutely correct. Suspicious was the wrong word and I did not mean to criticize the author or the work.
    • jlarocco 3 days ago |
      It looks like the final images have some kind of vignetting to make the corners and outter edges fade away. Probably grabbing OSM tiles and doing some image processing.

      Looks neat!

  • nycerrrrrrrrrr 3 days ago |
    Does anyone have recommendations for how to actually print a poster from images like these?
    • hirako2000 3 days ago |
      A good print on demand that delivers ?
    • xnx 3 days ago |
      In the US, I've had good results with Staples
    • dexterdog 3 days ago |
      dotphoto.com
    • loloquwowndueo 3 days ago |
      For something DIY, Rasterbator.net can make you a poster-sized print in multiple sheets. You’ll need some elbow grease to assemble the print.
    • jfengel 3 days ago |
      For what it's worth, I use Vistaprint. That's not based on an extensive comparison, just that it always works for me and seems comparable in price and quality to other services.
    • fmajid 3 days ago |
      El-co Color in New Jersey is known for its affordable 20x30" poster prints.

      https://www.elcocolor.net/index.php/poster-special

    • 1970-01-01 3 days ago |
      I remember one of these had a service that made a 3D relief map (3D print) and then framed it, so you could hang it onto a wall.
  • 7777777phil 3 days ago |
    Very cool, thanks for sharing!!
  • japoneris 3 days ago |
    Looks amazing ! In my free time, i play with my laser cutting machine. It will save me some design time. Thanks
  • dylan604 3 days ago |
    What happens if there are multiple cities with the same name. Maybe this is a US specific problem, but there are many states with cities of the same name from another state. As a few examples:

    Salem, OR and Salem, MA

    Portland, OR and Portland, ME

    Springfield, IL and Springfield, MO

    Dallas, TX and Dallas, GA

    • MengerSponge 3 days ago |
      Don't even get started on American cities named after world cities: Paris, Munster, London, Toledo, Memphis, Athens,...
      • tokai 3 days ago |
        Every country has those. There was some that found it very funny when Russia occupied New York last year (or last year again?).
        • netsharc 3 days ago |
          Even the name "New York" is a reference to an existing city...
          • MengerSponge 3 days ago |
            But they had the decency to append "New". New Birmingham? New Athens? New Madrid? These are cyberpunk city names.
        • ornornor 2 days ago |
          There is a Suisse in France, but no France in Switzerland afaik
    • originalankur 3 days ago |
      lol, I didn't even think of it. May be I should start taking country too. Edge case :-p
    • fat_cantor 3 days ago |
      If you just type "Salem" for the city, it just picks one and goes with it. If you type "Salem, Oregon" vs "Salem, MA", it gives the desired result (at least for the cases I've tried), and then uses your input text as the caption.
      • vivzkestrel 3 days ago |
        there is also a salem in tamil nadu india
  • stanko 3 days ago |
    There is a related project which I used several times:

    https://github.com/anvaka/city-roads

    Edit: it outputs SVGs and you can try it online. Anvaka (author) has other really cool dataviz projects.

    • sandos a day ago |
      Kinda sad that maptoposter uses png. SVG is so much better in this case, if you want to actually print a poster!
  • kingforaday 3 days ago |
    Awesome! After I generate, where can I take that super res image and get a high quality photo print to frame?
    • giarc a day ago |
      Really depends on country you live in. Just google local printers and email them.
  • colinbartlett 3 days ago |
    These demonstrate just how car-obsessed our society is. Depressing.
  • Yash16 3 days ago |
    Are you using a coding package or graph-based approach for this, or is it standard image generation? I’ve seen very similar results on https://picxstudio.com —it’s an AI image generation platform.
  • nl 3 days ago |
    This really needs to be `uvx` runnable.
  • mvdwoord 3 days ago |
    Great project! It takes a bit of fiddling to get the distance parameter right in some cases, and two possible improvements would be to allow for coordinate input rather than city name so I can point it at a specific spot as the center of the map. Another one would be to output all styles simultaneously so I can visually select from the generated images.

    Anyhow, nice work. Thanks!

  • vivzkestrel 3 days ago |
    - for those of you that dont want to install this locally, run this inside docker

    *`Dockerfile`*

    ``` FROM python:3.12.10-slim-bookworm

    RUN apt-get update -q -y && apt-get install -q -y \ build-essential \ git \ python3-dev \ && rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*

    RUN groupadd --gid 10000 python \ && useradd --uid 10000 --gid python --shell /bin/bash --create-home python

    WORKDIR /home/python/app

    RUN git clone https://github.com/originalankur/maptoposter.git

    RUN chown -R python:python ./maptoposter

    # 5. Switch to non-root user USER python

    RUN pip install --no-cache-dir --upgrade pip && \ cd ./maptoposter && \ pip install --no-cache-dir -r requirements.txt

    CMD ["sleep", "infinity"]

    ```

    *`main.sh`*

    ``` #!/usr/bin/env bash

    # https://github.com/originalankur/maptoposter # Read the documentation to change themes and settings for each city

    # Get the directory where THIS script is located SCRIPT_DIR=$(cd -- "$(dirname -- "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}")" &> /dev/null && pwd) cd "$SCRIPT_DIR" || exit 1

    # TODO: kolkata is done already, change to some other city both here and on that notepad.pw link in Chrome readonly CITY="kolkata" readonly COUNTRY="india"

    readonly CONTAINER_NAME="map_to_poster"

    if ! docker buildx build \ --file "Dockerfile" \ --progress none \ --tag "${CONTAINER_NAME}" \ --quiet .; then printf "Error: %s" "while attempting to build the docker container:${CONTAINER_NAME}" exit 1 fi

    if ! docker container run \ --detach \ --interactive \ --name "${CONTAINER_NAME}" \ --tty \ "${CONTAINER_NAME}"; then printf "Error: %s" "while attempting to run the docker container:${CONTAINER_NAME}" exit 1 fi

    container_id=$(docker ps -aqf "name=${CONTAINER_NAME}")

    if [ -z "$container_id" ]; then echo "Container not found!" else echo "The ID for ${CONTAINER_NAME} is: $container_id" fi

    docker exec -i "${CONTAINER_NAME}" /bin/bash << EOF cd /home/python/app/maptoposter python create_map_poster.py --city "${CITY}" --country "${COUNTRY}" EOF

    mkdir -p "${HOME}/map_to_poster"

    if ! docker cp "${container_id}":/home/python/app/maptoposter/posters "${HOME}/map_to_poster"; then printf "Error: %s" "while attempting to copy map files from container:${CONTAINER_NAME}" fi

    if ! docker stop "${CONTAINER_NAME}"; then printf "Error: %s" "stopping container:${CONTAINER_NAME}" fi

    if ! docker rm "${CONTAINER_NAME}"; then printf "Error: %s" "removing container:${CONTAINER_NAME}" fi

    ```

  • mindwork 2 days ago |
    https://maptoposter.penk.in/

    Using Claude Code and OP's library, I've put it on the internets. Web hosting is cheap(free) and generation takes some time

    • giarc a day ago |
      I get an ambiguous error when submitting a request.

      Error: Generation failed: ==================================================

      • mindwork a day ago |
        yup, something to fix in the future. I suspect it couldn't find city coordinates