Mapping the Front Range

Water bodies were extracted from the NAIP imagery using Photoshop's magic wand selection tool. In Illustrator, the image trace tool was used to develop the coloring of the water bodies and transform them into Illustrator objects. The final look was achieved by applying a feather effect and setting the layer to a 10% opacity.

To give a little more coloring to the trees on the front range, the color range selection tool was used in Photoshop and the display was masked using an NLCD canopy coverage map.

In Photoshop, a base layer was developed using NAIP imagery and a slope layer (developed from 1m DEMs in ArcMap). A mask was applied to the base map to separate more colorful features. This layer consists of the less colorful features, and was set to a 79% opacity.

Using the same base map as in the previous slide, a mask was applied to the base map to separate more colorful features. This layer consists of the more colorful features, and was set to a 100% opacity.

NAIP imagery was used in multiple layers of this map. The trick was to bring in the realism from satellite imagery while getting rid of the bold coloring. This was done though setting very low opacity to the NAIP imagery when used in a top layer, and applying a multiply blending effect to the above layers when NAIP imagery was used in a lower layer.

The slope layer was developed in ArcMap using 1/3 arc-second DEMs (approx. 10M resolution), the highest resolution seamless DEM dataset for the United States.

The hillshade layer was developed in ArcMap using 1/3 arc-second DEMs (approx. 10M resolution),

I can't recall how I rassled out this layer in 2016, though it appears to be a black and white NAIP image blended with hillshade. However I made it, I can tell you that this layer is key to making the homes and other structures pop off the map, which it does by creating the effect of hand shadowing (similar to the effect caused by the blending in the slope layer). I set the layer to a hard light blending mode and 50% opacity.