Cartographic Effects
Adding a custom background to your ArcMap layout
ArcGIS comes with many out-of-the-box backgrounds that you can use in your map layouts. Backgrounds add an element of artistic flair to your maps, making them more cartographically appealing. Sometimes, however, you may have a particular look in mind that the standard suite of choices does not provide. Here’s how to load and insert a parchment background to a layout to give it an antique appearance.
Here’s a simple map of North Carolina population by Zip Code. The background is a very bland and uninteresting white. Let’s spruce it up by inserting a parchment background that was created in Adobe Illustrator.
ArcMap allows you to insert images as backgrounds in a layout as long as they are either bitmap (.bmp) or enhanced metafile (.emf) format. The original parchment file used here was a small, 100 x 100 pixel document. Since ArcMap will automatically tile the image in the layout, it didn’t need to be very large at all (70 kb). This is what the original parchment looks like:
We’ll next add the parchment to our styles directory in ArcMap.
- Go to Tools > Styles > Styles Manager.
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In the Styles Manager window, open the “Backgrounds” folder under the “ESRI.style” directory.
- Right click in the right side window and select New > Normal background.
- In the Background window, select “Change Symbol”
- Select “Properties” under in the Symbol Selector window.
- Select “Picture Fill” under “Type”
- Browse to your parchment file.
- Select OK to all subsequent dialog boxes
Your parchment image is now added to your Styles Manager
- In your map layout, right click on your data frame and select “Properties”
- In your Data Frame Properties window, click on the small Style Selector icon in the Background portion of the window.
- Select your parchment file from your available background options.
Your new parchment is added as the map’s background.
If you'd like to download the parchment file used in this exercise, go to our FTP site and find the folder "Tips_Tricks".
Happy Mapping!
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