Ortelius® is a new way to communicate your project through maps, make landscape plans, show service territories, and well… draw your world. Mapdiva is dedicated to making intuitive mapping software so you can focus your creative energy on content and design. Finally, map-making software for the rest of us.
10.09.03 Mapdiva presents Ortelius 1.0.7, the latest update of their cartographic design software for Mac OS X. Ortelius is a vector-based cartography application that helps you create high-quality custom map graphics, plans, and scaled drawings. Ortelius offers a creative solution with superior quality graphics – perfect for reports, presentations, and publications. Ortelius helps you do more than just make maps – it help you communicate visually.
A picture is worth a thousand words and maps are powerfully effective means for communicating. However, until now, creating professional quality map graphics has just been too hard, too time consuming, or both. Ortelius solves this problem by automating many of the graphics tasks that are most common for mapping and most tedious for graphic design, such as automatic road junctions, smart sequence markers, and smooth style transitions. With Ortelius, draw directly with features such as roads, rivers, coastlines, buildings, symbols, and contours. Ortelius supports the rich attribute information behind map features typically associated with geographic information systems (GIS) data, enabling fast, intelligent labeling – one of the most difficult aspects to map-making.
The update includes significant enhancements and new features:
* Ortelius User’s Guide now online
* Dozens of fully editable map templates
* Automatic junctions and style transitions
* Hundreds of styles and symbols
* Learning Ortelius just got easier – new “Getting Started With Ortelius” guide with bundled hands-on Exercises & Demo files
* Unlimited trial period – continue to receive updates during evaluation
* Advanced style components, including random fill pattern generation, tapered strokes, and tagged line effects
Pricing and Availability
Ortelius software is designed as a dedicated map graphics program for Mac OS X. Ortelius Standard Edition is available for $99 (USD). A free trial download is available from their website.
Ortelius has always had great tools to create smooth meandering rivers & streams. Now they can look even better with naturally tapering ends. We’ve added an expert Tapered Stroke component to the Style Inspector – you can use it to design your own creative map styles. Here’s how… Read more »
Sometimes static text (as opposed to dynamic text like route numbers) is an integral part of a symbol. These symbols may be re-scaled and shared for different purposes, such as placement in a legend and reuse at a different size within a brochure or book. For maximum scalability and consistency with complex symbols, convert text objects to shapes when creating a symbol. Your symbols will always look right, even when shared with people who don’t have the same fonts loaded on their system. Here’s how… Read more »
When you need to map points of interest with numbered placemarkers, look no further than Ortelius’ smart Sequence Markers. These symbols save time and sanity. Place Sequence Markers just like any other symbol and they’ll automatically number themselves 1,2,3… (we should call them magic).
Our customers have been finding Sequence Markers really useful, and with their suggestions we’ve made Sequence Markers even better. Here’s how… Read more »
Ortelius is packed with hundreds of styles and symbols. Now it’s easier than ever to make fine adjustments to symbol sizes on your map. Here’s how… Read more »
Interactive maps capture your reader’s attention by making it easy to see the details. Zoomify is a great way to show off any large map in web design with a slick zoom-and-pan interface. Zoomify Express is a free version available from Zoomify, Inc. that provides fast interactive viewing on the web with just HTML, JPEGs, and Flash. Here’s how… Read more »
Randomized patterns can add texture and variety to an otherwise flat map. This is an especially good effect for representing features with naturally occurring randomness, such as ground-cover and forests. Ortelius has several tools in the Style Inspector to help you make awesome randomized patterns. Here’s how…
Maps are tremendous genealogical tools to help build a more comprehensive understanding of what life was like for your ancestors, looking at locations, migration routes, political boundaries, and more. Custom maps let you personalize the historical geography and highlight features relevant to family reports, documents, and photographs.
Here is an example of a family history map made with Ortelius showing the northeast Italian region of Udine (c. 1910). Click here to view a PDF export of the finished map in all its glory. Read more »
About This Particular Macintosh awards Ortelius map illustration software a rating of “Excellent” in their recent review. About This Particular Macintosh (ATPM) is a monthly Internet magazine created to celebrate the personal computing experience on the Apple Macintosh. The ATPM review included testing a wide assortment of Ortelius features, particularly the versatility of pre-packaged map templates. Ortelius receives the highest rating based on the overall usage, purpose, and documentation of the vector-based cartography software for Mac OS X.
Their conclusion? “Mapdiva has a winner on its hand. For now, Ortelius has found a niche market to fill. There are some Mac map-making programs out there, but none in the price range or that possess the features found in Ortelius. With the specific map tools found in Ortelius, it is easy to make maps, whether from templates or imported bitmaps, or even if you have to start with a blank page. You can take mapping even further by importing shapefiles, many of which are freely available on the Web. If you have a mapping need, Ortelius makes an excellent choice.” In his evaluation of Ortelius, reviewer Linus Ly continues, ”there is much potential in using Ortelius as an educational tool.”
Softpedia awards Ortelius map illustration software 4-stars, with its highest ratings for user interface and features. Softpedia reviewers thoroughly test software products following a series of characteristics and parameters, starting from the installation of the product and to the help system, with ratings based on aspects such as how well organized and intuitive is the products user interface and how useful and well implemented is the product’s feature set.
Softpedia’ Mac Editor, Alexandru Tanase, notes, “There are a lot of fine things about Ortelius. Fi[r]st of all, Ortelius comes with a lot of templates that can be used at any time. Also, Ortelius is very easy to use, has a simple interface, and most of the tools you need are available in the main screen. The graphics are good, the maps look great, and really challenge you to use the program and give it your best in order to create a work of art.”
Their conclusion? “If you like drawing maps, or you do this at the office on a regular basis, be sure to use or just give Ortelius a try. You may find that even the most difficult maps can be created in a record time with no headaches. So, if you are a young cartographer, I truly recommend this program. Give it a try and you won’t be disappointed.”
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