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I am trying to create a photobook with Aperture, but their maps are highly inaccurate (lots of lakes and even the whole Caspian sea is missing!). Online maps like Google Maps or Openstreetmap work great for websites and screens, but provide low resolution (72 dpi).

Is there a simple way to generate a high DPI (e.g. 300 dpi) image for printing from these sources?

Note: I'd like to preserve the text labels on the map, so simply taking a high resolution screenshot and placing it into a small box doesn't work for me, as labels will come out tiny.

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    Not an answer, but keep copyrights in mind.
    – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007
    Commented Apr 13, 2013 at 15:11
  • I read that you might need a google premier license to gain access to the static maps. I tried to make use of the google maps api, but it ended up shrinking the fonts. What zoom level are you trying to use on google maps, and what paper size are you printing to?
    – cybernard
    Commented Apr 14, 2013 at 3:50
  • The photobook is for personal use, anyway I'd be fine with Openstreetmap version too if terms of use is an issue with Google Maps. As for the zoom level, geographical areas are about 100x100 miles to print into a 3"x4" with a minimum of 300dpi. And I need it for 10 different locations (its a travel photobook).
    – Anton Roslov
    Commented Apr 14, 2013 at 9:28
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    Change the latitude & longitude to your liking. maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/… The scale=2 is the really important part it supposedly double the resolution of the image. However, scale=4 is reserved for google for business users.
    – cybernard
    Commented Apr 14, 2013 at 16:00

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After some digging around, I came to a few options:

  1. http://www.openstreetmap.org/ offers an export function with PDF and SVG. I can export to PDF and then take screenshot to create a small image with suitable DPI. Also see http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OSM_on_Paper for information on print maps.
  2. Openstreetmap labels are still small, so I've used http://maps.cloudmade.com/ with a custom style (no labels), took a large screenshot and labeled my map post export with places I needed and with suitable (for printing) font
  3. Use the proposal suggested by cybernard with Google API (but the copyright / terms of use question requires more research, and probably depends on the exact usage)

And I've ended up using solution #2. The whole process was not very user friendly, even with just a handful of small maps to produce, so I really hope that Apple can fix their print maps in Aperture.

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