English
English
Appearance
How to Make a Custom Map Poster of Any City or Country
TrueSize can turn any place on the map into a map poster for printing, wallpaper or social media. Choose a city, country, island or your own imported shape, style the frame, title and colors, and export a PNG, PDF or SVG in one of 12 size presets.
A map poster preview in TrueSize.
How to make a poster
Load the place you want. Search for a city, country, state, island or coastline on the Home tab, or import your own file from the Advanced tab.
Move and zoom the map until the composition looks right.
Open the Tools tab and click Poster. The map switches to a framed Poster Preview. The map stays interactive, so you can still pan, zoom, tilt and rotate.
Poster Preview does not work with MapToolkit map types, so use the OpenStreetMap map type for posters. Poster is not available while a planet is shown.
Click Customize in the poster bar at the top of the map to open the poster settings, and adjust the look (see below).
Choose an Output size in the settings, then click PNG, PDF or SVG in the poster bar to download the poster.
The poster bar at the top and the settings panel opened with Customize.
What you can adjust
- Theme: recolors land, water, roads, borders and the poster ink.
- Title and Subtitle: your own text, plus font, size, color, all caps and letter spacing for each.
- Coordinates: show or hide the coordinates line, with its own color and size.
- Legend: choose its position and whether it sits on the map or on a soft paper panel.
- Frame: choose the frame style (full bleed, gallery or mat) and the frame size.
- Overlay opacity and Overlay distance: how strongly the paper fade covers the map and how far it reaches.
- Vignette opacity and Vignette distance: how dark the outer edge is and how deep it reaches.
- Camera: bearing to rotate the map and Pitch to tilt it, with optional 3D buildings for dense cities.
- Terrain and seafloor: relief, terrain height, light direction, and ocean depth.
- Map labels: show or hide place names.
Reset All Settings returns everything to the defaults, and Exit poster mode takes you back to the normal map.
Output sizes
Pick one of 12 presets in Output size. Choose it early so you compose for the right proportions.
| Preset | Use |
|---|---|
| Current screen | Whatever your window shows |
| Print: A4 Portrait (21 x 29.7 cm) | Home printing |
| Print: A3 Portrait (29.7 x 42 cm) | Larger wall prints |
| Social: Instagram Square (1080 x 1080) | Square posts |
| Social: Instagram Portrait (1080 x 1350) | Portrait posts |
| Social: Story 9:16 (1080 x 1920) | Stories |
| Social: Pinterest Pin (1000 x 1500) | |
| Wallpaper: Desktop 4K (3840 x 2160) | Desktop backgrounds |
| Wallpaper: Ultrawide (3440 x 1440) | Ultrawide monitors |
| Wallpaper: iPhone 15 Pro (1179 x 2556) | Phone wallpaper |
| Wallpaper: iPad Pro 12.9" (2048 x 2732) | Tablet wallpaper |
| Web: Hero Banner (1440 x 600) | Website headers |
Export formats
- PNG is best for images, quick sharing and wallpapers.
- PDF suits print handoff.
- SVG exports a vector file; the map itself is embedded as an image.
Tips for better posters
- Pick one strong focal area instead of too much territory.
- Use all caps with modest letter spacing for a classic travel-poster title.
- For city posters, try a high-contrast theme so roads and water stand out.
- For country posters, a lighter paper and softer overlay often look better.
- A longer vignette distance gives a moodier poster; a shorter one looks cleaner.
Poster gallery
Posters made in TrueSize. Click a poster for the full-size image.
More poster samples are on the examples page.
Where it works
Posters are available on the website only. See the mobile app page for what the app offers.
Related
Next: learn how to share and export your maps.