Toronto, ON, November 4, 2025 – Avenza Systems Inc., producer of the Avenza Maps app for mobile devices and geospatial extensions for Adobe Creative Cloud, including Geographic Imager for Adobe Photoshop, is excited to announce the release of MAPublisher version 11.8 for Adobe Illustrator. This version introduces compatibility support for Adobe Illustrator 2026 and macOS Tahoe, as well as other performance enhancements and bug fixes.
MAPublisher cartography software seamlessly integrates more than seventy GIS mapping tools into Adobe Illustrator to help users create beautiful maps from geospatial data. Import industry-standard GIS data formats and make crisp, clean maps with all attributes and georeferencing intact using the Adobe Illustrator design environment.
New features of MAPublisher 11.8 for Adobe Illustrator include:
Adobe Creative Cloud 2026 compatibility: MAPublisher now supports Adobe Illustrator 2026 (version 30) on both Mac and Windows
macOS Tahoe compatibility: MAPublisher also officially supports the new macOS Tahoe (version 26) update
Additional performance enhancements and bug fixes
To utilize the improvements and enhancements offered in MAPublisher 11.8, users require a valid Adobe Creative Cloud subscription and a compatible operating system. For questions and information on how compatibility requirements may affect your organization, please contact our Support Centre.
MAPublisher 11.8 is immediately available free of charge to all current MAPublisher users with active maintenance and as an upgrade for non-maintenance users starting at US$999. New licenses are available from US$1,749. MAPublisher FME Auto and MAPublisher LabelPro are also available as add-ons starting at US$599. Academic, floating, and volume licenses are also available. Prices include one year of full maintenance. Visit www.avenza.com/mapublisher for more details.
More about Avenza Systems Inc.
Avenza Systems Inc. is an award-winning, privately held corporation that provides cartographers and GIS professionals with powerful software tools to make better maps. Avenza also offers the mobile Avenza Maps app to sell, purchase, distribute, and use maps on iOS and Android devices. For further information contact: +1 (416) 487-5116 – info@avenza.com – www.avenza.com
Colour plays a fundamental role in cartography, helping convey both quantitative and qualitative information, differentiating features, and guiding users through visual hierarchies. However, for individuals with colour blindness, interpreting maps can be challenging if they are not designed with accessibility in mind. By understanding how colour blindness interacts with cartography, we are able to leverage the tools available in MAPublisher and Adobe Illustrator to create more inclusive, colour blind-friendly maps.
Understanding Colour Blindness
Colour blindness, or colour vision deficiency, affects an estimated 8% of men and 0.5% of women globally. Most colour blind people are affected by congenital red-green colour blindness, which means they have decreased colour discrimination ability on the red-green axis. There are two main types of red-green colour blindness:
Protanopia: a lack of red cones, affecting the ability to perceive red light
Deuteranopia: a lack of green cones, affecting the ability to perceive green light
These types of colour blindness vary in severity, but both affect the user’s ability to distinguish between red and green hues. Fortunately, Adobe Illustrator offers soft colour proofing features that simulate these conditions, helping us design maps that work for everyone.
Using Colour Proofing in Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Illustrator’s “Proof setup” feature, also known as colour proofing, is a valuable tool for designing colour blind-friendly maps. This feature allows you to simulate how your maps will appear in different viewing conditions, including for people who are affected by red-green colour blindness. Proof setup has options for previewing your artwork in protanopia and deuteranopia modes.
Enabling colour proofing in Illustrator is very simple:
Open your map file in Adobe Illustrator.
Navigate to View > Proof Setup > Color Blindness.
Here you can select between protanopia-type and deuteranopia-type proofing.
Toggle the “Proof Colors” option below “Proof Setup” to switch the simulation on and off as required.
Simulating what colour vision-deficient users see enables you to adjust your maps to ensure they are understandable and effective for all users. These adjustments may take the form of simply changing the colour of particular objects or using other indicators such as labels or varying patterns, textures, and line types to differentiate between features.
Designing Accessible Maps
When designing maps for accessibility, consider these three colour attributes:
Hue, often used interchangeably with colour, refers to the actual colour wavelengths one perceives (problematic for colour blind individuals).
Value refers to how dark or light a colour is, with a lower value being closer to black and a higher value being closer to white.
Saturation refers to the intensity or purity of a colour, with a higher saturation being very intense and a lower saturation being duller, or closer to grey.
Since hue can be challenging for those with colour blindness, we can leverage value and saturation to help provide better differentiation. Here are a few colour-related tips to consider when creating a map for users with red-green colour blindness:
Use orange-red instead of pure red, as it’s easier to identify.
Opt for bluish-green over yellowish-green.
Keep in mind that grey may be confused with pale or emerald gree, and lighter shades of pink.
Avoid using the following combinations to differentiate features wherever possible:
red and green
yellow and bright green
light blue and pink
dark blue and violet
The image above makes it easy to envision why it is not advised to use red and green as differentiating colours on a map. However, if we take the darkest red and green of each side and use some of our tips above to adjust them, we can already see an improvement:
Even with the slight adjustments of adding orange to the red and blue to the green, a greater difference can be observed. These can be enhanced even more by changing the value or saturation of the colours as well.
ColorBrewer, created by Cynthia Brewer, is a great resource for selecting colour swatches pre-designed for colour blind users. Here, you can toggle the option to view only colour blind-safe palettes. All of the ColorBrewer swatches are available in MAPublisher through the Swatches panel by selecting Open Swatch Library > MAP Swatches > ColorBrewer.
The image above shows the 9-colour Red Blue ColorBrewer swatch, which is just one of its several options for symbolizing your data in a colour blind-friendly way.
Differentiation Beyond Colour
When colour isn’t enough, here are some other methods you can try to make a map more accessible:
Patterns and textures: Utilize different patterns or hatching to distinguish features, even when they are the same colour.
Labels and annotations: Clear, legible labels or annotations can ensure that users do not solely rely on colour to understand map features.
Alternative formats: Offer grayscale or high-contrast versions of your map where possible.
Practical Example
On the above map, the greens, browns, and yellows representing different land use types might be difficult for someone with red-green colour blindness to discern. We can adjust some of the greens to be more bluish to make them more differentiable from each other and the brown background of the map. I can also use different patterns to tell them apart if necessary. For example, adding a grainy pattern and making the pale yellow colour used here to depict sand a little more orangey helped it stand out more on the map when proofing for colour blindness.
With just a few small changes, the map becomes much easier to read and more accessible to people with colour blindness.
Colour blindness presents unique challenges in cartography. Since our maps often convey essential (and sometimes even vital) information, we must ensure they are clear and accessible to anyone who relies on them. By practicing mindful design and using tools like Proof Setup, these challenges can easily be mitigated to create a map that everyone can understand.
Check out Adobe’s help article on colour proofing for accessibility in Illustrator for more help.
Avenza was founded and headquartered in Toronto, and as such, we pride ourselves on being a Canadian company with a global reach. This year we have celebrated by creating a map highlighting the names and capital cities of each province and territory of Canada using MAPublisher.
Using the MAP Point Plotter Tool to Plot Canadian Capital Cities
This blog will detail how we quickly and easily plotted points to represent the capital cities of Canada and its provinces and territories using the MAP Point Plotter tool. Firstly, a MAP Point layer must be created and selected before opening the MAP Point Plotter tool. This is the only layer type that can be used with this tool, for obvious reasons.
There are several different ways in which addresses and coordinates can be entered into the MAP Point Plotter tool. This blog will highlight a few of the common techniques.
Using a Point’s Address
The simplest way to plot a point is by entering its address, following a specific-to-general granularity format as seen in the examples below. After opening the tool, the Address tab was selected and the following cities were plotted using MapQuest to locate these addresses:
Victoria: 1 Centennial Square, Victoria, BC V8W 1P6
Edmonton: Edmonton, AB T5J 0R2
Regina: 2476 Victoria Ave, Regina, SK
Winnipeg: 510 Main Street, Winnipeg
Using a Point’s Coordinates in Decimal Degrees
Another way to plot points is to use coordinates, by selecting the Coordinates tab. There are several different coordinate formats accepted by the MAP Point Plotter tool. We entered simple decimal degrees by selecting Decimal degrees as the format and using these coordinates:
Whitehorse: Long: -135.056839, Lat: 60.721188
Yellowknife: Long: -114.371788, Lat: 62.453972
Iqaluit: Long: -68.519722, Lat: 63.748611
Decimal degrees with a compass direction can be entered similarly to the previous step by using negative or positive numbers to indicate the hemisphere of the point or the compass direction can be indicated by using a letter. The follow cities were added to the map in this manner:
Toronto: 43.6532° N, 79.3832° W → Long: -79.3832, Lat: 43.6532
Québec: 46.8139° N, 71.2080° W → Long: -71.2080, Lat: 46.8139
St. John’s: 47.5615° N, 52.7126° W → Long: 52.7126W, Lat: 47.5615N
Using a Point’s Coordinates in Degrees Minutes Seconds
Coordinates that are formatted as Degrees Minutes Seconds, can be added using various delimiters, such as spaces, dashes, underscores, colons, or d (degree), single quote (minute), double quote (second). We entered the last 3 provincial capital cities using these formats:
Points can also be plotted from previously created MAP Locations (to learn about this tool, visit the MAP Locations page in our Support Centre). This is how we plotted a MAP Location for Ottawa on our map. In the MAP Point Plotter tool window, we selected the hamburger menu and selected Plot MAP Locations. Then we selected our MAP Location for Ottawa and set the Destination Layer to Existing… and added it to the Capitals MAP Point Layer. After clicking OK the point was added to our map!
Finally, we used other MAPublisher finishing tools to stylize and complete our map so it would be ready to post on this blog just in time for Canada Day!
To tell the complete story, we added insets of the major urban areas around the country, to make the additional detail there more readily accessible. Making the insets was easy using MAPublisher’s Copy Map Objects tool in Adobe Illustrator.
Maps are powerful story-telling tools that can provide additional context and a deeper understanding of an issue. In a highly visual way, they can summarize complex data in an engaging presentation. Maps can sometimes contain very large amounts of data, compressing it into an easy to read the overview. Maps can also drill down into the data to offer more depth, and sometimes a very different story than the overarching one.
One way to do that is by using insets. Insets on a map can be used to bring faraway places closer together, erasing expanses of water or land that aren’t relevant to the map. They are also a way to focus on map data that cannot be easily distinguished at a different scale. For example, after the most recent Federal Election in Canada, we made a map showing the election results in each of the ridings across the country.
If you’re not familiar with the Canadian system, the country is divided into geographic areas, called ridings, based at least in part on population density, so that each riding represents a certain number of voters. In each riding, a representative is elected to hold a seat in Parliament. In the 2019 election, there was a total of 338 seats. The government is formed by the political party that wins in the majority of ridings.
So the morning after election day the political map of Canada, at the federal level looked like this. We made map importing publicly available data on the riding boundaries and election results.
Clearly, our political leanings (at the federal level, at least) are influenced by our geography. Or are they? There is, in fact much more data on the map than can be seen at this scale.
Canada is the second-largest country in the world, by landmass, with a relatively small population of just under 38 Million people. Combine that with the fact that 80 percent of the population lives in urban areas. That means that in order to fairly represent the population with representatives in Parliament, urban areas will contain many, smaller electoral ridings while the rural ones will be much larger in area. Does the map at this scale then really tell us what’s really going on with politics in Canada? Can you tell which party was the victor with this view?
To tell the complete story, we added insets of the major urban areas around the country, to make the additional detail there more readily accessible. Making the insets was easy using MAPublisher’s Copy Map Objects tool in Adobe Illustrator.
First, create a new document, which will be used as a temporary working space. Using the Copy MAP Objects tool, copy the required data layers from the original document into the new one. Zoom in to an area of interest and draw a box around it. With the box selected, use the Crop to Shape tool to remove data outside of the area of interest. In the original document, create a new artboard where you want the inset to be located. Then use the Copy Map Objects tool once again to bring the cropped data back into the original document and scale it to the new inset artboard. Draw a box around the pasted bits to indicate the inset, and add labels. Return to the temporary document, undo the data crop and repeat the process for as many insets as you need. Easy!
With the insets added we get the full extent of the election picture, and a better sense of what the results actually were. The map together with the insets also highlights the impact of population density and regional population distribution on political representation. It’s valuable information for future campaigns, but also raises interesting questions about the fairness of the current electoral system. For now, we’ll leave election reform to the experts and stick to making maps. ^_^
MAPublisher and Geographic Imager provide an extensive library of predefined coordinate systems available for referencing or transforming mapping projects.
In the United States, the NGS (National Geodetic Survey), a department of NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) has established a system that divides the United States into 124 zones, each with its own custom projected coordinate system. This system is known as the State Plane Coordinate System. It is important to note that there are two sets of State Plane coordinate systems defined in the United States, one based on the North American Datum of 1927 and the other based on the North American Datum of 1983. In addition to NAD 83, the NAD83 HARN and NSRS2007 adjustments are available for use. All three versions of NAD83 are available in metres, feet or international feet.
State Plane Coorindate Systems projections
There are four projections for SPCS. The geometric direction of each state determines the projection utilized. For states that are longer in the east-west direction, the Lambert Conformal Conic is used. States which are longer in the north-south direction use the Transverse Mercator projection. The panhandle of Alaska, which has the sole distinction of lying at an angle, garners the use of the Oblique Mercator projection, while Guam uses a Polyconic projection.
These coordinates systems are all defined in the MAPublisher and Geographic Imager library, however the initial question “which one do I need to use for my map” cannot be answered by the software itself.
There are a number of ways to determine in which zone your American area of interest lies. One online resource, searchable by latitude and longitude coordinates, can be found on this NGS website.
In an effort to better assist mapmakers in their selection of the appropriate system, the Avenza support team has prepared a searchable interactive map using MAPublisher 8.2 MAP Web Author tool. View the SPCS map here.
A MAPublisher geospatial PDF of the same map is also available for download here.
Transform into State Plane Coorindate Systems using MAPublisher
When it comes time to transform your data into the appropriate State Plane Coordinate System zone, use the MAP View Editor Perform Coordinates System Transformation option. When you specify the destination coordinate system for the transformation, navigate to Coordinate Systems > Projected > North America > United States > US State Plane NAD 83 – on the right hand list, you’ll find all the state plane zones sorted by state name and zone name: select the right one!
Note: similarly you can select the NAD27 state plane systems from Coordinate Systems > Projected > North America > United States > US State Plane NAD 27 if appropriate.
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