How to create a map in the national or custom coordinate system

This article will teach you how to turn your image into a map in a coordinate reference system (custom or national). If you don’t know what coordinate systems are or which one to use, just go with the default settings. This feature is available to all editions of MapTiler Engine, including FREE.

Watch the video to go through the whole process step-by-step:

Maps in any coordinate system can be uploaded and hosted on MapTiler Cloud. Select the setting for the Output coordinate system after Assigning geolocation for your image step.

What is a national or custom coordinate system?

The geographic coordinate system is a method of assigning points on a map to a geographic position on Earth (or another planet).

Traditionally, a map was intended to show a relatively small area - one city or one country. Therefore, each country has built its own system of displaying the map - such a system fits each country best; however, it deforms other parts of the world.

Displaying the entire world on a flat surface was quite rare. The need for such displays started to grow in the last decades. Still, it needs to solve the issue of displaying a globe on a 2D surface: none of the methods is perfect and it either distorts some parts of Earth or makes the map harder to use in other aspects.

Global coordinate systems

The two most common global coordinate systems are Mercator and WGS-84.

Mercator is the de facto standard used in web cartography. It shows the world in an aspect ratio of 1:1. Most likely, you want to use Mercator. To do so, you don’t have to do anything - it is the default coordinate system of MapTiler Engine.

Mercator is compatible with most of the web services and maps including Google Maps, OpenStreetMap.org, and MapTiler Cloud. All modern JavaScript libraries, mobile SDKs, desktop GIS, game engines, and other tools support Mercator projection. The cons of Mercator is that it shows areas closer to poles much bigger than those near the Equator. This coordinate system is completely unusable for maps of the poles.

WGS-84 is the coordinate system standardized by the United States National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. It shows the world in an aspect ratio of 2:1. WGS-84 is used by many international organizations, it is also used as the reference coordinate system by the Global Positioning System.

National coordinate systems

United Kingdom: Ordnance Survey - British National Grid - National tiling grid for the United Kingdom using Ordnance Survey projection.

Switzerland: SwissTopo grid (LV95) - Swiss national tiling grid used in Switzerland and Liechtenstein with high precision. Output tiles could be combined and are compatible with SwissTopo maps.

France: IGN Lambert 93 grid - Tilegrid defined for precise overlay of maps in France, using Lambert 93 conic projection.

China: Baidu grid - Tilegrid defined for China customers. This preset covers only the China region and is compatible with the Baidu Maps service.

Czechia: CUZK S-JTSK / Krovak grid - National tiling grid for Czechia and Slovakia with a precision of up to 1 meter per pixel.

Russia: Yandex grid - Custom tiling preset used in Russian web mapping service, compatible with Yandex.Maps. Coverage is limited to Russia and Ukraine.

Netherlands: Rijksdriehoekstelsel New / Amersfoort (Dutch) - National tiling grid for the Netherlands - Rijksdriehoekstelsel New / Amersfoort.

New Zealand: NZGD2000 / New Zealand Transverse Mercator - New Zealand Geodetic Datum (NZGD2000), the official geodetic datum for New Zealand and its offshore islands.

Zoomable images without geographical location for GLAM

For scans of old paintings or high-res photography, there is the Pixels tab. With this option, the image is cut into tiles with no geographical location. The final image is ready for publishing on the web using any standard JavaScript library - with all the advantages of a zoomable viewer.

This feature is recommended (but not limited to) GLAM institutions (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums), super-high-res photographers, scientists, and other individuals, companies, and institutions who need to publish high-resolution material online.

Custom coordinate system

MapTiler Engine gives you the freedom to define your own coordinate system. This feature is useful for power users working with specific coordinate systems for Earth or other space objects.

A coordinate system that is not on the list?

If your coordinate system is not on the list, submit a new idea via our ticketing tool and we might add it in the following releases!

Useful links

More on coordinate reference systems
MapTiler Cloud pricing
MapTiler Engine ideas portal