There are myriad reasons to choose to map atop a grayscale or monochrome basemap. Maybe you want your whole map to live within the visual constraints of various tones within a single hue, like this map of the Appalachian Trail. Daniel Huffman does into detail on the aesthetic challenges and benefits of this approach. Or maybe you want your basemap to be more of a stage for your thematic data and going grayscale (or monochrome) helps reduce its visual prominence and best sets a spartan stage for the content you layer atop (Andy Skinner and I pivot a recurring presentation on choosing basemaps on this base-map vs base-map functional consideration, and it’s one of the main drivers behind Firefly cartography).
Whatever the reason, the result can be beautifully restrained and useful in all sorts of ways. And it’s mega easy to do.
…
0:00 The voice of an angel
0:06 Question from customer Christopher Wilson: Can I make a basemap grayscale?
0:18 How to set a map’s background color in the ArcGIS Online Map Viewer Beta
0:36 Applying a “luminosity” blend mode to the basemap
1:08 Pow! A grayscale basemap!
1:27 Playing with the background color to make monochrome basemaps of any hue
1:41 How do you do it in ArcGIS Pro (2.7 or later)?
1:46 Applying a blend mode to the basemap
2:01 Changing the map’s background color to get crazy
Thanks to Christopher for the great question which prompted this video! Often it’s easier to show something than it is to say it—especially when blend modes make this a snap. So monochrome away! It can be a wonderful and practical version of your basemap.
Love, John
Hello and thanks for the good information on the embedding process. I have read the blog, but I am having trouble with getting a “guided tour” app put inside another App. I have practiced using another App I have to embed in the current app, but it is not seamless. I mean one has to click “Open” to bring up the App, instead of it just automatically opening and fitting into the original App.
I can send you some images if that would help to show you what I mean.
Hi Mark, I think we might want to move this question to the StoryMaps GeoNet space, where we can easily share screenshots for better clarity. It sounds like you’re trying to embed a story that includes a guided tour block into another story? Or a different configurable app? If you can start a new question thread on GeoNet and provide some images as well as a few more details, my teammates and I will be better able to assist. Thanks!
Hi Hannah, in your article you mention photographs are not interactive but I wonder if it is possible to embed 360 images via an embed code – e.g Google Tours
Paddy,
Good catch! Using an iframe code (which Google provides) to embed a 360-degree photo does indeed allow interactivity with that photo. See this demo story.
Dear Hannah,
Any chance you can help me with an embedded vimeo video? I’ve embedded it into a sidecar container with an autoplay function
. And it works perfectly fine in the editing mode – the video just starts playing automatically. However, the autoplay is not working in a published story. When I scroll to a point when the video appears there is no autoplay action and I need to press a play button in order to make it play. Any chance this can be fixed?
Thank you!
Taras
Hello Hannah! Thank you for an excellent post. I work as a tech support analyst @ Esri Sweden. I have a customer who used this technique to embed photos and show them as cards. But after the latest update of StoryMaps, it seems like this is not an option any more 🙁 It seems like StoryMaps recognize the URL as an image and therefor does not present the same functions as when embedding other content. The customer really want their image to be shown as a card, but we can not find a way. Do you have any suggestions for… Read more »