Better Printing with Google Maps

If you are a keen New Zealand walker, angler, hunter, or other outdoor pursuit enthusiast you are probably already familiar with New Zealand Topographic Map. The application overlays the official New Zealand LINZ topographic maps on top of Google Maps to provide a level of topographic detail simply not available through Google Maps alone.

New Zealand Topographic Map has now added an improved printing function that allows the user to print a far better quality topographic map from the site than by simply printing directly from the Google Map itself. It works by taking the area the user has selected on the map, producing a printer friendly page by increasing the map resolution. The increased map resolution is achieved by cramming more tiles in to the space to be printed than you would normally see on-screen in a web page.

The results don't always look pretty on-screen, but lead to very good quality print-outs when sent to a printer. This is a simple but very effective technique for ensuring good results when printing map overlays with Google Maps.