Printing
Printing in ALIGN is not a screenshot. Print in the header bar opens a layout composer: it captures your map, places it on a sheet with the cartographic furniture you choose, and exports the result to PNG or PDF. A preview of the sheet sits beside the settings and follows every change.
The sheet
Section titled “The sheet”Pick a paper size (A4, A3, Letter, Legal, Tabloid) or a screen size (Full HD, HD, 4K UHD, square) when the map is going into a slide deck or a web page rather than onto paper. Custom gives you the width, the height and the unit. Then choose the orientation, the margins (normal, narrow, or none for a borderless sheet), and the background behind the map.
What goes on it
Section titled “What goes on it”Each element is a switch, so a sheet carries exactly what your document needs:
| Element | Notes |
|---|---|
| Title and subtitle | Placed inside the map frame or above it, aligned left, centered or right. |
| Legend | Built from the visible layers, with a title of your own. |
| Scale bar and north arrow | Can be grouped together as one block. |
| Footer text and date | Free text, plus the date of the print. |
| Attribution | The data credits your sources require. |
| Page border and map frame | Color and width for each. |
| Title block | The cartographic stamp: author, project number, CRS, scale, revision. |
| Color bar | For a raster: colormap, minimum, maximum, label, orientation, position and length. |
The legend, in detail
Section titled “The legend, in detail”The legend starts from the layers currently visible, one entry each. You can retitle it, group the classes by layer, reorder the entries, and hide the ones your reader does not need.
When a legend has to match a chart or a report you already have, Import from
dictionary takes a {"label": "color"} object and builds the entries from it, in
the same format the Legend widget accepts.
Printing at a scale
Section titled “Printing at a scale”Type a scale denominator, for example 25000 for 1:25 000, and the map is set to it. Common denominators are offered as presets. If a scale cannot be reached from the current view, ALIGN says so and shows you the closest one it can hold, rather than silently printing something else.
Choosing the area
Section titled “Choosing the area”By default the sheet prints what the map shows. Draw extent on map lets you drag
a box for the exact area instead, and holding Shift while you drag keeps the box in
the proportions of the page, so nothing is trimmed at export. The extent can be
cleared at any time to go back to the active view.
Exporting
Section titled “Exporting”Export PNG for an image, Export PDF for a document, or copy the composed sheet to your clipboard to paste it straight into a report. Recapture map refreshes the captured image after you change something in the map behind the dialog.