Michael Corey is a data journalist
who likes maps, science and history.

In part 1 of our GDAL and Mapnik hillshade map tutorial, we used GDAL to convert tiled USGS digital elevation models to a merged GeoTIFF. When also reprojected the map to Mercator and used a California border shapefile to cut out just the state of California.

Mapnik is your best friend if you want to create map tiles for a slippy map or just want an open-source way to output high-quality printed maps for a wide variety of uses.