Guide to Linking Map Images

How to use National Geographic Map images directly on your web site

If you run a commercial map reselling site and you sell maps from National Geographic then this site should help you. National Geographic has started a new service designed to help retailers keep their web pages up to date. Images for every map sold by National Geographic are now available in a single location. Every map has been prepared in several sizes ranging from 100 to 1000 pixels. This range of image sizes should work for almost every possible situation.



Quick Link to Image Tables

If you are already familiar with this site and the range of National Geographic Map products then you can go directly to the Image Link Tables. Please read on if you would like to find out more about how these images can be integrated into your web page.

 

 

How to Use the Tables

Each map is listed on the appropriate linked page. When the page loads you will see several columns. These columns are sortable by clicking on the column header. The first step is to find the map you need. In this example we will use "AdventureMap Nepal". The product number for this map is "AD00003000". There are several columns of image links; XSmall 100px, Small 250px, Medium 500px, and Large 1000px. For this example each image size has three links; Cover, Front, and Back. For many Reference Maps, there is only one side "Front".

Cover
Front
Back

 

To use these links directly you can right-click (option-click on Mac) on the text of the link you want to use and select "Copy Link Location" from the menu that appears. This will put the image link location into your pasteboard and you can add this link to your web page.

 

Source Behind the Links

Each image resides on an Amazon S3 server. If you know what that means, great, if not then the general idea is that these images are stored on a site so you can use the links directly. So when a map gets a new cover you don't have to ask your sales rep for the new image. It will be updated on the Amazon Server and if you have linked to the images (and have not stored it on your local web site) it will automatically update. This should save you time and keep your site up-to-date with the most recent and best resolution images available.

You can link directly to the images using a standard web location. The steps described above will work for a few images but if you carry, or want to carry, hundreds of National Geographic titles then there is an easier way to set this up.

Each image has a standard pattern:

"https://images.natgeomaps.com/PROD_XS_100px/AD00003001_0_XS.jpg"

"https://images.natgeomaps.com/" - Amazon S3 web folder (bucket on S3)

"PROD_XS_100px/" - The image size and pixel dimension of the image. All XSmall images are in this "XS" folder.

"AD00003001_0_XS.jpg" - The "product number" _ "side" _ "size" of the image.


Sizes - The folders for the different sizes are:

  • "PROD_XS_100px/" & Product Number & Side & "_XS.jpg"
  • "PROD_SM_250px/" & Product Number & Side & "_SM.jpg"
  • "PROD_MD_500px/" & Product Number & Side & "_MD.jpg"
  • "PROD_LG_1000px/" & Product Number & Side & "_LG.jpg"



Sides - The "sides" of the maps are:

  • "0" Cover
  • "1" Front
  • "2" Back

If a map has only a "Front" and no back or cover then the "side" value would be "1" Front. If the map has no cover then the front is still "1" Front and the back is "2" Back.

Downloading for Local Use

If you are not able to Link to the images you do have the option to download them and store them on a local device instead. There are several shortcomings that will be encountered with this approach. First, when new images become available there will be no way to know if the images on your local device are out of date. Second, National Geographic maps has hundreds of products. Many of these products have multiple images (Cover, Front, and Back). So the task of just downloading all of them one at a time will be time consuming.

If you choose to download the images you can use the same tables but instead of copying the link you can right-click (option-click Mac) and select "Save Link As..." This will allow you to save the files to your local directory.

 

 

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