How to Print a Fantasy Map: Sizes, Resolution and Paper That Actually Work

You generated a map, you like it, and now you want it on the table. Or on the wall. Or tucked into the front of a printed book.

This is the point where a lot of maps go wrong. The file looked crisp on a phone screen, and the print comes back soft, or with a strip of ocean lopped off one side, or so dark that the coastline vanishes into the land. None of that is bad luck. It comes down to three decisions you make before you press download: how many pixels, what file type, and what paper.

Here is how to make those decisions for maps from the fantasy map generator, and most of it applies to any map file you already have.

Resolution in one paragraph

Pixels are the whole game. A printer does not care how big your map looks on screen. It cares how many pixels it has to spread across the paper. Print quality is measured in dots per inch (DPI): how many of those pixels land in each inch of paper. At 300 DPI, text is razor-sharp when you hold the sheet in your hand. At 150 DPI, the same file looks fine on a wall you stand a metre or two away from, and starts to look soft if you press your nose to it. Below about 100 DPI, coastlines go blurry and small labels turn to mush.

The arithmetic is simple. Divide the pixel width by the DPI you want and you get the printable width in inches. A 3200 pixel wide image at 300 DPI prints 10.67 inches wide. The same image at 150 DPI prints 21.3 inches wide.

What the generator actually exports

Three map sizes, four scales. The size dropdown gives you Small (800×600), Medium (1200×800) and Large (1600×1100). Those are the working sizes on screen. In the Advanced panel, the image export has a scale setting from 1× to 4×, which multiplies both dimensions before rendering, so a Large map at 4× comes out at 6400×4400 pixels. The 4× option is labelled “print” in the menu for a reason.

Here is what those combinations print at. Widths and heights are in inches, rounded to one decimal place.

Map size	Scale	Pixels	At 300 DPI	At 150 DPI
Small (800×600)	2×	1600×1200	5.3 × 4.0	10.7 × 8.0
Small (800×600)	4×	3200×2400	10.7 × 8.0	21.3 × 16.0
Medium (1200×800)	2×	2400×1600	8.0 × 5.3	16.0 × 10.7
Medium (1200×800)	4×	4800×3200	16.0 × 10.7	32.0 × 21.3
Large (1600×1100)	2×	3200×2200	10.7 × 7.3	21.3 × 14.7
Large (1600×1100)	3×	4800×3300	16.0 × 11.0	32.0 × 22.0
Large (1600×1100)	4×	6400×4400	21.3 × 14.7	42.7 × 29.3

Read the table from the paper backwards. Decide the finished size first, then find a row that covers it at the DPI you need. A handout players will hold: Medium at 2× already gives you 8 inches at 300 DPI. A 24 inch poster over the game shelf: Large at 4× lands at 300 DPI with room to spare. The only combination that disappoints is 1× at anything larger than a greetings card.

Note the map itself scales. The title banner, compass rose, label fonts and stroke widths all grow with the map size, so a Large export does not just have more pixels, it has proportionally sized lettering. Pick the size for the composition you like, then use the scale setting for print resolution.

When to use the SVG instead

Vector has no DPI. The SVG download is a description of the map, not a grid of pixels: every coastline is a path, every label is live text. It prints at any size at all, with no softening. A wide-format printer can take it straight to a 60 inch banner and the letters stay crisp. The display fonts (Cinzel, IM Fell and the rest) are embedded in the file, so the lettering survives the trip to another machine.

It also opens in an editor. Inkscape is free, Affinity Designer is cheap, Illustrator is the industry standard, and all three open the SVG so you can move a label, thicken a border, recolour the sea or delete a kingdom you no longer need. For a book map that a designer will adjust, send the SVG, not the PNG.

One catch. The terrain relief is a raster image embedded inside the SVG, at the resolution of the map size you generated. The lines and text are infinitely sharp; the shaded landmass underneath is not. For very large prints, generate at Large before exporting, and accept that the hillshade is meant to be soft. It reads as painted texture, not as a defect.

PNG, JPEG or WebP

PNG for anything that will be printed. It is lossless, so thin coastlines and small serif letters come through exactly as rendered. The file is bigger; a print shop does not care and neither should you.

JPEG only if size is the constraint. JPEG is lossy, and the artefacts it creates land precisely where a map is most vulnerable: the sharp edge between ink and parchment. At the default 85% quality most people would not spot it on a small print, but at poster size you will see faint halos around lettering. If you must send a JPEG, push the quality slider to 95 or above.

WebP is for the web. Fine for embedding on a wiki page or a Discord post, not what a print shop wants to receive. Some print services will not accept it at all.

Paper sizes and aspect ratio

The maps are not the shape of a sheet of paper. Small is 4:3, Medium is 3:2, and Large is 16:11 (about 1.45 to 1). Office paper is different again: A4 and the rest of the A-series are 1.414 to 1, US Letter is 1.29 to 1, and Tabloid is 1.55 to 1. So a map will never fill a standard sheet edge to edge without either a border or a crop.

A border is the better answer. Tell the printer, or your own print dialog, to fit the image to the page rather than fill it. You get a thin margin of white (or parchment, if you print on coloured stock) on two sides, and nothing is lost. Filling the page instead trims a strip off the map, and it is always the strip with the compass rose in it.

Some sizes do line up. Poster frames are more forgiving than office paper. A Small map is exactly 4:3, which is the ratio of an 18×24 inch poster. A Medium map is 3:2, which matches 4×6, 8×12, 16×24 and 24×36 inch prints. Large sits closest to the A-series: fitted to the width of an A3 sheet it leaves under a centimetre of margin top and bottom. If you know the frame before you generate, choose the map size to match and you can print full-bleed with no border at all.

Black and white printing

Use the Ink style, not a colour map through a mono printer. Converting the Parchment or Watercolor style to greyscale flattens the land and sea into similar mid-tones, and the coastline you could read on screen disappears. Ink is drawn for exactly this: black line work, hatched coasts and open water. It is also the style most books use for interior maps, because interior pages are usually printed in one colour. Read the style guide for the reasoning behind each look.

Check contrast on a test page. Print one sheet at A4 or Letter before committing to the poster. Hold it at arm’s length: if you cannot tell land from sea in two seconds, the print will not work at any size. The fix is usually to reduce the forest density slider so the tree marks do not merge into a grey mass, or to switch from Parchment to Atlas, which has a stronger land-sea boundary.

Home printer, print shop or online service

Home printers are fine up to Letter or A4. An inkjet on decent paper handles a handout or a book-sized map well. Turn off any “photo enhance” option, set the paper type correctly so the ink does not bleed, and use the highest quality mode. Expect colours slightly warmer than the screen; parchment tones survive this well, Verdant’s greens can go a little muddy.

A local print shop for anything larger. Copy shops and office-supply chains such as Staples or Office Depot print on wide-format machines up to around 36 inches. Bring the 4× PNG, ask for matte stock, and ask them to fit to page with a small margin. This is the cheapest way to get a wall map, and you see the result before you pay.

Online poster services for framed or mounted prints. Services such as Vistaprint, or the poster option on most photo-printing sites, will print, mount and ship a map. Upload the largest PNG you have, choose a size from the table above that stays at or above 150 DPI, and pick matte or satin. Prices vary by size, material and country, so check the service’s own pricing page rather than trusting any number you read in a blog post, including this one.

Which paper to buy

Matte for maps, almost always. Gloss reflects the room lights and makes fine line work hard to read at an angle. Matte or satin looks closer to a real drawn map and photographs better on the table.

Cardstock for handouts. Regular 80 gsm office paper goes limp after one session; 200 to 250 gsm card survives being passed around, folded and spilled on. Cream or ivory card is worth the small extra cost with the Parchment style: white paper makes the aged effect look printed on, ivory makes it look aged.

Parchment-effect paper for props. Stationery shops sell mottled parchment-style paper designed for certificates. Printing the Ink or Parchment style onto it gives a startlingly convincing prop, and it takes a tea stain and a crumple well. Do not use it for a poster you want to read from across the room; the mottling fights the fine detail.

A five-step print checklist

1. Pick the finished size first, then the frame or paper it will go in.
2. Choose the map size whose ratio is closest to that frame (4:3, 3:2 or 16:11).
3. In the Advanced panel, set the image scale to 4× and the format to PNG, then download.
4. Print one test page at A4 or Letter and check contrast at arm’s length.
5. Ask the printer to fit to page with a margin, on matte stock, at the size you chose.

What the generator will not do for you

No CMYK. The exports are RGB, like every web image. Print shops convert RGB to ink colours automatically, and for a map this is rarely a problem, but the Verdant roof reds and the brightest title gold can come back a shade duller. If exact colour matters (a book cover, say) send the SVG to a designer who can convert it properly.

No bleed. Commercial printing likes a few millimetres of extra image beyond the trim line so tiny cutting errors do not leave a white sliver. The map stops at its own border frame. If you want a full-bleed print, ask the shop to add a coloured margin that matches the sea or the parchment, or open the SVG and extend the background rectangle yourself.

No trim marks or page imposition. For a book interior, your layout software handles that, and the novel map guide covers how to place the map in the front matter. For a VTT you do not need a print at all, and the Roll20 and Foundry guide walks through the screen-only route.

None of those gaps stop a good print. They just mean the map is the artwork, and the framing is your job. Pick the size, export at 4×, print a test sheet, and put the thing on the wall.