GeoCanvas: Map Projections

Every flat map of a round world distorts something: area, shape, distance or direction. You cannot avoid it, only choose what to give up. GeoCanvas lets you watch that choice being made.

Switch between 55 projections, turn the globe, and see exactly what each one gives away.

EXPLORE
• The familiar: Mercator, Robinson, Winkel Tripel, Equal Earth, Mollweide, Natural Earth, Albers
• The rarely rendered: Waterman butterfly, Peirce Quincuncial, Airocean, Berghaus star, tetrahedral Lee, interrupted Mollweide
• Cylindrical, pseudocylindrical, azimuthal, conic, polyhedral and interrupted families, side by side
• Rotate and re-centre a projection, and watch the distortion follow the viewpoint
• Search any place, or jump to where you are with My location

BUILD
• Vector, raster and terrain layers, as many as you like on one map
• Colour a layer by category or by value in a few taps, with ready-made colour ramps
• Draw on the map directly with parametric tools
• Symbology, labels and legends
• Isolines and relief shading

IMPORT
• Bring your own GeoJSON or zipped Shapefile
• The coordinate system is read from the .prj and converted for you, with an honest note on how exact the conversion is

EXPORT
• PNG, JPEG, TIFF, SVG and GeoJSON
• Print sizes up to A3 at 300 dpi, or set your own dimensions
• CMYK separation for press work, from a measured profile rather than a guess
• Leave the geocanvas.app wordmark off: only the data credits stay

WHO IT IS FOR
Geography teachers explaining why Greenland is not the size of Africa. Cartographers prototyping a layout. Students, journalists, designers, and anyone who has looked at a world map and felt something was off.

GeoCanvas is a map projection explorer and a small map maker in one: compare world map projections, study cartography and map distortion, teach geography, and turn GIS data from GeoJSON or Shapefile into a finished map or data visualization.

Free to download, no ads. The free version is limited; a single in-app purchase unlocks everything listed here. The AI Chat includes a free allowance.

GeoCanvas runs on open data, including Natural Earth.