Kind of OT: Blank maps of Earth?

[Christopher]

I'm hoping someone here can help me out... I've recently written a couple of stories in a fantasy universe that's basically a parallel Earth with an entirely different history, and I thought it might be helpful for future stories if I could make a map or maps. So I've been looking online for public-domain, editable physical maps of the world, something without labels or country borders. But I haven't been able to find much that works for me. I've found a few blank world maps, but on a scale that's too small to do much labeling. And I've had little luck finding things that are more focused, stuff like Eurasia, Africa, or the Mediterranean region.

So I'm wondering if anyone here knows where to find the sort of thing I'm looking for.

 

[137th Gebirg]

How about this?

 

[Christopher]

Only one of those was potentially useful for my needs (i.e. physically detailed but lacking national borders), and it's in a format my computer doesn't recognize -- an .ai extension which I'm guessing means Adobe Illustrator, a program I don't have. I need something like a .jpg or other common image format.

 

[largo]

which one, and how large of a map do you need? i or several others here can likely convert the .ai for you.

 

[Christopher]

It's the second one from the top, the one with pale grey continents and blue-green oceans. As for size, I'm not sure. Something on a big enough scale to label countries and major cities, but not too unwieldy.

 

[largo]

here you go, 3628 x 2454 px
http://img697.imageshack.us/img697/5719/macdaddyworld3628.jpg

 

[Locutus of Bored]

There are a bunch of world and continental maps here in svg and png format. You don't want to use a lossy compression format like jpg for this if you're planning on saving or editing it multiple times, because the quality degrades each time.

 

[Christopher]

here you go, 3628 x 2454 px
http://img697.imageshack.us/img697/5719/macdaddyworld3628.jpg

Thanks. It's not perfect for my needs, but hopefully I can work with it.

There are a bunch of world and continental maps here in svg and png format.

A couple of useful things there too, though most of the maps have national borders.

You don't want to use a lossy compression format like jpg for this if you're planning on saving or editing it multiple times, because the quality degrades each time.

I can save it in my editing program's format while I work on it, preserving layers and such.

 

[EmperorKalan]

I'm hoping someone here can help me out... I've recently written a couple of stories in a fantasy universe that's basically a parallel Earth with an entirely different history, and I thought it might be helpful for future stories if I could make a map or maps. So I've been looking online for public-domain, editable physical maps of the world, something without labels or country borders. But I haven't been able to find much that works for me. I've found a few blank world maps, but on a scale that's too small to do much labeling. And I've had little luck finding things that are more focused, stuff like Eurasia, Africa, or the Mediterranean region.

So I'm wondering if anyone here knows where to find the sort of thing I'm looking for.

Christopher,

I would suggest trying here:
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/

and pick out ones with the sort of scale and detail you're looking for, particularly the reference maps in PDF format. Those have the political and other data you want to lose in a form which can be stripped out, leaving you with just the physical map. If you don't have the tools to do that yourself, I'm sure someone in this forum does. I do, at least for one I briefly tested.

From their faq about copyright and public domain:

Most of the maps scanned by the University of Texas Libraries and served from this web site are in the public domain. No permissions are needed to copy them. You may download them and use them as you wish. We appreciate credit to "University of Texas Libraries" as the source of the scanned images.
A few maps are copyrighted, and are clearly marked as such. Any that are copyrighted by The University of Texas are subject to our Materials Usage Guidelines.
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/faq.html#3.html

 

[Squiggy]

How about this?

 

[dru]

http://comonca.org/Documents/world2.gif