24/06/2026
I've inadvertently travelled two-thirds of the NC500, the popular 500-mile tour of the North Coast of Scotland. I'm thinking of travelling its entirety this autumn, and to help with inspiration, I created a poster for my study wall. I had a lot of fun creating it. First, I tiled 6 high-level topology maps from OpenStreetMap together to create a mega map of North Scotland. Then I used GIMP (Graphic Image Manipulation Program) to remove modern references and traced a RED line around the NC500 route. Then I used AI to transform the map into an antique map, asking it to highlight all the POI on the NC500. It misplaced most of the POI, so I then used GIMP to lift and shift the POI to their correct locations. The observant among you might notice a wandering Smoo Cave, but I couldn't figure out how to get it into the correct location and look good (call it artistic licence). The image was also a bit flat, so I isolated the hills and valleys from the original map and subtly overlaid them onto the antique map. Printing to A0 requires very high image resolution, and I discovered that the final file size was far too big for AI upscalers. So I tiled the image into quarters, upscaled them separately and then merged them back together into a huge image in GIMP. There were a few touch-ups after that, but I think it worked out really well, so well, I decided to share it on Etsy.
https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/LothianLightStudio
Hope you enjoyed this behind-the-scenes tour.
