Style terrain with color relief

Color relief is a visualization method that styles the map in diferent colors based on altitude. Unlike hillshading, color relief focuses purely on elevation data without any simulated light or shadows. This allows you to show elevation using smooth color gradients, which is perfect for creating the “old-school geographical atlas” look or high-contrast environmental maps.

Our Topo map with color relief (left) vs hillshading (right)

Predefined color ramps

Our cartographers have prepared a selection of beautiful predefined color ramps for any map look and type of terrain. Here’s how to add the relief with a specific color ramp:

1. In your MapTiler account, page Maps, click on the map you want to use. It can be any map including custom.

2. Under the map preview, click Customize. This opens the map in Map Designer.

3. Go to menu Layers → block Terrain → layer Hillshade.

   ☝️ If the Terrain block is missing, click the plus button to add a new layer. Search for Terrain RGB and add it to your map.

4. In the Hillshade panel, set Visualization to Color relief.

5. Choose a Color ramp from the presets.

Advanced techniques

Custom color ramps

You can create your own color ramp from scratch, or modify a preset to match a specific branding or map style. For power users, clicking the {} icon allows you to edit elevation values directly in the style JSON, giving you total control over the gradient interpolation.

Adjusting breakpoints

Default color ramps are calibrated globally, from sea level to Mount Everest. If your map is focused on a flatter region (like the Netherlands or Kansas), the color differences might be nearly invisible. To fix it, remove elevation breakpoints for values that aren’t used in your map, and adjust the color of remaining breakpoints to increase the contrast.

Styling combinations

To combine a color relief with shading, use the Landscape map which additionally contains the hand-drawn hillshading layer, or add this layer to any map manually.

For realistic 3D appearance with the selected tint, you can add a new hillshading layer. Place it on top of the color relief and adjust its opacity. This helps you achieve special effects like “plastic” or embossed.

Various terrain styling techniques combined (from left to right): color relief, color relief with hand-drawn hillshade, color relief with an extra hillshade layer

Technical details

The color relief feature is powered by our Terrain RGB tileset. When you select a color ramp, the elevation data from the tileset is translated into the colors defined in the ramp.

The Ocean map uses an additional tileset Ocean RGB. In this map, you can adjust separate color ramps for Terrain (land) and for Ocean.