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How it works

What you are buying

A set of print-ready image files, not a printed sheet. You download them, and you print them — at home, at a local print shop or at an online lab. Nothing is shipped, nothing can be lost in the post, and the same $14.90 buys a desk print or a wall piece close to a metre wide.

What restoration means

Every map begins as a scan published by a library or an archive. A library scan is made to record a sheet, not to print it: it carries the yellowing of the paper, damp stains and foxing, dust, the shadow of the fold, the scanner’s own edges, and often a stamp or a pencil shelfmark on the margin.

What we remove

The colour cast of aged paper, rebuilt to an even, warm tone
Damp stains, foxing spots, dust and speckle
Fold shadows, scanner edges and torn paper at the margins
Library stamps and pencil marks outside the engraved border — decided sheet by sheet, never automatically

What we never touch

The engraved line and the lettering — nothing is redrawn or thickened
The period hand colouring, where the copy has it
The plate mark and the border — the engraving is never cropped away

Restoration is measured, not eyeballed. Fifteen numbers are taken from every finished sheet — black point, white point, evenness of the paper, stains, dirt, noise and sharpness against the source — and a sheet is only released when it passes. The passport inside your download lists each number with its target and the measured value.

What is in the download

One purchase, six files, all 300 dpi, sRGB with an embedded profile.

File	What it is
Full sheet	The whole sheet as the paper is — margins, plate mark and all
Trimmed to the plate rule	The map alone, cut at the engraved border, for framing edge to edge
3:2	24×36 in / 60×90 cm
4:3	18×24 in / 30×40 cm
5:4	16×20 in / 40×50 cm
ISO A	A2 · A1 · A0

The four standard ratios are made by extending the margin with paper texture taken from the same sheet. The map itself is never stretched, squashed or cropped to fit a frame.

A restoration passport (PDF) comes with every map: the source, the holding institution, the shelfmark, the rights, what was done to the sheet and every measurement.

How large it prints

Every map states two sizes, because you get two different files:

The map — measured inside the plate rule. This is the framed picture.
The full sheet with its margins — a few centimetres larger.

So a map that prints to 89 cm comes on a sheet that prints to 92 cm. Both numbers are true at 300 dpi, and neither is reached by upscaling: nothing is enlarged to fake a bigger figure. Print smaller than the stated size as much as you like — the detail only gets denser.

How to print it

Any print shop or online lab can work from these files; so can a home photo printer. What we would choose:

Paper: a matte or lightly textured cotton rag for the antique look; a smooth matte photo paper if you want the engraving crisp and modern. Glossy paper fights the paper texture we kept.
Size: pick the ratio file that matches your frame, then order at or below the stated maximum.
Colour: hand the lab the file as it is. The profile is embedded; no correction is needed.

Licence

Personal printing is included with every map: print it for yourself, your home, your office, as many copies as you like. Reselling the file itself is not allowed.

For client work, packaging, products for sale, or anything else commercial, add the commercial licence (+$49) — no print-run limit, no resale of the file.

Downloads and delivery

The download link appears as soon as the payment clears, and it is also sent to your e-mail. It allows five downloads, so you can fetch the files again on another machine. Keep a copy: the files are yours.

If something is wrong

Write to hello@oldmapstudio.com and we will fix it or refund it. Digital goods cannot be returned once downloaded, but a broken or wrong file is our problem, not yours. We answer within 24 hours.