Comparison of digital and manual relief shading


Manual shaded relief often provides a clearer picture of major terrain features, especially at small scales. The manual and the digital examples below illustrate this strikingly. Both images are registered to 1:50 million Natural Earth vector drainages.
Stacks Image 3419
Manual shaded relief by Herwig G. Schutzler of Latin America.
Stacks Image 3424
Digital shaded relief from downsampled SRTM data.