Blog › Absolute vs Fit-to-Area: The Colour Band Setting That Changes What Your Map Says
Absolute vs Fit-to-Area: The Colour Band Setting That Changes What Your Map Says
Every terrain map paints elevation as colour bands, and every such map has to answer one question first: which metres get which colours? The terrain app calls the answer Band scaling, it has exactly two modes, and choosing between them deliberately is what separates a map that informs from a map that merely decorates.
Fit to area: the flattering default
Fit to area (the recommended mode) spreads all the colour bands across the elevation range of your own selection. If you map a county that spans 180–900 m, the full ramp stretches across those 720 metres. Every hillside gets contrast; the map pops; no band goes unused.
This is the right mode most of the time — when the goal is showing the shape of one place. Relief patterns, valley networks, escarpments: everything a single region's terrain has to say is loudest in this mode.
Its weakness is invisible until you compare: two maps made in fit-to-area can look identical while describing completely different places. A 180–900 m county and a 2,800–3,500 m alpine valley both fill their legend top to bottom. Side by side, they lie by omission.
Absolute elevation: the honest mode
Absolute elevation pins the colour bands to real sea-level metres. Now 500 m green means 500 m above the ocean — in this map and every other map made in the same mode. The legend becomes a ruler instead of a caption.
Switch to absolute when the comparison is the story:
| Situation | Mode | Why |
|---|---|---|
| One region, its own shape | Fit to area | Maximum contrast, nothing wasted |
| Two regions side by side | Absolute | Same colour = same metres, or the pair is meaningless |
| Before/after sea-level flooding | Absolute | The water level sits at real metres; bands must agree |
| A country strip next to a zoomed valley | Absolute | otherwise the valley looks "as tall" as the country |
| Poster of your hometown | Fit to area | Nobody compares it; make it beautiful |
The classroom version
The sea-level presets are where this setting earns its keep. Flood a coastline at +10 m in fit-to-area mode and the waterline lands wherever it lands — a different altitude in every region students try. Switch the band to absolute and the +10 m line sits at ten real metres above the sea in every region, so students can ask the question that actually matters: which places are low, and what does low cost them?
The app's sea-level rise guide builds its whole classroom exercise on this switch, and the exported images carry the legend — with absolute mode, that legend reads the same on every map in the stack.
How to tell which mode a map uses
Look at the legend and ask a local. In fit-to-area, the lowest band always starts at the region's lowest ground — a river valley bottom, a beach. In absolute, the bottom band starts at a round sea-level number, and inland high regions use only the upper slice of the ramp. Once you have seen both, you can spot the mode of any terrain map — including printed ones — in about five seconds.
The one-line summary
Fit to area answers what does this place look like. Absolute answers how does this place compare. Both live in the Style panel, one dropdown apart — pick the question first, then the setting, and the map writes itself.
Try it while it's fresh
The whole tool runs in your browser — pick a region, shape the relief, export. No account, nothing to install.
Open the terrain app