These are the Pro settings that change how the contour lines themselves are drawn, plus multi-zone batch export. They are all part of one credit pack; on the free plan they are switched off before the trace runs.
Elevation gradients
With a single stroke colour, every line looks the same whatever its height. A gradient colours each contour by its elevation: the lowest line of the zone takes the first stop, the highest takes the last, and everything in between is interpolated along the ramp.
- The ramp is relative to the zone — it spans the zone’s own lowest and highest contour, not sea level to Everest. A 40 m coastal delta uses the whole ramp just like a 4,000 m massif.
- Add a stop between two others, remove one, or start from a preset — including the two Imhof-style hypsometric presets described in Cartographic options.
- Reverse mirrors the stops, so the first colour goes to the summits instead of the valleys.
- Each stop has its own opacity; the stroke opacity then applies on top of the whole ramp.
In SVG exports, lines stay grouped by elevation and each group carries its colour, so a single height band can be recoloured later in Figma or Illustrator. In Points mode the gradient colours each glyph by the height below it (Render modes).
Taper
Taper ties line weight to height: the lowest contour of the zone is drawn at your full stroke width, and lines get progressively thinner as they climb, down to 0.1 at the highest contour. Valleys read heavy, summits read light — close to how a hand-inked relief drawing builds up weight at the base.
Taper replaces the uniform stroke width, so the width you set becomes the
maximum. It combines with a gradient (colour and weight both follow height).
Index and auxiliary contours keep their own widths. In SVG, each elevation
group carries its own stroke-width.
Relative mode
By default the interval is an absolute height step: 10 m means one line every 10 m of elevation, wherever you are. That works for a given landscape but not across very different ones — 10 m gives a cliff dozens of merged lines and a flat delta two or three.
Relative mode turns the interval into a density setting instead. TopoLines measures the elevation range inside your zone and picks the step that gives roughly the same number of lines whatever the terrain:
- the target is about 500 ÷ interval lines across the zone’s range — so an interval of 10 aims for ~50 lines, 25 for ~20;
- the step is that range divided by the target (never finer than 0.5 m);
- levels start at the zone’s lowest point and stop below its highest.
Lower interval values still mean denser maps; the difference is that the density stays consistent from coast to mountain. Because the step depends on the zone, two zones in relative mode no longer share the same contour heights — turn it off when maps in a series must line up level for level.
Multiple zones and batch export
Free accounts work with one zone at a time: drawing a new one replaces it. On Pro you can draw as many zones as you need on the map, each with its own frame.
Batch export generates every zone in one go and downloads them as a single ZIP, in PNG, SVG, GeoJSON or DXF. Every zone uses the same style settings, so a series of prints stays consistent. The cost is the sum of each zone’s credits, shown before you confirm (see Exports and plans).
Last updated 19 October 2026