Basemaps

Basemaps are image tiles that are used to render the graphical representation of your map background. Basemaps include the natural and cultural features of the world; such as water bodies, topography, park areas, terrains, roads, streets, and sometimes buildings.

The CARTO Builder provides a set of CARTO and Google Maps basemaps styles as background maps. By default, basemaps are projected using the Webmercator projection. To setup your map’s base map, open the Base Map panel to select from a list of default map styles.

CARTO

Select CARTO in the menu to see different basemap options. They include:

• Voyager: basemap with colors to clearly differentiate natural and cultural features. This basemap is showed by default when creating a new map.

• Positron: light basemap with dark-colored text.

• Dark: dark basemap with light-colored text.

You can manage the CARTO basemaps layers to hide and show water, buildings, roads, and more.

Google Maps

Select Google Maps in the menu to see different basemap options. They include:

• Roadmap: displays the default road map view.

• Satellite: displays Google Earth satellite images.

• Hybrid: displays satellite imagery with overlays of road names, city names, and other labels.

• Terrain: displays a physical map based on terrain information.

• Positron, Voyager and Dark Matter: new versions that has been developed for Google Maps.

Amazon Location

Select Amazon Location in the menu to see the options to use a base map from the Amazon Location Service.

To use an Amazon Location maps, you will need to introduce some credentials from your Amazon Location Service account. Lear more about it in this guide:

• Cognito Pool ID: Amazon Cognito provides authentication, authorization, and user management for web and mobile apps. You can use Amazon Cognito unauthenticated identity pools with Amazon Location as a way for applications to retrieve temporary, scoped-down AWS credentials. Learn more about how to get a Cognito Pool ID here.

• Map name: The name of the map style from your Maps home page in your AWS console.

Once you have set the credentials, click on Apply. The current configuration will be saved in this map.

To use another base map from Amazon Location, specify the new credentials and click Apply again. The map will be updated and saved.