Blurry street names/ resolution issue

[JimboWatson]

Hi all, hope you can help me with an issue.

Im using arcgis explorer 1500 and the latest gfx drivers for my system. Im trying to print off a custom map i have made. I am using an approximate scale of 200-400m.

I like the clean look of the basemaps "Bing maps road" and "world streets". Unfortunately at this scale (and it seems to be all basemaps) the road names and highways are noticeably blurred. This is to such a degree that they are hard to read on an A4 print. This is the same whether i copy to clipboard or print direct from arc.

Any help/advice/solutions would be really helpful!

As i am only using one UK city, can i remove the rest of the basemap and have increased quality for what is left?

Are there basemaps with better quality?

A work around seems to be zooming in very close. However this means copying/pasting hundreds of tiles for each map which will take forever.

Many thanks in advance!
James

EDIT: A picture says a thousand words im told. So:
The following is the standard basemap "bing maps road" with nothing added. The resolution of this is fine for what i need: http://img703.imageshack.us/img703/4400/standardbingresolutionc.jpg

However i have since added in some layers. This consists of shapefiles and point data. The following is the same image as above, however it is my completed project file with all the layers turned off except basemap: http://img651.imageshack.us/img651/9967/projectresolutionexampl.jpg

As you can see the quality is much reduced even though it is the same scale, same map, same export method (cut to clipboard, paste to PShop) etc.

I have since tried deleting the cache. This has not helped.

[MichaelBranscomb]

Hi,

Do you have ArcGIS Server in your organisation? - if so you can pick up your corporate services and use those as basemaps.

Otherwise - World Streets, World Topo, Bing - any of those make excellent good basemaps. I've been trying to reproduce your problem but as yet have not had any success.

I'll post here if I manage to reproduce the blurred issue.

Regards

Mike

[MichaelBranscomb]

Hi,

Another thought - you said you were working at 200-400 metres? In which case are you in 3D? Unless you specifically need to be in 3D, I'd suggest working in the 2D mode, particularly if scale is important because on a globe the map scale varies across the view.

I've posted some Add-ins which can help when working in the UK on British National Grid here:

- Zoom to BNG grid ref: http://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=ede2dcdd52bb4497957067f4bb693e99

- Zoom to map scale: http://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=b2814df318ad4b3482cf05ce62db1967

- Previous/Next Extent: http://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=d857b130f76d48acab8eeb2e1e63cff7

Regards

Mike

[JimboWatson]

Thanks for the replies.I have finally managed to track down the issue. I was using BNG as the coordinate system after trying and failing to integrate an Ordnance survey map into explorer. It is also the format a lot of the data i am using is in. However changing the coordinate system to a mercator projection solved the issue.

I shall have a look at those add-ins. Go to previous/next extent looks particularly useful! Thanks for your help.

[deleted-user-IR249IovB3CN]

I am having a similar issue. I'm using the Shaded Relief basemap from ArcGIS Online within Arc 10 at a map scale of 1:11,000,000. The topography resolution appears fine at that scale but the water features of that basemap are noticeably blurry, even when printing on a letter sized piece of paper. Does anyone know how to force the display of a basemap to a higher resolution, such as it appears when you zoom in to the data on the basemap image?