A satellite route print is your recorded route drawn on aerial imagery of the ground it crossed: the fields, the forest, the coastline, the hairpins. It is one of the seven backgrounds in the editor, and the only one that is a photograph rather than a map we draw.
What makes it sharp
Satellite imagery on a poster usually goes wrong in one of two ways: it is stretched from a screen, or it is so compressed that a field turns into a smear. Ours is fetched for the print, not the preview.
| Imagery | Maxar, through Mapbox, credited on the sheet |
| Target | 300 dpi on the size you order; never below 150 |
| Detail | Down to the full detail of Maxar's 50 cm imagery |
| On top | Route, roads and text stay vector, so they are sharp at any size |
The screen preview is kept light so it stays fast. The print is sharper than what you see in the browser, never the other way round.
What is drawn on top of the photo
A bare satellite photo tells you nothing about where you are. So roads are drawn as thin pale lines and place names sit in white with a dark edge, as on a hybrid map, and the sea reads as one clean surface. You can switch the roads and names off in Map detail. Your route goes over everything.
Which routes suit satellite
Long rides and runs through landscape: coast roads, islands, farmland, mountains, a crossing. The photo carries the place, and the line shows how you went through it. A city loop usually reads better on City or Atlas, where the streets are drawn rather than photographed.
Very short routes are the exception to the rule. Satellite detail depends on how much ground the map shows, so a 400 m track fitted tight on a 70×100 would print soft. The editor zooms out automatically until the photo is sharp, and tells you by how much ("zoomed out to 1.3 km"). If a route is too small even then, it says so before you pay.
Watch it fly
The preview has a ▶ Watch it fly button: the route is flown in 3D over satellite imagery, with the distance, time and climbing on screen, and the flight lands as your poster. It is the quickest way to check the route is the one you meant.
Sizes, paper, frame
30×40, 50×70 or 70×100 cm on Museum 250 gsm or Classic 170 gsm uncoated matte paper, from 319 kr, or framed in pine wood behind acrylic from 799 kr. 70×100 is Museum 250 only. Every specification is on one page.
The other six backgrounds, and when to choose which, are on Strava map print. All the ways to print a route are on Strava prints. Epic Efforts is not affiliated with Strava, Mapbox or Maxar.
