The Star Map element draws the actual sky over one place at one moment: the constellations that were up, where they sat, and how bright. It is the element behind birth posters, anniversary prints and “the night we met” gifts.
Set the moment
Add the element
Open Elements and click the Star Map tile. A circular sky lands on the canvas with its Design tab open.
Choose where
Under Place, type into the search. For a place the city search does not know, open Fine-tune and enter Latitude and Longitude in decimal degrees. Typing a coordinate clears the city label, because the map no longer stands for that city.
Choose when
Date & time takes the Date and the Time. The Time zone follows the place you chose, and you can change it under Fine-tune. All three matter. The sky at 21:00 is not the sky at 23:00, and the time zone is what decides which of those a given clock reading was.
For a birth poster, use the time on the certificate and the time zone of the hospital.
Tune the sky
In the Look section, a list of switches and Star density decide how much is drawn.
- Star density is the most important control on the element. It sets how faint a star can be and still appear. Low values give a calm sky with the famous stars only. High values give a dense, dramatic sky that can turn into noise when printed small.
- Constellation lines joins the stars into the shapes people recognise. Most star map products keep these on, because without them the sky is beautiful and unreadable.
- Constellation names labels them. Consider your print size before switching this on.
- Coordinate grid draws the celestial grid.
- Milky Way adds the band across the sky.
Choose a look
The Look section on the Design tab holds the rest.
- The look gallery offers Midnight, Ink, Gold, Blueprint, Vintage, Sienna, Mono and Transparent. Transparent is the useful one for designers: it drops the background so the star map sits over your own artwork.
- Under Colors you can set Background, Bright stars, Stars, Constellations, Coordinate grid, Milky Way and Labels one at a time. Once you change a colour, a Save current tile appears at the end of the gallery. Name the combination, click Save, and it appears under Yours.
- Shape crops the sky to a Circle, Heart, Star, Hexagon, Oval or Plaque, with Edge and Glow around it.
- More adds Film grain and Shooting stars.
Let the shopper pick their moment
Under What customers can change on the Personalize tab:
- Place, Date and Time are all on from the start, which is the right default for a personalized star map.
- Time zone is separate, and starts off. Leaving it off is often kinder: most shoppers do not know what to put, and the value follows the place.
While a switch is on, its input gets its own Label and Help text right under it, so you can rename it and add a help line. Date and time share one input. This element benefits from it more than any other, because “Time” on its own leaves shoppers wondering whether they should guess. A help line reading “The time of birth, as close as you know it” removes that.
Linked text
Linked text on a star map, under Content on the Design tab, publishes the moment itself: Date, Time, Location, Coordinates, Country and Constellations. Click Add and pick one, and a text layer appears pre-filled with it, so the caption under the sky rewrites itself when the shopper changes the date.
Full list: Auto-filling captions from an element.
Next
Moon Phase marks the same kind of moment with one object instead of a whole sky, which survives being printed much smaller.