Making an old-world wood print with the Vintage Parchment Map preset

Difficulty: easy. Time: 30–45 minutes printed, 45–90 minutes engraved. Best methods, in order: UV printing on wood, laser engraving (the best engraving palette of the flat presets), sublimation on hardboard. 3D printing is workable but the three near-identical road browns waste filament slots - notes below.

This preset dresses a modern city in old-world clothes: oxblood and sepia roads over a parchment ground, with muted teal water and olive parks. It's designed for UV printing on wood - toggle the background off and the wood grain itself becomes the parchment. Think study walls, whisky-bar decor, anniversary maps of Rome or Vienna.

Open the Vintage Parchment Map preset

What You'll Need

UV printing: flatbed UV printer, light hardwood or quality ply panels (maple, birch, white oak - grain should be visible but calm), sanding sealer or sanded-smooth surface
Sublimation: sublimation printer + paper, poly-coated hardboard or "vintage" textured sublimation panels, heat press, heat tape, butcher paper
Laser engraving: diode or CO2 laser, light laser-grade plywood or hardwood; optional pre-stain for the parchment tone
3D printing: multi-color printer with parchment/cream, brown, teal, and olive filaments

Step 1 - Start from the preset

Open the Vintage Parchment Map preset. It loads Rome at zoom 13.4 - old-town scale, where the irregular medieval street pattern is the texture this style wants. The preset rewards cities with tangled historic cores: Rome, Prague, Lisbon, Istanbul, Edinburgh, Quebec City. Search yours and center on the old town, with the river (the #7FA8A4 teal is gorgeous in this palette) sweeping through a third of the frame. Rigid modern grids fight the vintage look - if your target city is gridded, lean into a riverfront or diagonal rail cut instead.

Step 2 - Tune the layers

One Solid layer group, Parchment map:

land - #EFE3C8 parchment. This is the layer you'll hide for wood prints.
water - #7FA8A4 muted verdigris teal.
landusePark - #C9C39A dry olive; subtle against the parchment, by design.
Roads, dark-to-light: roadsMotorway #7A4A32 width 4, roadsPrimary #7A4A32 width 3, roadsSecondary #8F5E42 width 2, roadsStreet #A3765A width 1.

The browns step from oxblood to tan as roads get smaller - a hand-inked hierarchy. All are dark enough to survive sublimation, and they convert to a clean grayscale ramp for engraving. If you hide the background for wood printing, check your wood tone against the road browns: on darker woods (walnut), lighten the streets to #B58A6C or they'll sink into the grain.

Step 3 - Export

UV on wood (signature move): toggle Background off in the export modal for a transparent PNG - roads, water, and parks print directly onto the grain, and the wood is the parchment. Keep landusePark on or off to taste; it's subtle either way.
Sublimation: background ON; the parchment tone is part of the transfer.
Laser: combined SVG (the grayscale ramp handles tonal separation in one pass) or per-layer ZIP for power control.
3D: 3MF after consolidating browns (below).
A Hanger hole suits a small vintage ordinance-survey ornament; Corner holes + brass-toned anodized standoff spacers nail the explorer's-study look on larger panels. Enable small-polygon cleanup if your old town has confetti-sized park slivers.

Choose Your Build Method

UV printing

Export the transparent PNG (Background off).
Sand the wood panel to 220 grit and blow it clean; UV ink telegraphs every fiber.
In the RIP, place over your panel size. Print color directly with no white underbase - letting the grain ghost through the inks is what makes it look aged.
Register and print; a satin varnish pass deepens the inks without plasticky gloss.

Sublimation

Print mirrored at final size, background ON.
Tape face-down to poly-coated hardboard; this preset particularly suits "rustic" textured blanks.
Press with the settings recommended for your material, paper, and inks, with butcher paper.
Peel hot. The dark browns hold beautifully; expect the #C9C39A parks to soften toward the parchment - acceptable, they're a whisper by design.

Make It Yours

Old-soul cities: Prague, Lisbon, Seville, Kyoto, Jerusalem, Quebec City, Charleston.
Nautical-chart swap: water #5E8C8A deepened, land #F2E8CF, roads #3D4A52 slate - instant harbor chart for port cities.
Wine-country swap: roads #5C2E2E, parks #8A8B5C over the same parchment for Tuscany or Bordeaux.
Turn on the compass icon overlay in the export modal - no preset wears it better.
UV print onto a cork panel instead of wood; the cork texture reads as ancient paper.
Add a route layer in faded ink #4A3B2A tracing a grand-tour walking route through the old town.
Heart export shape over Rome or Paris with this palette = the vintage cousin of the Heart Keepsake preset.
Make a "then and now" pair: this preset and the Blueprint preset of the same city, parchment beside drafting blue.