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Overview of the Print Composer

The Print Composer provides growing layout and printing capabilities. It allows you to add elements such as the QGIS map canvas, text labels, images, legends, scale bars, basic shapes, arrows, attribute tables and HTML frames. You can size, group, align, position and rotate each element and adjust their properties to create your layout. The layout can be printed or exported to image formats, PostScript, PDF or to SVG (export to SVG is not working properly with some recent Qt4 versions; you should try and check individually on your system). You can save the layout as a template and load it again in another session. Finally, generating several maps based on a template can be done through the atlas generator.

Ejemplo de sesión

Before you start to work with the Print Composer, you need to load some raster or vector layers in the QGIS map canvas and adapt their properties to suit your own convenience. After everything is rendered and symbolized to your liking, click the newComposer New Print Composer icon in the toolbar or choose File ‣ New Print Composer. You will be prompted to choose a title for the new Composer.

To demonstrate how to create a map please follow the next instructions.

  1. On the left side, select the addMap Add new map toolbar button and draw a rectangle on the canvas holding down the left mouse button. Inside the drawn rectangle the QGIS map view to the canvas.
  2. Select the scaleBar Add new scalebar toolbar button and click with the left mouse button on the Print Composer canvas. A scalebar will be added to the canvas.
  3. Select the addLegend Add new legend toolbar button and draw a rectangle on the canvas holding down the left mouse button. Inside the drawn rectangle the legend will be drawn.
  4. Select the select Select/Move item icon to select the map on the canvas and move it a bit.
  5. While the map item is still selected you can also change the size of the map item. Click while holding down the left mouse button, in a white little rectangle in one of the corners of the map item and drag it to a new location to change its size.
  6. Click the Item Properties panel on the left down side and find the setting for the orientation. Change the value of the setting Map orientation to ‘15.00° ‘. You should see the orientation of the map item change.
  7. Now, you can print or export your print composition to image formats, PDF or to SVG with the export tools in Composer menu.
  8. Finally, you can save your print composition within the project file with the fileSave Save Project button.

You can add multiple elements to the Composer. It is also possible to have more than one map view or legend or scale bar in the Print Composer canvas, on one or several pages. Each element has its own properties and, in the case of the map, its own extent. If you want to remove any elements from the Composer canvas you can do that with the Delete or the Backspace key.

The Composer Manager

The Composer Manager is the main window to manage print composers in the project. It helps you add new print composer, duplicate an existing one, rename or delete it. To open the composer manager dialog, click on the composerManager Composer Manager button in the toolbar or choose Composer ‣ Composer Manager. It can also be reached from the main window of QGIS with Project ‣ Composer Manager.

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The Print Composer Manager

The composer manager lists in its upper part all the available print composers in the project. The bottom part shows tools that help to:

  • show the selected composer(s): you can open multiple print composers in one-click
  • duplicate the selected composer (available only if one print composer is selected): it creates a new composer using the selected composer as template. You’ll be prompted to choose a new title for the new composer
  • rename the composer (also available only if one print composer is selected): You’ll be prompted to choose a new title for the composer. Note that you can also rename the composer by double-clicking on its title in the upper part
  • remove the composer: the selected print composer(s) will be deleted from the project.

With the Composer Manager, it’s also possible to create new print composers as an empty composer or from a saved template. By default, QGIS will look for templates in user directory (~/.qgis2/composer_templates) or application’s one (ApplicationFolder/composer_templates). QGIS will retrieve all the available templates and propose them in the combobox. The selected template will be used to create a new composer when clicking Add button. You can also save composer templates in another folder. Choosing specific in the template list offers the ability to select such template and use it to create a new print composer.