I’m refreshing a 1:50k topo series in QGIS and need lightweight, open textures for arid landforms — think wind-scoured dunes that don’t fight contour hierarchy… Any favorite repos or style packs for muted sand palettes and low-noise multi-directional hillshade (around 35 deg sun), ideally SVG/PNG assets under 2 MB?
Those “beach/sand” tile PNGs from OSM-Carto are tiny and super-muted; drop one in QGIS as a repeating fill and set Multiply at about 8–12% so it won’t stomp your contours — see https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/tree/master/symbols/patterns. For the 35° sun, use GDAL Hillshade (multidirectional) in QGIS and give the output a 0.5–1 px Gaussian blur to kill the speckle; , the default noise drives me nuts at 1:50k. Do small PNG tiles work for you, or do you need true SVG?
@henry4528’s blend tip is solid — ambientCG has CC0 seamless sand PNGs; grab the 1k “color” map (Search | ambientCG) and use it as a texture fill with Soft Light about 12% so the dunes stay whisper‑quiet. For relief, run QGIS’s Multidirectional Hillshade at 35° then a about 0.7 px Gaussian blur and blend as Luminosity about 25%; want a tiny QML to drop in?
Tom Patterson’s texture‑shaded relief examples are great for muted desert grain; grab the subtle desert texture here and clip it to a low‑slope mask (about 3–5°) so flats stay quiet and contours read clean: https://www.shadedrelief.com/texture/… If you need vector, I can share a tiny SVG dot matrix that tiles well at 1:50k — interested?
For 1:50k, I’ve had good results combining gdaldem’s -multidirectional with -alt 35 for the base and a tiny blue‑noise PNG tile over sand units so the grain stays subtle… Grab an MIT‑licensed tile from https://github.com/EmbarkStudios/blue-noise and use it in QGIS as a pattern fill at very low opacity; if it buzzes in print, blur the tile about 0.3 px before tiling. Small caveat: it can slightly darken flats, so I mask it to lighter areas to keep contour hierarchy clean.
@emma_jones94 your overlay idea tracks — I’ve had best luck with this tiny sandpaper tile (https://www.transparenttextures.com/patterns/sandpaper.png): recolor to #e9dcc1, Soft light about 8%, scale in map units to about 280 m, and hide it on slopes >5° so contours pop; if it buzzes at print, nudge the scale to 102% — need an SVG version?
