# From Airbrush to AI: My Career in Cartographic Relief Presentation

Tom Patterson is a retired cartographer with the U.S. National Park Service. Over an extensive career in cartography, including over 25 years mapping National Parks, Patterson has become especially accomplished in topographic mapping techniques and terrain visualization. His talk, “From Airbrush to AI: My Career in Cartographic Relief,” showcases the history of mapping at the U.S. National Park Service, including the transition from grayscale to natural color reliefs to represent the wide range of park environments and the use of geodata and software to mimic the exquisite manual panoramas of Heinrich Berann. Patterson concludes by addressing his work developing software that employs machine learning and AI for terrain presentation, including a sneak peek at new tools. This presentation was given as part of “Adventures in Topographic Mapping,” a Library of Congress celebration of cartographic design and topographic relief, which also featured interactive games and crafts, as well as a display of collection items, on themes of topography and wayfinding.

- Kind: Talk
- Year: 2026
- Runtime: 54 min
- By: Patterson, Tom
- Archive: [Library of Congress](https://www.loc.gov/item/video-11688/)
- Licence or status: Rights statement at the Library of Congress (as the archive states it)
- Credit: Library of Congress
- Who can watch: Tweens profiles and older (the archive gives no rating; placed by Invisible Network from its collection and subjects)

[Watch now](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/watch/archive/loc/video-11688?play=1)