Understanding Relief Shading and the Color Palette

Relief shading delivers highly detailed shading that combines color and shadow to provide an easier-to-understand, clearer view of bottom structure than contour lines alone. Additionally, changes in the light angle further emphasize gradient changes, especially beneficial when located in areas with limited color differences.

In some cases, high-resolution data is mixed with low-resolution data to produce a more complete image. Where high-resolution will reveal underwater structure such as rocks, cliffs, wrecks, and smaller (3 to 5m wide) objects, low-resolution images will help identify larger structure, such as ridges and seamounts. This means you have the ability to easily find bottom structure and head directly to it.

Relief Shading Structure Gradients

Relief Shading uses a gradient of colors to show structure through shallower and deeper water, allowing you to find bottom structure at-a-glance. 

How to Understand the Color Shading

Color shading by depth in meters.

What has Changed?

By integrating the Navionics® SonarChart™ Shading data into the new relief shading, it has expanded the coverage to additional coastal and inland waterways. An improved and vibrant color palette gives you a better understanding of depths, and a clearer picture of sharp ledges, points and other bottom structure.

Relief Shading is available for download with an active subscription in the Navionics® Boating app, ActiveCaptain® app, Navionics Platinum+™ and Garmin Navionics Vision+™ premium mapping products.