Making a beach towel or coastal print with the Beach Town Map preset

Difficulty: easy. Time: 30–45 minutes per pressed piece. Best methods, in order: sublimation (towels/totes/coasters), UV printing (acrylic/wood), 3D printed plaque. Laser engraving is the weak method here - the palette is nearly all light tones - see the note below.

This preset is pure vacation: turquoise ocean, sandy land, pale green parks and wetlands, and sun-bleached white streets, tuned for Miami Beach but happy anywhere the water meets the sand. It's designed first for sublimation - towels, totes, and coaster sets - where the big turquoise and sand fields carry the design even when fine details soften.

Open the Beach Town Map preset

What You'll Need

Sublimation: sublimation printer + paper, polyester beach towels or microfiber towels, poly canvas totes, or poly-coated coaster/panel blanks, large-format heat press for towels (or press in sections), heat tape, butcher paper, lint roller
UV printing: flatbed UV printer, white or clear acrylic, light wood panels
3D printing: multi-color printer with sand, turquoise, green, and white filaments
Laser engraving: only with recolored roads - see the method section

Step 1 - Start from the preset

Open the Beach Town Map preset. It loads Miami Beach at zoom 13 - wide enough to get a satisfying sweep of coastline, close enough that the white street grid reads as texture. The composition rule for this preset: the shoreline is the design, so frame it diagonally or along one third of the canvas, not dead-center horizontal. Search any coastal town - Gulf Coast, Côte d'Azur, Gold Coast - and make sure a good chunk of water turquoise stays in frame; an all-land crop wastes the palette.

Step 2 - Tune the layers

One Solid layer group, Beach town:

land - #F4E2C7 warm sand base.
landcoverSand - #F7D9A8, the actual beaches; slightly more golden than the land so the strand line shows. Push it to #F2CD8E if your beach isn't reading.
landcoverWetland #C9E4C5 and landusePark #B9DCB2 - soft greens for mangroves and parks.
water - #5BC8C4 turquoise, the hero fill.
Roads: roadsMotorway #FFFFFF width 4, roadsPrimary #FFFFFF width 3, roadsSecondary #FFFFFF width 2, roadsStreet #FFF7EA width 1.

Two practical notes: the #FFF7EA width-1 streets are extremely subtle against #F4E2C7 and will mostly vanish in sublimation - that's intentional sun-bleach, but set them to #FFFFFF and width 1.5 if you want the grid to survive a towel press. And remember white in sublimation means "no ink," so white roads become the color of your blank - perfect on white towels, but on a cream tote they'll print as cream.

Step 3 - Export

Sublimation / UV: 4096 px PNG, background ON - the sand color is the design, you almost never want it transparent here. The one exception: printing on a sand-colored or natural canvas blank where the fabric can play the land; then toggle Background off.
3D: 3MF export.
Laser: per-layer SVG ZIP, and recolor first (see below).
Enable small-polygon cleanup - coastal OSM data is full of sliver wetlands and sandbar fragments.
For a coaster set, switch export shape to circle before exporting; corner/hanger holes generally don't suit soft goods, but Hanger hole works if you cut a beach-house ornament from acrylic.

Choose Your Build Method

UV printing

Export the 4096 px PNG with background on.
Size in the RIP to your panel; the flat fields and fine white grid hold up at large sizes.
On clear acrylic, print a white underbase so the turquoise stays vivid; on white acrylic print direct.
Register, print, and consider a matte varnish pass - gloss fights the sun-bleached look.

Sublimation

Print mirrored at final size on sublimation paper. For a towel, that may mean tiling a large-format print.
Lint-roll the towel, pre-press it for 5–10 seconds to drive out moisture, then tape the print face-down.
Press with the settings recommended for your material, paper, and inks (polyester fabric typically runs cooler and shorter than hardboard).
Peel hot and pull the paper in one motion to avoid ghosting on the fluffy surface.
Expect the width-1 #FFF7EA streets to disappear into the weave; the white primaries and turquoise carry the design.

Make It Yours

Towns where the palette sings: Key West, Tulum, Santorini coastline, Cape Cod hooks, Australia's Byron Bay.
Sunset swap: water #7B6BC9, sand #F4C7A1, keep white roads - instant dusk-beach version.
Deep-tropic swap: water #1FA8A0, parks #5FA86B for a lusher, postcard-saturated take.
Toggle water inversion in the export modal for islands so the ocean becomes the cut/printed body - great for acrylic island silhouettes.
Add a route layer in coral #FF6F61 tracing the boardwalk or your morning beach run.
Circle export shape + Hanger hole = beach-town Christmas ornament from 3 mm white acrylic.
Press a matching set: towel + tote + four coasters of the same shoreline, one artwork, three blanks.
Use the heart export shape over the resort where you got engaged - same palette, instant keepsake.