Artistically Coloured Relief Shading

Strict rules do not apply to the use of colour on shaded relief. Cartographers sometimes use colour in a more impressionistic way to emphasize the three-dimensional appearance of shaded relief.

On maps of this kind, colour changes are typically dependent on elevation, exposition and land use.

Relief de la Suisse by Imhof (excerpt)
“Relief de la Suisse” (section Bernese Oberland/Goms) by Eduard Imhof, 1982, original scale 1:300,000. Available from © swisstopo.

Other examples of artistically coloured shaded relief: