Mapping Center Answer:

Hmm – I cannot get it to buffer either so I suspect it might have something to do with the complexity of the shoreline. However, I think there might be an easier solution. I used the Euclidean Distance method instead and had not problem – it worked really fast and I can symbolize it easily. The results are below:

If you want less white along the shore, that’s easy – I just created a new color ramp (I looked at the specifications of the Bathymetry_1.10 style and then created a new multipart color ramp that has two algorithmic color ramps - the first one ranges from white to HSV 201,25,100, and the second ranges from HSV 201,25,100 to HSV 201,25,100 - this stretches out the blue and reduces the amount of white in the color ramp):

To create the coastal vignette effect using the Euclidean Distance method, here are the steps:

1. Open ArcToolbox, and in the Spatial Analysis toolbox, there is a Distance toolset – open the Euclidean Distance tool.
2. Use the Alaska polygon as the input feature source data (no need to make it into a raster first).
3. Check the output cell size – you can also do this after you get the results to se if the resolution is fine enough – if it isn’t, just run the tool again with a smaller cell size. There is no need to set a maximum distance and no need to create a Euclidean Direction raster.
4. Once the raster is created, you can symbolize it using a color ramp in either stretched or classified mode.

Note that I used one of the color ramps out of the new ColorRamps2.0 style that you can download from the Mapping Center – ArcGIS Resources: Styles page – it has a set of bathymetric color ramps in the Hypsometry style.

We also wrote a white paper on both buffer and Euclidean Distance coastal vignettes.

Hope this helps even though it doesn’t solve the puzzle of the buffer results!