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I often take maps from PDFs and turn them into printed maps. It's particularly effective for complex maps which are difficult to draw, but often it's just nicer to have a printed map. A friend of mine asked for some tips on printing them out so I put together a little tutorial, hope you enjoy.
Video Tutorial On UseTube.
PS: I know the sound is choppy. Sorry, first video. I'll do better next time.
PPS: There are some mild spoilers for Carrion Crown because that's the map I used to do the tutorial. I can't imagine this seriously spoiling anything, but if you are playing, you've been warned.

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I use Visio to fix the size. After copying the source image, I first paste into Visio, then count the grid squares and size the image appropriately using the handy display in the bottom toolbar (that tells you precisely how large the image will be in inches). Then I can copy it back out into my image editor of choice for slicing (if needed), or just let Visio print across multiple pages for me.
Thanks for the video, Dennis. I wasn't aware of the contrast fix you used to bring out the edge details. Unclear gridlines are the biggest complaint I get from my players, so I'll be giving that a try.

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This is actually one of the most awesome and appropriate things I have seen this year.
Some of the maps in scenarios (and Im only talking the scenarios here.. not the modules/AP stuff), are getting quite complex.
I have access to an A3 B&W printer at work Which I have tried to use to print out some pdf maps. They nearly always end up with gridlines blurred as the scalability of the map just gets ugly.
Ill have a watch of this tonight and see how I go.
(Note : Yeah I use a metric system for measurements. Inches give me a headache :) )

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great tutorial
i use photoshop for cropping and resizing once i have finished modifing the basic image.
i copy out a small section to a new image, crop to just a single square - then use image resize to make that square 1", noting the % scaling applied to the image.
i then resize the original image with that same %, and use posterrazor for breaking up the images into pdf pages for later printing at work on their A3 colour laser.

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Thanks!
You can certainly scale the image before the printing step. It's likely more accurate if you measure 10 squares rather than just a single one. I used copying and pasting sections because it wasted less ink/ paper and because it avoids math ;)
Thanks for the link to PosteRazor, I'll definitely use this for more regular images.

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Very nice - I just did a quick & dirty print with the poster setting of my printer and I'll see how that turns out (it was for a map that fills a pretty full grid so the technique of selecting individual sections likely wouldn't have been all that helpful. However I'll definitely try to figure out a means of getting the contrast corrected as you did here (perhaps installing Gimp - don't currently have it installed)

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Dennis Baker wrote:The pixels per inch varies significantly based on the source image.So it all boils down to trial and error? Is there a nice way of determining the DPI to print 1 inch squares?
I've printed quite a few maps so I'm pretty decent at this. In Photoshop (or whatever editor you're using) copy a one inch square from the map then check its size. I randomly pulled up a map and it was 27 pixels an inch at 72dpi, when you convert that to inches it's 0.375" (27/72). So now take 1/0.375 which gives you 2.7 this is the scaling factor for the map. Lastly, scale the map up 2.7x (so if it's current 1000px wide resize it to 2700px wide).

dromanin |
I often take maps from PDFs and turn them into printed maps. It's particularly effective for complex maps which are difficult to draw, but often it's just nicer to have a printed map. A friend of mine asked for some tips on printing them out so I put together a little tutorial, hope you enjoy.
Video Tutorial On UseTube.
PS: I know the sound is choppy. Sorry, first video. I'll do better next time.
PPS: There are some mild spoilers for Carrion Crown because that's the map I used to do the tutorial. I can't imagine this seriously spoiling anything, but if you are playing, you've been warned.
I found the easiest way to scale the map is this:
Copy image in Adobe Reader with photo tool. Use the image grid lines as a guide. (If you cut at the grid lines (horiz and vert), the image will scale almost perfectly).
Count the number of squares for the image width.
Go to GIMP on the main screen without a canvas open. Choose Paste in the Edit menu (ctrl V). The new canvas should be the exact size of the pasted image.
Choose the Scaling option in the Image menu. Change the units to "in" and then set the width to the number of squares width of the image.
Hit OK and now the canvas will resize with each square being 1" X 1"
I was very happy with the quality of the map using this method along with the color adjustment in the video too.

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I've found Inkscape to be very useful. It also has means to depixelise images.
After extracting the image, fire up inkscape and import it.
Open Document Properties (File menu), set your page size, then go to the grids tab and add a new 1" grid.
Then, resize the image to fit on the grid.
Now, select the image, and go Path->Trace Bitmap.
Choose Colours, and set scans to 100.
Uncheck smooth, and in the options tab, uncheck all three options (suppress speckles, smooth corners, optimise paths).
Click OK, and wait for the magic to happen.
With any luck, you'll convert a pixelated map into a much better looking map (40mb).

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Dennis,
I'm relatively new to GMing in PF and found your video straight away. Awesome help for those of us without the artistic talent to recreate or the funds to purchase a bunch of flip maps. Thank you!
I am prepping for PFS scenario 6-03, The Technic League and am having problems. I was hoping you had encountered this or had a solution: When I copy the maps, they just show up as black. I successfully used your technique in GIMP for other scenarios and the very first map in this scenario (map of Nantambu) works fine. It is just the rest.

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I was hoping you had encountered this or had a solution: When I copy the maps, they just show up as black. I successfully used your technique in GIMP for other scenarios and the very first map in this scenario (map of Nantambu) works fine. It is just the rest.
GIMP is a little buggy. Try quitting and restarting between maps that you are working on.

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I am prepping for PFS scenario 6-03, The Technic League and am having problems. I was hoping you had encountered this or had a solution: When I copy the maps, they just show up as black.
All three of the Season 6 scenarios have that same problem. It was identified to Paizo right before GenCon and they were going to look at it after they got back, but I haven't seen new versions of the scenarios yet.

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I am prepping for PFS scenario 6-03, The Technic League and am having problems. I was hoping you had encountered this or had a solution: When I copy the maps, they just show up as black.
There are a number of solutions to this problem suggested in this thread.

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I managed to get a hold of a large-format printer for maps similar to Katt. A couple things I find helpful.
I prefer Paint.NET for editing images. It has some nice tools for playing with colors and such but I find it much easier to use than Gimp.
I'm lucky enough to have a copy of MS Publisher. It works beautifully for laying out the image on paper. Visio is more common and also works effectively.
thanks for the calculate size from a sample of squares tip. That's one I hadn't thought of. Doing it by trial and error on the whole image is a pain, especially since Paizo hates maps that are a simple number of squares. Why is every map something like 23.4 by 32.1 squares with partial squares on all four sides?

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I wrote up a guide on printing maps, from start to finish.
I've been meaning to post this for a while, but hadn't confirmed everything's kosher - so it's here if anyone wants to check it out.
Feedback is welcome.

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I've been printing out my maps without being able to find this thread, until Sebastian gave me enough info to spot it anyway. So I'm coming at this from a little different perspective since my wife and I have been munging steps together without seeing what the rest of the community is up to.
I hadn't thought of doing that much cleanup and contrast enhancement on the image. I'll have to experiment with that! It's a good thought. It makes me worry a little about blowing through ink...
A trick my wife showed me is using a spreadsheet application (Excel or LibreOffice Calc) for both sizing and printing the image once you've got it ready to go:
- Open up a new workbook
- Select all
- Set both column width and row height to something slightly over 1" (I use 1.1 inches, so the minis have a little extra breathing room)
- Import the map image
- Drag resize the image until the map grid matches the grid you've made with the spreadsheet cells
- Print!
It looks like my spreadsheet step replaces the Inkscape and PosteRazor steps in some of these guides... you do miss out on some of the Inkscape features if you're using some of its features for cleanup prior to printing, though.
I also laminate my maps, and tape them together such that they fold up for transport. The laminating really helps, at least for the way I draw all over everything.
I was thinking of writing up a blog post on the whole thing... might still do that.

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posterrazor handles cutting the image into page size pieces for printing, it also allows for adding overlap to each page, great if your glueing them together
Plus one billion for posterazor. That thing makes printing maps literally a 2 minute process from extracting the image from the PDF to printing the 1-inch-square maps. Plus the fact it overlaps makes map taping so much easier.

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chris manning wrote:posterrazor handles cutting the image into page size pieces for printing, it also allows for adding overlap to each page, great if your glueing them togetherPlus one billion for posterazor. That thing makes printing maps literally a 2 minute process from extracting the image from the PDF to printing the 1-inch-square maps. Plus the fact it overlaps makes map taping so much easier.
Indeed. Spreadsheet applications won't create overlap, if that's the killer feature for you, but they do print things out in page-sized pieces without any additional work. So for me, since I'm also using it to resize the image appropriately, it saves me the two minutes it would take to open up posterazor. The lack of overlap doesn't bug me as I'm laminating this stuff anyway and taping it together, so there's enough overlap in the plastic that I don't need more from the map itself. It's just another option, I suppose!