How to print Maps?


GM Discussion

Grand Lodge 2/5

I'm trying to print the map for the Consortium compact but I don't want all the letters and secret doors and stuff on the map so how do I do that?

Sovereign Court 4/5 5/5

If you open the PDF and select the map image you can copy and paste it to a program like paint or photoshop without the lettering/secret doors/etc, thus creating a spoilerfree map.

Grand Lodge 2/5

So it doesn't have layers where I can just turn off those features?

Silver Crusade 4/5 5/55/55/5

Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Maps, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber

Kindasorta. In recent scenarios, npc/monster notes often end up not copying out but secret doors are usually flattened into the map.

5/5 5/5 ***

You can also try nitro PDF (the free version). It has an option to export all images in a document. If the things like numbers are on a separate layer, they wont export. Sometimes you're out of luck. Like Terminalmancer says, often secret doors are flattened into the image and will copy no matter what.
If they do, sometimes you can go into paint, select a similar looking piece of wall. Copy/past that, then move it onto the big S. Its not always pretty, but some maps get pretty pixaleted anyway. No way of knowing if it looks wonky because you removed a secret door or because of JPEG artifacts.

Silver Crusade 4/5 5/55/55/5

Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Maps, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber

For what it's worth, I just opened up the Consortium Compact, copied the custom warehouse map, and pasted it into Gimp. Even the secret doors are on a separate layer! No wonder I liked this one.

For reused flip-mats and map packs, it's often easiest to pull the image from the product PDF rather than the scenario. I don't know if that's an option for you, though.

Grand Lodge 2/5

Terminalmancer wrote:

For what it's worth, I just opened up the Consortium Compact, copied the custom warehouse map, and pasted it into Gimp. Even the secret doors are on a separate layer! No wonder I liked this one.

For reused flip-mats and map packs, it's often easiest to pull the image from the product PDF rather than the scenario. I don't know if that's an option for you, though.

Thanks. I haven't had a chance to check because I posted that before work this morning. I'm good with the other maps. It was primarily the warehouse I was worried about.

Grand Lodge 2/5

Printed off just fine. Though I had no idea color prints were going to cost literally 10x as much as black and white.. [spoiler alert]I printed it in black and white[/spoiler alert]

Grand Lodge 4/5 5/55/55/55/5 **** Venture-Captain, Minnesota

I am having issues with a map for an online pbp. The maps that come with a certain module look horrible when blown up to a size where I can put minis on board.

My computer drawing skills are terrible. Part of this takes place in a mine with twisty caverns. Would it be ever okay to substitute in a flip map that is similar (but not the same) or should I just deal with fuzzy, over blown maps?

Hmm

4/5 5/55/55/55/5 ****

The amazing Jack Brown helped me with image extraction. Wow, what a difference! Thank you, Jack!

Hmm

2/5

Hey claude.

What i did to get a clean map, was go here. You can upload your PDF, and let it extract the images stored in the PDF, without the indicators on them.

Then simply print.

Liberty's Edge 4/5 5/5

GM Hmm wrote:
The amazing Jack Brown helped me with image extraction. Wow, what a difference! Thank you, Jack!

Any tips you can pass on?

Dark Archive 4/5 5/5 ****

Couple of simple tricks is all I used.

First is when you have the pdf open in reader, right click on the image, select copy image. Paste this into your favorite paint program.

If that fails you, then use something like pdfimages to extract all the images on the page you are looking at.

What you don't want to do is to just take a screenshot of the section of the page, this will cause the graininess Hmm was talking about.

Hope that helped.

Liberty's Edge 4/5 5/5

OK, good to know I was already using the 'optimal' method!

In terms of improving the blockiness of maps that are blown up significantly to get them to battlemap size, I've found a tool called SmillaEnlarger but I've barely had chance to test it out. I'd be interested to know if anyone gets good results out of it.

Shadow Lodge 3/5

2 people marked this as a favorite.

Here's a complete guide on how to extract and print maps.

1/5 5/5

Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Still can't get Consortium Compact to work...

*sigh*

Silver Crusade 4/5 5/55/55/5

Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Maps, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber
Wei Ji the Learner wrote:


Still can't get Consortium Compact to work...

*sigh*

What problem are you running into?

1/5 5/5

Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Well, I tried to take the map from the .pdf and put it into the .ink thing as the one link to a google doc suggested, but it refused to print even a small map.

When I tried to take it into the barebones picture editor on my computer, I couldn't get it to enlarge properly to get the scale of the squares right...

Silver Crusade 4/5 5/55/55/5

Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Maps, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber

Sent you a PM.

1/5 5/5

Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Terminalmancer wrote:
Sent you a PM.

Pm rec'd, replied to.

5/5

3 people marked this as a favorite.

I finally bothered to write up my own process for printing maps so I figured I'd share it.

This is my method for printing Pathfinder and Starfinder maps. This involves saving the maps as individual PDFs with the image scaling information so that they can be printed at the correct scale automatically. I normally print them spread across multiple pages, trim the edges off, and tape them together. This has also worked successfully for taking the PDF to a print service that does large format printing such as Office Depot.

Extract the image from the adventure
- Open the adventure PDF in Acrobat Reader
- Select the map
- Edit > Copy (ctrl-C)

Open IrfanView [1]
Edit > Paste
Calculate the DPI for the image
- Select a large area, lining up the edges of the selection to the grid lines on the map
- Look at the title bar to find out the number of pixels you selected
- Count the number of grid squares you selected on the map
- Divine the number of pixels by the number of grid squares. Make sure to do the calculation for both the horizontal and vertical directions as they are not always the same. This is the DPI (pixels per inch).
Update the DPI for the image
- Image > Information...
- Change the DPI from the default values and click the Change button.
- Click OK
If you only want to print part of the map you can adjust that now. I use the crop tool to cut off unnecessary edges for example.
Save the image
- File > Save as...
- Enter a file name
- Change the file type in the "Save as type" dropdown to "PDF - Portable Document Format"
- Click Save
- If an additional dialog appears, simply click Save

Print the map
- Open the PDF you created in Acrobat Reader
- File > Print...
- In the Page Sizing & Handling section click the Poster button
- Adjust any other printing settings as needed
- Click the Print button

[1] http://www.irfanview.com/ This is a freeware image viewer with some basic image editing built in as well. You can download the zip file if you don't have admin privileges to install it normally.

2/5

What I normally do is copy the image from the PDF and paste it in Windows. I then crop it into sections and use the measurement tools to expand sections till the grid lines are 1". I print out the individual sheets, measure them to be sure they are the right size and laminate them. I put each room on its own sheet and trim it down to just the room. If a room is more than 1 sheet I tape them together.

Normally, room numbers, secret doors, traps etc. doesn't copy. When it does, I trim out that section and find a similar piece in the map to replace it.
Morag

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