Hiya
Just wondered if anyone knows any good ways to edit the maps from Paizo's online suppliments. Mostly, I'm talking about easy ways to add player markers from play by post gaming, and how to remove rooms from these maps, such as room V3 from the Vanderboren Vault...
Any help would be great.
Cheers
Chris
Well, to speed things up, what imaging editing software do you have available? Photoshop? Paint Shop Pro? MS Paint? And will you be editing them on a Mac or PC?
Well, to speed things up, what imaging editing software do you have available? Photoshop? Paint Shop Pro? MS Paint? And will you be editing them on a Mac or PC?
Well, my laptop only has MS Paint, and I'm working Windows, so PC. I do, however, have IrfanView, if that helps.
Gimp is free and does everything I need to do for maps... and far superior to mspaint.
http://www.gimp.org/
Has anybody used Paint.Net? My resident expert says this is less flakey on Windows but still gets the job done. I'm dl'ing now.
Use MapTool. It allows you to export screen captures. The only hurdle is finding a method to bring the image from Adobe Reader to an image file. That can be done by selecting the area on the page, copying the area, and pasting it in any image manipulation program. One that is done, you can import the image into MapTool and place tokens anywhere you'd like. Export screen captures at each move.
Note that MapTool also has area of effect overlays for spells and effects.
Okay, without downloading any new software (and you really should get new software), here's what you can do.
1) Open the PDF with the map you want to use. Magnify on the area you want to use so that it's the scale you want the final map to be.
2) Hit the "Print Screen" button (top row near the numeric keypad).
3) Open MS Paint and paste your screen shot (Ctrl-V). It'll ask if you want the bitmap enlarged; click "Yes".
4) Use the selection tool (the dashed square) to select the parts of the map you want to keep (I doubt you'll want the PDF reader toolbars in your final image) and copy it (Ctrl-C).
5) Create a new document (Ctrl-N) and paste what you just copied (Ctrl-V).
6) From here, you can use the various tools in the program to edit the image. Again, you'd be better off from the start getting a better piece of software, but this'll work for the time being.
This may sound like an odd solution, but I was in kind of the same boat as you (looking for a simple way to add markers to PDF maps and add markers for the PCs) and I ended up using Google Earth!
Step 1: Convert PDF to something like JPG format.
Step 2: Open Google Earth and zoom in to a relatively flat spot; I like to choose the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
Step 3: Add the JPG as an overlay to the world map.
Step 4: Zoom in to the part of the map you're interested in.
Step 5: Add Placemarks to represent the PCs, monsters or other items of interest.
Step 6: Once the map looks about right, go to Save As.. and export it as a JPG again.
Step 7: Open up the JPG with Gimp (or MS Paint or whatever) and black out the stuff you don't want the PCs to see.
Step 8: When the PCs move, fire up Google Earth again and move around the Placemarks to produce a new map.
The results aren't perfect, but it's the easiest thing I've found so far and all of the components are free.
Hiya all
Well, I tried out many options, and I must say, that I think MapTool is brilliant. Thanks for all the other suggestions.
However, the problem with MapTool is that maps like the one for the Blue Nixie are tricky, and it's hard to recreate them. Also, are there any other tokens than those like elf and hero?
Cheers
Chris
Also, are there any other tokens than those like elf and hero?
On the RPTools main page, they've got another utility that lets you create your own tokens.