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What's the point in Paizo offering the Interactive Map Packs with their Adventure Path line if they're so secure that I can't save the map images out of them for printing or for use in third-party programs like Roll20? I can't even right click the images to save them like I can images in other Paizo PDFs!
Does anyone have any advice on how I might be able to export the high rez maps?
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I'm a graphic designer by trade. I have the appropriate software with which to extract and chop things via conventional means.
Screenshots only get really low-rez results. Might work fine for small-scale screen usage (such as being zoomed out on Roll20), but not for printing at full-scale table size.
The lock is implemented by your PDF software. Most PDF readers won't allow you to chop up a PDF, but PDF writers and editors will. The non-techie solution using your existing software is to take a screenshot.
That simply isn't true
RD is 100% correct, they lock down their PDF interactive maps, it sucks and I hate it.
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I'm not at all sure what you're talking about here, but then again, I'm not an AP subscriber. As an only moderately adept user of computers and software, I can authoritatively say that I've never once found a PDF that cannot be cannibalized with the right software and permissions.
What products are you talking about specifically? What exactly makes the maps interactive?
When I ran Iron Gods I used the Export Page to Image function of my PDF reader to create JPGs of the maps (player view, grid on) then cropped and scaled the result to use in MapTool. That might not have been suitable for printing out for mini-scale use, though.
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Yeah ok, I understand. That makes sense and yes, the copy lock is indeed something that can't be easily bypassed.
That said, if your PDF Reader has a Snapshot tool you should be able to zoom in as far as you need, click-n-hold to drag the snapshot box to fit the whole page and then paste into other image software. Barring that, just use Print > Print as PDF and set the Custom Scale to something obscene like 400% and voila, you've extracted what you need, just be sure to have the things enabled that you want visible such as the Grid if you want it for battlemaps.
If you do the snipping trick you end up with a blurry low quality mess as it is set to the DPI values of the PDF, not the image embedded in it.
If you use the browser method, it does a horrible job in firefox and I am not sure how you would do it in chrome.
The best way I have found has been breaking Fantasyground's security or if you don't want to do that simply set your resolution to 4k-8k open the image file in fantasygrounds, right click it, set to original size and then use the clipping tool or take a screenshot before returning to your native resolution.
It won't get you a full resolution image but it is orders of magnitude better quality than the methods mentioned earlier.
I use the Adobe Creative Suite. For PDFs, that means Adobe Acrobat DC, Photoshop, InDesign, and the like.
The lock is implemented by your PDF software. Most PDF readers won't allow you to chop up a PDF, but PDF writers and editors will. The non-techie solution using your existing software is to take a screenshot.That simply isn't true
RD is 100% correct, they lock down their PDF interactive maps, it sucks and I hate it.
Yeah, it makes sense that they'd protect their normal book PDFs; they'd probably go out of business without such protections. However, I can't think of any reason for them to make the maps in a separate document (that they don't seem to charge extra for) so troublesome to use.
It just feels like they're the masters dangling the toy in front of their cats. "It's so beautiful, don't you want it? Try to get it. Oh how cute! You can't have it." I'm sure that's not what they intend, but that's how it feels to me.
Seems to me like it would be a better business model to either allow their customers to actually use the tools that they provide, or else sell the maps as a separate product at their full resolution.
Do the PDFs even actually contain full resolution, print-scale maps in the first place? I'm not sure I've ever actually seen one.
I've struggled with the same problem for years. I'm glad to be using Fantasy Grounds now, so that I don't have to worry about it, but I've never been sure how the average customer is supposed to get much use out of the interactive maps.
I can't really use the maps in FoundryVTT, so they're pretty worthless to me.*
*The pdfs themselves that is, since I frequently recreate the maps at the table/via software.
I've struggled with the same problem for years. I'm glad to be using Fantasy Grounds now, so that I don't have to worry about it, but I've never been sure how the average customer is supposed to get much use out of the interactive maps.
IIRC, the Interactive Maps, when they were introduced, were explicitly not meant for VTTs but for showing on a screen: a map for the party to look at, not a battlemap to put pawns on. At the time, I believe Paizo said people using VTTs should use the maps from the PDF.
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Extracting the maps on Linux is quite easy (use 'pdfimages'). I haven't been able to get the interactive PDFs to actually do any tricks in a PDF reader. And while the extracted images have labels removed, they're not gridless, even though the interactive PDF promises that option. I'm puzzled how it removes grid?