I have a very large map to start a project with. How do you go about merging the multiple scans to form one large map?
Thus spake gw15 via messages:
I have a very large map to start a project with. How do you go about
merging the multiple scans to form one large map?
Use Hugin for merging scans.
hugin.sourceforge.net/tutorials/scans/en.shtml
–
J.
thanks.
I am scanning in my map but the images are like 5mb each for .pdf or 40mb for .jpeg. How do I reduce the size?
How many dots per inch are you scanning at?
I scan most of mine at around 200.
Also, you can lower the number of different colors in the jpg file.
Thus spake gw15 via messages:
thanks.
I am scanning in my map but the images are like 5mb each for .pdf or
40mb for .jpeg. How do I reduce the size?
Do you need to?
I’d be more concerned about image quality. Scans are typically rather
noisy, which is what accounts for their large size. If your maps are
line art as most game maps are, then there will be a lot of areas on the
map which are intended to be a single solid color but which have small
variations in color in your scans. If you clean those up by making them
a solid color again (and then save your map as a PNG), you’ll improve
the apearance of the map and reduce the file size dramatically at the
same time—but it could be a fair bit of work to do.
–
J.
I first scanned at 300dpi and saved as .pdf and it was 5mb. When I zoomed in one notch it looked funny. Then I scanned in 600dpi under .pdf and it didn’t really improve the zoomed in look. I tried scanning as .jpeg and the size went to 40mb.
But your comment “do you need to?” - do I need to not worry about the map memory size?
Maybe I’m approaching this wrong. I really don’t need to zoom in on this map. I mean that wasn’t my plan. I thought I would just scan and then connect the multiple scans (maybe 10 of them) together for a large map. If the scan image looks fine without zoom then it should look fine in the game???
What is an acceptable memory size for a large map? 1mb, 5mb, 50mb???
Is there anyway to convert a .jpeg 50mb image into maybe a 1mb image? easily…
BTW - the module I want to create with is the 1967 game ‘Confrontation’. You can find it at BGG and see a picture of the map.
I “stitched” 2 images together! scanned them in, used GIMP to convert to .jpeg, used Windows Photo shop to reduce memory of each image, then used Hugin to stitch the 2 images together. Thanks for the help!
Because my map is so large I will have to stitch 12 scans together.
Decreasing the DPI on a scan can actually result in a better image, rather than increasing the DPI. I found this out when scanning an SPI map from 1980. They did not print the map at that high of DPI, so when I choose 300 DPI I get an image that has lots of yellowish dots with white space rather then a smooth yellowish back ground. Scanning at 150 DPI produced a much smoother yellowish background and a smaller file size to boot. Helps to scan it directly to .png rather then any other format.
With GIMP I can usually reduce a .png by a factor of 2x-5x.
Thus spake combatengineer:
Decreasing the DPI on a scan can actually result in a better image,
rather than increasing the DPI. I found this out when scanning an SPI
map from 1980. They did not print the map at that high of DPI, so when I
choose 300 DPI I get an image that has lots of yellowish dots with white
space rather then a smooth yellowish back ground. Scanning at 150 DPI
produced a much smoother yellowish background and a smaller file size to
boot. Helps to scan it directly to .png rather then any other format.
This is because you’re scanning at a higher DPI than the map was printed
by the 4-color press which made it. If you can see individual dots in your
scan, then you’ve gone beyone scanning the map to scanning the physical
features of the paper and ink.
With GIMP I can usually reduce a .png by a factor of 2x-5x.
You can often dramatically reduce the file size of a PNG without
reducing the quality using a PNG optimizer like optipng.
–
J.