Converting GIS Data to Map for Editing

[Beleriphon]

Does anybody have any good thoughts on actually converting GIS data to an editable format? I'm currently working from GIMP.

The website I'm pulling from is: http://www.county.peterborough.on.ca...mation-systems

My main thought is I want to use the basic river system layout, and I'd prefer it to be accurate, for a D&D game that I'm working on. I've grabbed a few other maps from photocopies and tried scanning them but they never end up quite right. I'm attempting to change the look of the map into a more old hand drawn style using a few of the tutorials here. Biggest issue seems to be getting the image in an easily usable format.

Edit: The rough scale I'm looking for is around 1:120000, which is enough detail for what I want to show.

[snodsy]

Hopefully someone else with more experience might help, but this is what I know, I use QGIS to imports shape files, then can save them out as dwg then open in My vector program, Adobe illustrator. Hope that might help, QGIS is free

[johnvanvliet]

this is a biggie so....
What format is the data in ?????
as in what is the file extension ?

for almost ALL formats you will need GDAL or a gui like Qgis


ArcGis is the most used program and most common format ( think of it as the Adobe of GIS software)

and gis image data is 16 bit signed ( -32767 to +32768 ) or 32 bit floating point normally in Meters height

or

if it is not topography ( height data) it is SVG vector data

gimp 2.8 is ONLY a 8 bit /layer program but can import SVG
for 16 bit and 32 bit data the DEVELOPMENT gimp 2.9.2 is needed

[Beleriphon]

As far as I know its not straight GIS data from the topography/survey data. I can probably grab it as an SVG file without too much trouble, the site I'm pulling from allows export as a variety of formats include PNG and TIFF. My main concern is that I can get the raw GIS data which might be more usable for my purposes. If I can get free software to at least import GIS data then that would be perfect. I just had no idea such a thing existed.

[Azélor]

Biggest issue seems to be getting the image in an easily usable format.

And what format(s) are you looking for?

[AzurePlanet]

@ Beleriphon

I had a look at the County of Peterborough GIS website.
As far as I can see, It does not allow to download "raw" GIS data (vector, raster, tables), but it only allow to print pdf files or download low quality images.
By the way, I think you could get a pdf file and then open it in GIMP. I have used this method many other times.

[Beleriphon]

@ Beleriphon

I had a look at the County of Peterborough GIS website.
As far as I can see, It does not allow to download "raw" GIS data (vector, raster, tables), but it only allow to print pdf files or download low quality images.
By the way, I think you could get a pdf file and then open it in GIMP. I have used this method many other times.

You are a scholar and a gentleman. That's perfect. I hadn't even realized that GIMP opened PDF files.