Reply With QuoteCool project! The PNG compresses better because you have large areas of solid color which PNG handles more efficiently than JPG. It also won't create artifacts around the boundary lines and roads.
Matt's Tree Stands – a Real Life Map
It's deer hunting season where I live: bow season started mid-September and gun season starts the weekend before Thanksgiving.
Matt and his wife have a vacation and hunting cabin half a mile south of me (1 mile if you are driving) and Matt is an avid bow hunter.
Matt has been hunting my land for about ten years now. During bow season he always hunts from tree stands (platforms in the tree or ladder stands strapped to the tree). He currently has about sixteen stands – six on his property and ten on mine. The most of the stands have names: the Orchard Stand, the Joe Stand (where his older son prefers to hunt), the Big Elm Stand, etc.
Last week Matt hit me with a new name – he was thinking of having Jim (a friend) hunt the Tunnel Stand. Huh? What tunnel?
We really needed a map with 'official' names for all the stands. Matt loves the idea, especially since he'd get a decent map of my property.
I started at the county web site and their GIS map system – it has all the public information that you can get from the Zoning Office.
Plus it has an aerial photo overlay.
Here is the GIS map, sized for printing on 11" x 17" paper. I'm the two large parcels in the center.
Really weird texture on the woodlands.
The aerial photo was probably taken in early to mid April – the alfalfa fields have greened up, but the trees are still bare.
The woodland texture is tree shadows.
Dark tree shadows.
If you know where to look, you can see the tree, sort of...
I downloaded the highest resolution maps that I could access and stitched them together. Lots of compression artifacts in the maps, even though I downloaded them as PNG files. (Took a while with my slow internet connection.)
I used paths to outline all the important features. I really wanted to show the different types of land use for the non-woodland areas – crop land, land that was mowed to keep the man-eating multi-flora rose at bay (there's a story there), etc. I went down that rabbit hole for a while...
Here is the first version in simple topo style. The colors are from the USGS Topo map.
### Latest WIP ###
Surprisingly, the png file is much smaller than the jpg file.
The next step is to add contour lines. The contour lines on the USGS map are way off in the wooded areas – they show a smooth change going from the ridge-top field to the valleys. In reality, much of the terrain is a combination of steep slopes and shallow slopes. I'm going to have to do a lot of fiddling to get them close to correct.
Comments and suggestions are welcome.
Cool project! The PNG compresses better because you have large areas of solid color which PNG handles more efficiently than JPG. It also won't create artifacts around the boundary lines and roads.
Yes, PNG is ideally suited for this type of image. I expect it to continue to be the best format as I add the contour lines and text.
By way of contrast, the map that I downloaded from the county (first image) is 700 KB as a JPG and the same map takes 11.9 MB in PNG format. And there is no visual difference between the two images at full resolution, especially in the map area.
Got some more done.
- Added the contour lines - they're a pretty good approximation to reality now
- Added the tree stands locations and names.
### Latest WIP ###
I fought with my printer for a while (new printer and version of GIMP) and got a hard copy to show Matt.
He had some good suggestions that I'll implement today.
I also got the names and locations of the tree stands that Matt has on his property, so the next step is to add the map of his property.
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The upload manager hung twice when I tried to upload a cropped copy of this map. Arrggghhh...
What a fantastic, useful map! I really like how it's coming along.
Gidde's just zis girl, you know?
My finished maps | My deviantART gallery
My tutorials: Textured forests in GIMP, Hand-Drawn Mapping for the Artistically Challenged
Looks great! Did you do the contour lines in GIMP?
Pretty cool.
Thanks Gidde.Originally Posted by Gidde
I've wanted to do a new map of my property for a long time and this was the trigger.
I wasn't happy with the satellite imagery I'd seen, then a couple of weeks ago I found out that the county map system now includes aerial image overlays.
Suddenly, the project became very doable.
Thanks Phergu. And yes, the entire map is done in GIMP 2.8 with a mouse. And a lot of paths.
Thanks Falconius.
Latest improvements
- Added intermittent water flow areas (wash, dry stream bed, gully, etc.)
- Added the trees in the orchard. I had resisted doing this initially because it didn't fit my perception of the Topo style. I'm glad Matt requested them.
- Added two trees on the east valley while I was at it because I like looking at them from the house.
- Some further fiddling with the contour lines. My handheld GPS isn't nearly accurate enough for this, but this map meant to be a guide rather than the gospel.
### Latest WIP ###
I'm going to set this aside and start the map of Matt's property.
At least his property is a lot simpler.
Mapping Matt's property was much more straightforward - most of his land is crop land.
Here is the composite map.
It has been scaled down for printing on standard letter size paper.
Matt's property is the bottom one.
### Latest WIP ###
Matt will be using this map this weekend - big deer hunting weekend here - so I'm hoping for some more feedback.
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