maptalk.co.nz Forum   |   Links    

  Forum

Forum Home   Start New Topic   Edit Profile   Register  

1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9   10   11   12   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70  

Mapping

Show Profile  robbie Posted: 4 March 2009, 5:35 PM  
Linley As you stated the trees are not scattered. Trees grow rather fast. I agree with Michael white forest lucky you!

Show Profile  Linley Posted: 7 March 2009, 4:40 AM  
Thanks for your comments. I will use 405 as it does suit the purpose and I welcome the lucky break!

Show Profile  Selwyn Posted: 16 March 2009, 4:39 AM  
Polyester Drafting Film: I have recently imported 1000 A4 sheets of polyester drafting film from UK. This is single matt 50 micron film which I could not find in NZ. I had been told that it was last imported into NZ commercially about 8 years ago.
Most of the film we can currently buy commercially is 70 micron double matt.
This 50 micron, single matt gives a slight improvement in clarity, especially important over aerial photo images.
I saved a bit on freight because a friendly traveller brought it has "hand" luggage, thus I obtained only A4 size sheets.
Michael Wood and Peter Bakos have tried using sample sheets and seem happy that it works with their ballpoint pen mapping. I use mechanical pencils and the film works well.
I am happy to sell much of this supply on to mappers who want it.
I can sell for 50c per sheet. Comes in packs of 100 sheets, but I can sell less than 100 sheets. If you want it posted that's an extra $2.00, or you can arrange to collect it at the Nationals.
Selwyn Palmer. (Contact details are on the 2009 Nationals web site.)

Show Profile  Selwyn Posted: 16 March 2009, 4:44 AM  
Rev Linley's "scattered trees", I agree with others that 405 is a better symbol. The scattered trees symbols are not good for map readability, especially if the area is small.

Show Profile  Michael Posted: 27 March 2009, 8:51 AM  
WOC and OHV use a gray version of symbol 527.1 for urban areas (thin gray stripes). Our printer doesn't render it too well, with intensity coming and going across the page, effectively we get light and dark stripes. Probably an interaction between the spacing and dot spacing on the machine. Strangely it can be OK on a cheap home printer.

Anyone else get this with a stripy symbol? Any solutions?

Show Profile  The Map Guy Posted: 27 March 2009, 9:25 AM  
I remember this happening a number of years ago when we first started using laser copied maps - in this case it was green stripe. The printer at the time was Visual Impact in Invercargill. I seem to recall the "solution" was to increase the gaps between the lines. Roger Bee may have a better memory than me.

You could try a different printer (model) - not all printers print the same.

Show Profile  Michael Posted: 30 March 2009, 1:34 PM  
Thanks Map Guy. Pursuing your hint, the maps I've had trouble with were printed at 1:15,000. Maps at 1:10,000 have the line spacing 50% larger and I surmise that this gets above the problem level for the printer. Maybe in the days of Visual Impact (is he still printing for you SOC?) we were doing more 1:15,000 prints and/or the machine resolution wasn't so good.

Now that we've started to put park maps on the web in pdf form, I've been experimenting with using pdf's (rather than eps's) to send our maps to the printer. It seems to make little difference. The banding of stripey symbols is still there, though the bands are in different places! I can't detect any difference in the way that colours come out. Would appreciate any comment about pdf's vs eps's before changing something that OCAD seemed to favour, and which has worked for me for 15 years.

Show Profile  Greg Posted: 30 March 2009, 1:44 PM  
For sending to a printer, apparently (according to Claire the freelance graphic designer www.clairepaterson.co.nz ) there should not be any difference if you send a pdf or a eps, the only thing being a eps could be edited where a pdf cant.

Show Profile  Michael Posted: 30 March 2009, 3:22 PM  
Thanks Greg and Claire. But just on a hunch I had a look at what you can import to OCAD and in version 9 you can import a pdf and edit it!!! I always thought a pdf couldn't be changed. Well except by hacker-type experts.

Even if not many people outside the orienteering fraternity will have OCAD version 9, it calls into question making maps available as pdfs. I don't think we want to give away something that can be changed. If it can be changed by OCAD then maybe by other software?

Show Profile  mick finn Posted: 30 March 2009, 3:33 PM  
PDFs can be edited if you have Acrobat Professional but it's not practical editing, you can replace text or delete bits but you can't redraw them. You can also import them into illustrator as you can an eps (same file structure postscript ps) and edit in that but it gets messy with lots of grouped vectors, particularly the contours which aren't on separate layers etc. Jpegs are the best way to remove any editability albeit giving you much larger files.

Show Profile  Michael Posted: 30 March 2009, 4:34 PM  
Based on that I tried some serious editing of a pdf in OCAD. Yes you wouldn't call it practical editing, the objects are not assigned to OCAD symbols, every dash of a dashed line is a separate object, each tick of a fence ditto, distinctive trees are just circular green lines, text is a black object in the shape of letters etc. HOWEVER it may be quite easy to for example remove the club's logo and that legal wording we're fine-tuning. Hmmm.

Show Profile  Norm Posted: 30 March 2009, 4:50 PM  
There are PDFs and PDFs...
A number of word processors for example may let you make a pdf file. eg there is an add-in for Microsoft Office 2007, which lets you save as a pdf.

However if you make a file in some piece of software, say Word, but then "print" it, using Adobe Acrobat 9, then the author has at the time of making the pdf file, a number of security options that can be incorporated into the pdf.

These can be:
A password to enable someone to even be able to open the file;
Specifying what others can do with your file, such as copying, printing resolution, commenting, or editing.

You can have a play and try it out - download a free 30-day trial of Adobe Acrobat 9 Professional from https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/tdrc/index.cfm?loc=en&product=acrobat_pro

Then, take a file in say OCAD, Choose "Print" - (using Adobe PDF), change the pdf properties/settings, email it to yourself, and see what you then can and (more importantly!) can't do with the file.

Viewing a low resolution pdf on a monitor at 72 dpi will look fine, but if you print the map on paper to use it out in the big wide world, it will look rubbish.


Show Profile  Claire Paterson Posted: 31 March 2009, 12:45 PM  
Just to be clear, when Greg asked me quickly the difference between the two files (eps and pdf), and I replied briefly, he got me slightly wrong. Yes, pdfs are still editable, but as discussed above, not as easily as an eps. I work with both files regularly, but not with OCAD, rather with adobe illustrator.

In a design capacity, an eps is saved as file that will be edited again at a later date, whereas i would only save a pdf to send a proof to a client or to send to a printer. In both cases I usually go through all the options carefully, for example unchecking the editable part so that it basically 'flattens' the file, discarding layer information etc (as I understand). By doing this it is vertially impossible to successfully edit the file. I also save as screen resolution (72dpi) for sending to a client so that it will not print well, and is just for them to view on screen to check. Most printing should be done at high resolution (300dpi).

I dont know if this has helped at all, I see Norm and Mick also said similar things... But basically, if you provide a low resolution pdf online, and save it the right way with certain options disabled, it will not be able to printed successfully so it should be pretty safe from editing. In saying that, Mick mentioned jpegs - if you have a good image compressing program such as photoshop or fireworks, you can decrease the size of a jpeg significantly without decreasing the on-screen clarity (again - it will print pretty badly).

Show Profile  The Map Guy Posted: 31 March 2009, 5:16 PM  
I agree with what Claire has written above. I have used OCAD in conjunction with Adobe Illustrator. AI is used to add high resolution photographs on maps. It is possible to add small graphic images and print them from your home printer, but with larger images they don't print. If you are not using Adobe Illustrator you can print the map plus graphics from a EPS or PDF file exported from OCAD (versions 9 or 10). OCAD8 only allows EPS.

Graphic images are embedded into the EPS or PDF files. OCAD9 prints better than OCAD8 when it comes to printing graphic images, especially if they have gradient screens in them. Well, that is my experience off-set printing (using CMYK colours).

It is far easier/quicker to edit the files in OCAD then re-export them as EPS or PDF than trying to do it from Adobe Illustrator.

When it comes to exporting JPEG images from OCAD, although you may specify 300dpi, they are NOT when imported into AI - they are 72dpi. I have found that importing the alleged 300dpi image into other graphic manipulation software (I use the one which came with my scanner, but I expect PhotoShop will do it) then re-saving it at 300dpi it seems to work OK. The file size increases markedly on the re-save which reflects the higher resolution image.

BTW I have just had a map off-set printed for the 2009 Oxfam Trailwalker. It was printed using CMYK colours - not the conventional spot colours. The contours are great - if there are any problems on the map they are my making, not the printer. Not sure why the IOF has a hangup about CMYK printing as the modern printers are great at registration these days. I have had many maps off-set printed using CMYK process in the last 5 years (not all have contours but coloured text which must have accurate registration). All maps have been fantastic. I have used both EPS and PDF files which I have given to the printer. Many printers prefer PDF files to print from.

If you ever do any off-set printing using the CMYK process, cover your back in writing by specifying accurate registration, because if one or more colours is out the result is disasterous.

Show Profile  Michael Posted: 31 March 2009, 6:06 PM  
Thanks for all this about pdf's. It seems that we may need Acrobat Professional - but that this would help with two issues.

A little while ago I was wanting to make maps look good on the screen but bad on paper. Then we decided that we wanted SOME maps to be downloaded specifically for printing, so we've been following down that track. However in neither case do we want the map to be edited. You're saying the Acrobat Prof will give us that control.

There's just one more thing (isn't there always?) A teacher who downloads one of our (edit-protected) maps is going to want to put some circles on the map. Hmmm.


1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9   10   11   12   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70  


Ruffneck Productions © Ruffneck Productions maptalk.co.nz