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Thread: Annotate a current map

  1. #1

    Question Annotate a current map

    Long time lurker, first time poster.
    Curious if anyone has found an easy/free solution to annotating a jpg? It's a particular problem of town/city maps due to information density, so I'm putting it here.

    Specifically, I have the attached lovely map of my medieval city (not my work, of course, this was the 16thC map of Kempten).
    I'd like to be able to annotate it digitally, to say "this person lives here" or "Church of Pelor" etc. in some way that's less kludgy than blowing up chunks of the map in sections, and hand-annotating numbers cross-indexed to a manual list of locations. It seems that there should be a digital solution?

    *Optimally* I'd like to
    - identify districts/neighborhoods/areas
    - post to the web (in which case it would be nice to flag some data as 'generally viewable' or 'my view only')

    I've tried umapper.com which is ok, but rather slow. I'd rather be doing the work locally, and then just upload it for dislpay/interaction, rather than working through some web UI.

    Someone must have already solved this? Thanks!
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails Click image for larger version. 

Name:	Alder_Players.jpg 
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Size:	1.17 MB 
ID:	71226  

  2. #2
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    As you say, it's dense and space is at a premium. If you don't have too many labels to add, you could do something like this:

    Click image for larger version. 

Name:	Alder_Players Annotations.jpg 
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Size:	576.0 KB 
ID:	71227

  3. #3

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    Yep, that was one of my first approaches but my goal is to eventually have nearly every building identified as to what shop it is, who lives there, or both. It's meant for a relatively dense, city-based campaign that's turning exceptionally thief-y, so the campaign focus will be mostly within the walls themselves.

  4. #4
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    There is simply not room in the map to label everything. If you are knowledgeable about interactive maps, and only need this online, you could probably make each building into a clickable spot and have a popup name for it.

    Perhaps something like this: http://public.tableausoftware.com/pr..._3/StormTracks

    made with this software: http://www.wired.com/2014/07/a-drag-...eractive-maps/

  5. #5

    Default

    It sounds like ideally you want to be able to mouse-over a building on that map, and have it highlight with the name of the building. That's possible to do as part of a webpage but I couldn't tell you how to do it. =P
    My new Deviant-thing. I finally caved.

  6. #6

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    Adobe's Fireworks is the way I usually do something like that. Essentially what you'd do is cut the map up into a grid of small images that then fit back together in a table. Each cell in the table is a link to either a web page or a pop-up. You can also have ti make roll-over replacement images, so you can do things like cause buildings to highlight when the user points at them. Fireworks will make the slices, allow you to configure the behavior, and export a web page all on its own. All you'd have to do then would be to make the target pages.

    The disadvantage is that you can only make rectangular slices. Well, that and Fireworks is Adobe software, and thus currently only available through their Creative Cloud subscription. However, if you think you can learn the software and get your job done within 30 days, you can take advantage of the trial version: https://creative.adobe.com/products/fireworks
    Bryan Ray, visual effects artist
    http://www.bryanray.name

  7. #7
    Guild Expert johnvanvliet's Avatar
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    "The Gimp" has had the same ability as fireworks since before 2001

    That is if you want to go the HTML rout

    you can create a STATIC html page for coordinates of the part on the image
    and use the "< on mouse over> " tags
    or the optional
    on mouse left
    on mouse up
    on mouse right
    on mouse down
    or code in any java script you can dream up

    BUT
    that image already has buildings NUMBERED

    remove the numbers . The heal or "resynthesizer " or the paint brush tools in gimp can do that

    then use the free program Inkescape
    to make a layer for NEW numbers and use the legend area in that original image for a listing
    or on a new" facing page"
    Last edited by johnvanvliet; 03-01-2015 at 03:31 PM.
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