Cthulhu City Export Issue
JulianDracos
Mapmaker
I am exporting a Cthulhu City map. The map dimensions are 1800H and 1200W. The export dimension are 5400x3600, at 18x 12 inches at 300 DPI. I have exported plenty of files like this. However, on export, the width is 3600 but the height is reduced to 5218. I checked the map dimensions and export and they are both set correctly. The image seems all there.
Any idea why this style is reducing the height?
Comments
Check the green line entity on the MAP BORDER layer, which might be smaller than the map if you have adjusted the map extent at any point.
EDIT: If you are exporting border entities that lie outside the edge of the map, don't forget to add them into the export size calculations.
The style has a picture frame look to it. It seems the map area is just everything inside that frame. When I export at the size I want, it includes the frame. That is fine, because I like it. However, I think that is what is distorting the ratio. For some reason, it does the width correctly, but keeps reducing the height.
Unless there is some option I can change, I will have to leave it off or piece something together in GIMP exporting the map without the border and then just the border. I want to print to the edge, so having the dimensions off will have white showing.
I strongly suspect that the added picture frame distorts the height to width ratio and the export then crops any white space resulting in the image size you see. Try turning off "Crop image to aspect ratio" in the export settings and you'll probably see some white space in the export.
You can always post the map here, so we can take a look, or submit a tech support request.
Turning off crop to aspect ratio does result in white at the top and bottom. Of course I have symbols hanging over. If the picture frame is distorting the image, then I guess I will need to use GIMP to fix things.
I would try to export without the frame and see what happens.
Without the frame, the aspect ratio is correct. It only prints to map and does not even include the screen layer that I left on.
A frame will always distort the aspect ratio. CC3+ maps are measured in the actual mapping area available (well, except for a few sinful templates which extends the frame over the mapping area).
For an example, let us say you make a map in the standard size of 1000x800. That's an aspect ratio of 5:4 for the mapping area itself. Now, say the frame is a fixed width of 25. Added on all sides, it means the total size including the frame is now 1050x850, or an aspect ratio of 21:17 (or 5:4.0476, similar, but slightly different than the mapping area alone). You need to take this into account when calculating the pixel sizes for your export. (Of course, you don't need to calculate it, as you already experienced, the number wasn't what you had expected, because CC3+ corrected it)
It seems that what I really needed to do was figure out how much to adjust the map size to get the correct ratio when printed. Adding more to the dimensions still results in a distortion. Although I suppose at a point I may be able to get the 1.5 ratio I wanted.