Printing maps from PDF?
Royal Scribe
🖼️ 372 images Mapmaker
I am trying to send my Game Master a PDF of one of my maps with a 5' grid, formatted so that each 5-foot-grid equals one inch on the paper. As the map is larger than what can fit on standard Letter-size, it will have to be printed in multiple sheets that can then be taped together.
I read and followed the instructions from CA31 Print and Export (2009), supplemented with info from CA21 Battle Maps (2008), along with info from blog posts of June 30, 2024, July 31, 2024, and March 19, 2020.
I was able to print to PDF, scaled properly so that a 5' grid = 1 inch on paper, formatted for Letter-sized paper. (Per the suggestion in CA21, I set the gridlines to be solid with a 0.25 width, and they show up nicely on the printouts.) The problem is that because the paper is 8.5 x 11 inches, I got 11 grids going the long way, but then 8-and-a-half grids going to narrower way. I think it would be cleaner to do 8x10, so there are no half-grids on the tiles, and there is sufficient white space around the edges to account for printers being unable to print all the way to the edge.
Fortunately, there are tons of different formats available for printing to PDF, including 8x10. However, when I try to print an 8x10 tile onto an 8.5x11 sheet of paper, my printer refuses to print it from the main tray (despite setting it to do so in the settings) and insists on printing from the rear feeder -- and then when I put 8.5x11 paper in the rear feeder, it makes the image start at the edge of the paper even though it can print there, so part of a grid gets cut off. This may be a quirk specific to my home printer, but if my printer is struggling with it, others I send my maps to may have the same problem.
My ideal solution would be to have it render 8x10 tiles centered on an 8.5x11 PDF page. I don't know if that's possible through CC3?
Another alternative I haven't tried yet would use Save As, and then select Rectangular Section JPEG (or PNG) to create 8x10 chunks (40 x 50 map units) bitmap image files, and then drop those tiles into some sort of desktop publishing software set at 8.5x11 pages. I just don't want the image quality to degrade too much if I do it that way. I will try it, but wanted to see if there were other ways of getting there directly through CC3.
Thank you!
Best Answers
-
Wyvern
🖼️ 264 images Cartographer
I haven't done a lot of printing to true scale like this. However, when doing test prints of any map, I simply save it as a rectangular section .JPG, then transfer that image to MS Publisher (albeit not for much longer, as MS is to withdraw support and cease the program shortly...), because there, I can set the image up exactly where I want it, at exactly the size I need, on whatever paper size I want. That can then be printed directly, or printed to a PDF, or saved whatever other way seems best.
The main reason I do this is because I've had horrendous problems trying to print directly from CC3 and CC3+ in the past, with fills printing weirdly, or with odd colours, etc.
If you want to try this, save the entire map as a .JPG at the exact size you need the full map to be when printed out, and leave the cutting-up into pages till you have it in a program where you can do that more easily - or the GM can, if that may be better (in case their printer doesn't like the PDFs you've prepared). As Don said, bleeping printers!
-
roflo1
🖼️ 3 images Surveyor
The croppping/slicing also works. And you can do both things in one go, at least with a new version of ImageMagick:
magick Greengulf_WIP.JPG -crop 800x1100 +repage -units PixelsPerInch -density 100 -page 850x1100 output.pdf
(note that I switched too 100 dpi for this example -because I was being lazy-, so the page size was adjusted accordingly)
And this is the result (I maximized the thumbnail panel and minimized the page display for this screenshot just because it looks better here in the forum).
And all pages are 8.5x11 inches as needed.
EDIT: If you own Annual Issue 129, you should be able to create your own copy of
tile10x10.scrandtile.cmd, and tweak your copies to do everything from within CC3+.
Answers
I bleeping hate printers.
Different programs have varied print systems. Trying a different program may help.
Sometimes I use Paint.
Using some parameters you can get "print to actual size" That may help.
Some printers also have their own software suites. Those may include different options.
One more route to go is finding a print only app from like google store.
Have you tried to right click the file and select print from there? Alwasy start with the most basic print and work through all the different programs. Like your normal PDF program, then a graphics program, then software suites. Also "I love PDF" has a crop pdf function that may help.
I haven't done a lot of printing to true scale like this. However, when doing test prints of any map, I simply save it as a rectangular section .JPG, then transfer that image to MS Publisher (albeit not for much longer, as MS is to withdraw support and cease the program shortly...), because there, I can set the image up exactly where I want it, at exactly the size I need, on whatever paper size I want. That can then be printed directly, or printed to a PDF, or saved whatever other way seems best.
The main reason I do this is because I've had horrendous problems trying to print directly from CC3 and CC3+ in the past, with fills printing weirdly, or with odd colours, etc.
If you want to try this, save the entire map as a .JPG at the exact size you need the full map to be when printed out, and leave the cutting-up into pages till you have it in a program where you can do that more easily - or the GM can, if that may be better (in case their printer doesn't like the PDFs you've prepared). As Don said, bleeping printers!
I did exactly as @Wyvern suggested -- dropping it into MS Publisher and then saving it as a PDF -- though I did so before seeing his recommendation. It worked just fine. I was worried that my image would resize when I pasted it in, but the printed page is indeed 1 square inch per grid.
I wonder what will happen to my version of MS Publisher when they discontinue it. I get it through my work, but I don't think we have Office as a software-as-a-service thing, so I think it may just stick around on my hard drive? I used to be pretty proficient with PageMaker and QuarkXPress, but these days tend to use MS PowerPoint of all things for simple layout stuff. I suppose I could get the hang of any desktop publishing software if I have to switch to something else.
not sure if what i do on my mac will work in windows but i load the image into my browser ( safari ) , go to print and there is an option to scale the image and printout as pdf this then gives me a poster print of my image , i save this as a pdf and then see if it is big enough for my needs , if not then rescale the %
Rob
Hi,
My take on this is that is too complicated. Below is the print menu.
OK from the top; 1) select the correct printer. Since you were sending a PDF to the GM select a PDF printer.
2) "View to Print" - select "everything"
3) "Sheet" - make sure "Standard CC3+" is selected.
4) "Scaling" - select "Scale Factor". for "Paper Distance" put in 1", for "Drawing distance" put in 5'. {Mine is in metric.)
5) "Tiling" - put in the overlap %, 5% seems to work well, YMMV. The # Horiz and # Vert are the number of sheets you want to print, not necessarily the whole map. The scale selected will control what is printed starting in the center of the map.
6) select the oriantation of the paper.
7} select "Preview" to see what the output will look like. This may be an iterative process till you get what you want.
Sample below; (note, this is the output from the above menu.)
Questions?
So far as I understand it, if you have an MS Office 365 sub, Publisher will cease working in October this year (I think - can't actually recall the exact date now). If you have Publisher on a computer that isn't connected to the Internet (so it was purchased years ago, probably on a disk of some kind - 3.5" floppy or CD-ROM), you should be fine.
I checked around earlier this year when this was first announced, and it seems that the free Libre Office suite (essentially the free equivalent to MS Office) will still open MS Publisher files. I haven't had time to install and check this as yet, but I know the earlier version of their MS Word-equivalent worked fine, and would open MS Word documents, although MS Word (of course...) won't open their files.
I like Publisher because it's so easy to resize the physical page size to fit whatever you're creating exactly - so it's really easy to create and save images, including images drawn in Publisher, to a very precise size. I know you can do this in other programs as well, but I've been using Publisher for decades, so it's much easier that way. I used to create all my maps and diagrams using it 20+ years ago, including for print publications!
In my map making, which sometimes requires large maps, I have been known to use everything from 8.5 x 11 up to 13 x 19 inches, with and without overlapping. Sometimes I may do the map in several different sizes Hexes as a method to provide less clutter on the map with unit pieces. I also do something sort of weird with the Fit to Page or Scale Factor. Frequently, I make map hexes where 1 hex is 1 km along the verticle axis, the same as a 1:50,000 map sheet, but I have also done 1:100,000 maps, and occasionally 1:250,000 maps.
I'll drop my $0.02 here...
I use Scribus for this.
Following your requirements, I'd export a raster image with the 8x10 area to the edge. Then set up a page in Scribus for a 8.5x11 sized page. Insert an image frame sized 8x10 and center it. Import the image to the frame and make sure the image is scaled to the frame. Then I export to PDF.
I will try that and see how it goes.
I like being able to print tiles to PDFs because you can do the entire map all at once. Creating 8x10 tile JPGs or PNGs one tile at a time is hard. For a default map of 1000x800, you'd need 400 tiles if you wanted to keep it to 1 inch print = 5 feet. It's slow enough printing that to PDF, but to have to do that in 40x50 chunks is a nightmare!
But the weird wrinkle with printing to PDF is that unlike Save as JPEG/PNG, the printing doesn't seem to respect the map borders. If you have fills or symbols that push off the edge of the map, it will include the portions outside of the map border.
Am I doing it wrong? Is there a way to get the Print to PDF to limit it to the map border? Alternately, is there a way of saving to JPG or PNG that tiles the map in 8x10 chunks?
I think I found a good approach.
So helpful with larger maps, like a town where you never know where the battle may go.
If you're comfortable with using the terminal/command line, and don't mind having all the pages in a single PDF... I'm honing towards a way to simplify step 3 (especially since CC3 already installs ImageMagick):
However... it doesn't respect the page size. Maybe with a newer version of ImageMagick?
Sorry if his is half-baked advice, but if I wait to have it fully tested, I might not ever send this. 😅
And apparently, you can also use ImageMagick instead of your step 2. Haven't tried it, but for the newer versions (which use
magick.exeinstead ofconvert.exe) it's something along these lines:(the
%02dpart makes sure all resulting images are numbered using two digits)I'm going to be watching where this goes.
Yeah... I couldn't let it go. 😂
Here's the fix:
Basically, at 300 dpi, an 8.5 x 11 page results in 2550x3300 pixels. So instead of declaring "letter" I used those dimensions. Apparently letter is equal to "
612x792".The croppping/slicing also works. And you can do both things in one go, at least with a new version of ImageMagick:
(note that I switched too 100 dpi for this example -because I was being lazy-, so the page size was adjusted accordingly)
And this is the result (I maximized the thumbnail panel and minimized the page display for this screenshot just because it looks better here in the forum).
And all pages are 8.5x11 inches as needed.
EDIT: If you own Annual Issue 129, you should be able to create your own copy of
tile10x10.scrandtile.cmd, and tweak your copies to do everything from within CC3+.I admit that much of what @roflo1 says here went waaaaay over my head. I keep coming back to study it, but it's still pretty advanced for me.
I do have CA129, and I have succeeded in exporting large files with tile5x5.scr and stitched them back together automagically. Works like a charm! I have not yet attempted it with the tile.scr but it looks like it will be able to help me with at least part of what I want to do.
I am trying to export for use both with a VTT as well as printable battlemaps. For the latter, I am going with tiles that are 40x40 map units, or 8x8 inches on paper. Is there a script that does this export, but also leaves the exported tiles intact (unstitched) so they can be used as printable battlemaps? (I just checked my Recycle Bin to see if ImageMagick deletes them to there, but I don't see them.) My workaround has been to export at a 300 dpi and then run the stitched-together file through Imagy.app's Split Image utility. It seems to be getting the job done but would save me a step if I could keep the unstitched tile.scr exports.
Thank you!
Is there a script that does this export, but also leaves the exported tiles intact (unstitched) so they can be used as printable battlemaps?
You can just edit the tile.cmd in the annual folder. Just comment out line 56, and tiles won't be deleted afterwards. You can also skip the stitching altogether by commenting out line 50.
Just make sure to delete the tiles manually if you do this, or they will interfere with the next export.