Scanning your own maps

[steveG]

Anyone know what the copyright situation is with scanning a paper map you own for use in your GPS. Are you technically not allowed to?

Made a hour's round trip to Officeworks yesterday to scan a map I wanted for this weekend (after calling them to confirm they had a large scanner) only to be told at the counter that they can't scan anything with Copyright on it.

Wouldn't have minded so much if they had told me that on the phone when I called. I could have better used the wasted hour of traveling stitching it together from my A4 scanner, or turned up with a slightly smaller map :angel:

Steve

[austastar]

Hi,
A4 scans are not a drama, Ozi will stitch them together for you.

Before you start, sort out where the borders will be roughly, and put a pinprick and lightly pencil in label on a known grid reference point for each corner of each scan.

That will make calibrating the map easier.

Photoshop or some of the stitching programs should also do the whole thing for you I suspect, but you will have to calibrate the final image when you import it into Ozi

cheers

[FeatherWeightDriver]

Anyone know what the copyright situation is with scanning a paper map you own for use in your GPS. Are you technically not allowed to?

Copyright does not apply to you scanning your own maps for your own personal use.

But OfficeWorks is covering their asses as they don't know who's map it is and/or what you plan to do with the digital copy.

Then again, if you scan it and distribute that would be your problem not theirs...

[steveG]

Hi,
A4 scans are not a drama, Ozi will stitch them together for you.

Before you start, sort out where the borders will be roughly, and put a pinprick and lightly pencil in label on a known grid reference point for each corner of each scan.

That will make calibrating the map easier.

Photoshop or some of the stitching programs should also do the whole thing for you I suspect, but you will have to calibrate the final image when you import it into Ozi

cheers

Thanks. I scanned, merged in Photoshop (actually my daughter did that bit) then calibrated the final large map and converted them to ozf4.
Scanning both sides of a full sized map, stitching them together, calibrating then getting them to work on my Samsung tablet took the best part of 4 hours when we did it the other night :(
Maybe calibrating the original scans as you suggest then using Ozi mapmerge might have been better.

Issues I had were:
- Trying to keep the map flat at the edges of the scanner bed (glass is slightly recessed on this scanner) to avoid shadowing
- if the map happens to move slightly you need also to rotate the image slightly in Photoshop
- version issues between the maps produced and the Ozi I was running on the tablet took me a while to work out - just got a generic "failed to load map" error.

If it was simply a case of buying the electronic version of a map I definitely would as I find it a complete PITA to scan in parts.
Unfortunately this is one of the "Rooftops" maps, and while they used to be available on CD they aren't any longer.
I've just put an ad in the wanted section to see if I can get onto some.

Need to find someone friendly who has a large scanner. Even A3 would reduce the number of images to manage.

Steve

[isuzutoo-eh]

Your local library might have an A3 scanner?

[steveG]

Your local library might have an A3 scanner?

Unfortunately not. Not even an A4 one :(

Steve

[austastar]

Unfortunately this is one of the "Rooftops" maps, and while they used to be available on CD they aren't any longer.

Hi,
Yep, Visa card beside my 'puta, I searched and searched for a digital version of the Rooftop maps we were using on our last mainland trip.
Very impressed with the paper ones, which we could buy in local newsagents, but it seems they didn't want the $$ I was willing to spend on digital versions.

cheers

[Tombie]

What map? I likely have them here already in digital...

[steveG]

What map? I likely have them here already in digital...

The one I was scanning for the weekend was the "Big River-Rubicon-Woods Point Forest activities map". Would definitely love to get a electronic version of that one for starters, but will be keeping my eye out for any others I can get hold of.

Needed the map as I did the "Pajero Challenge" 24hr nav event up there on the weekend with my youngest daughter as navigator.
Had a ball and didn't kill each other so it was a great weekend !!

While researching whether they were still available I came across a post in another forum saying the CD versions were no longer being produced due to an issue with a well known GPS provider using the maps without permission, and in response the author was no longer offering them in electronic format. No idea whether there is any truth to that statement though.
Whatever the reason, its a PITA.

Steve

[frostyblue]

Steve, I have 1:50.000 topo maps on cd for the entire state of victoria, very detailed and ozi explorer ready, would this perhaps be what you need as I have nsw covered as well and have used them so I know they are great to use in ozi, pm me if you are interested in a copy, more than happy to throw them on a cd and post them down to you via a mailer

cheers
ken

[Utemad]

It has been years since I've stitched a map together but I used to have a program that did it for you.
You just had to open the program and scan the map in segments. This usually amounted to 9 scans for my maps. During the scanning you told the program what went where.
Then you clicked auto stitch and the program rotated the individual images to suit and gave you a flawless map.

It gave a much faster and better looking result than Photoshop ever did.

I stopped doing it when I started working at a place that had a scanner that could do a full map in one go.