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Geordie21 (34 posts)
Aug-23-01, 08:30 PM (EST) "fao eveningstar, branchline, railrichart and UK others" Ive been trying to follow the walkthrough that you have all been working on recently, but ive got a problem.
I have a 1:25000 os map, and i needed to scan much of this in order to continue, as im sure you are aware.
When i scanned various sections of the map using my A4 scanner, they were huge. Even when saved as 256 colours, each A4 area takes about 14mb. This is on 400 dpi.
I had problems trying to cut and paste, so i used Adobe photoshop. I managed to piece them together fairly easily, but the resultant file is a not-so-small 255.3mb in .psd format, the standard photoshop format.
I also saved the completed map as a .bmp file so that i could continue with your instructions, but when i try to open the file it says it can't, - moreover it can't open any of these large .bmp files.
Ideally, I need advice on how to convert the file i have saved in photoshop to a bmp file so that it can open. If not, fair enough. But what is the alternative? What program did you guys use, and how do you make the .bmp files smaller and more manageable?
Any help would be great, im still having a mare!
Cheers
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Subject Author Message Date ID RE: fao eveningstar, branchline, ra... branchline Aug-24-01 1 RE: fao eveningstar, branchline, ra... Geordie21 Aug-24-01 2 RE: fao eveningstar, branchline, ra... eveningstar Aug-24-01 3 RE: fao eveningstar, branchline, ra... eveningstar Aug-24-01 4 RE: fao eveningstar, branchline, ra... branchline Aug-25-01 5 RE: fao eveningstar, branchline, ra... Geordie21 Aug-25-01 6

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branchline (14 posts)
Aug-24-01, 04:18 PM (EST) 1. "RE: fao eveningstar, branchline, railrichart and UK others" I think I may have the answer for you. Last night I was finishing creating the dems using the tutorial by eveningstar when I realised it would be nice to see some areas of my route at the extremes of my original scan. Rather than paste a new section to an already large 256 .bmp file I decided to scan to the same resolution, scale ect, a new section that butts up to the bottom of my route. The reason for doing this was that below Twyford the terrain is fairly flat at 30 meters or so. I had a cliff that descended to 0 meters just past Twyford that could be seen. Anyway I scanned the map, checked that the image was at the same scale, i.e. printed them out at same size and put them together to check. Re-registered the map using new co-ordinates within Microdem. Then rather than creating a new XYZ file I appended the old one used for the other parts of the route. Because there was an overlap I could see the old contours marked and where they finished. I simply completed the new areas in the normal way. It works a treat.It would appear that because the file is simply a txt one that you can add to it very easily. I guess you could also just append another file created as long as points don't cross each other. Any way have a go. Back up your old XYZ file first in case you make a mess of it.Ray (Branchline) Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
Geordie21 (34 posts)
Aug-24-01, 04:56 PM (EST) 2. "RE: fao eveningstar, branchline, railrichart and UK others" thanks branchline. just to confirm, what you are saying is to scan each section of the map as an A4, then convert them individually into .xyz files, and paste them all together while in xyz format. What do i use to paste them together in xyz format? have i understood you correctly?
ps sorry i seem a bit daft at the minute! - i badly damaged my back playing football on thursday night and im drugged up to the eyeballs as a result so the old brain doesnt seem to work properly! Thanks for all your help.
Geordie Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
eveningstar (29 posts)
Aug-24-01, 05:20 PM (EST) 3. "RE: fao eveningstar, branchline, railrichart and UK others" Geordie,Perhaps I'm not being adventurous enough! but my colour scan is of a 7x10 mile area from a 1:50000 map scanned in at 300dpi and this has created a bmp file of 16mb. I haven't had any problems with this. From the start i've used paintshop pro to scan and create my map, the 1:50000 map was just one scan but I also had to stick 3 scans together of a 1910 b/w OS map so that I could see the route as it was (i.e. before it was Beechingised) (I wonder if there is such a word?). If I have to combine many images for a new route I will use either Photovista or Panavue - both have trial versions which you can download the former is time limited the latter sticks a small "trialware" logo on each scan. Using these would be much easier than stitching together in a paint package. If you use either of these remember two things (well this is for Photovista as I haven't used Panavue); firstly they are primarily used to stitch together digital photos and as such try to correct lens distortion so make sure you diable the warping or distortion features. Secondly the automatic stitching will not produce an accurate enough result - make sure you manually line up the images. However all this is not helping you much! I assume from what you have said that you have your stitched scan in psd format and bmp but you can't load the bmp into Micodem? Presumably becuase the bmp is too large? Can you not load the psd file in photoshop, reduce the resolution and save as a bmp file? I don't know enough about Microdem or Photoshop to advise further. I think my crappy PC would explode it i tried to load a 200mb+ graphic file.Whatever happens, your end bmp file (even at reduced resolution) may be far too large to load into MicroDEM. If you're stuck with this you could try this: Use two of your original unstitched A4 scans (or scan in two separate bits of your map (300 dpi for 1:25000 should be more than adequate) and save them as separate bmps). Digitise (using Microdem) a bit of the first bmp (say an area 2km x 2km) and create an xyz file ready for importing into DEMex and then repeat the exercise for a bit of the second bmp. If you then use DEM-Ex on the first xyz file and repeat with the second xyz file have a look to see if the terrain in Route Editor has been altered. Both digitised bits of terrain should be correct with flat terrain between them (i.e as imported from the Route Geometry Editor) - the purpose of doing this? Well it will show if DEM-Ex will accept terrain without overwriting any previously imported terrain. If this is the case then there is no reason why you cannot digitise one A4 sheet Dem-Ex it and then repeat for the other A4 scans. Perhaps somebody has already tried this and can confirm if this appraoch can be used. My only concern with this is where you seperately import terrain using DEM-Ex which lies on the same tile - does one overwrite the other? I doubt it as DEM-Ex seems only to affect the terrain to which the xyz file relates - it leaves everything else untouched (I think!).By the way I've updated my original posting and here it is in Word format;http://www.train-sim.com/dcforum/User_files/3b86c4ed0941ab1a.zipNote I've had to take out some of the images to keep the file size below 100kbI'm sure somebody else should be able to offer advise on converting your graphic file.Paul Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
eveningstar (29 posts)
Aug-24-01, 05:53 PM (EST) 4. "RE: fao eveningstar, branchline, railrichart and UK others" GeordieLooks like Ray's come up with a much better solution - I think he is saying once you've digitised one A4 scan in Microdem, and saved the xyz file, (say mapdata.xyz) load up the next A4 scan, register it (i.e. locate the 3 registration points as these will obviously be different from the first A4 scan) and then select file>append xyz file and select mapadata.xyz again. The new digitising points will be written to mapdata.xyz without overwriting the old data (the xyz file is only a txt file and you can load this into wordpad, word etc. and have a look at it if you want). Carry on doing that for as many maps as needed. Actually this is better than scanning loads of A4 sheets and stitching them together because you will register each A4 sheet and therefore there will be less chance of error if you only registered the equivalent of 20 A4 sheets stitched together once.
When you've finished all the scans you will still only have one mapdata.xyz file which will will then need to convert to dem, fill in the holes and finally convert to xyz UTM for importing into DEM-Ex.Good one Ray.Paul Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
branchline (14 posts)
Aug-25-01, 07:59 AM (EST) 5. "RE: fao eveningstar, branchline, railrichart and UK others" You've got it Paul. It appears that you can append the xyz file as many times as you like from within MicroDEM. Mines over 1Mb in size now, but still seems to work ok. That has to be better than trying to load a 35Mb or larger stitched togther graphic file for tracing. I'm getting files of about 11Mb for an A4 600dpi 256 BMP file. There is no point in using jpeg files as although they save at smaller sizes they are unpacked when you load them into a graphics program or MicroDEM (can MicroDEM load jpeg images?) and as a result will be much larger than 256 bmp files.Ray Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
Geordie21 (34 posts)
Aug-25-01, 09:41 AM (EST) 6. "RE: fao eveningstar, branchline, railrichart and UK others" Many thanks for the advice guys. It does sound good, what youre saying, but I havent had a chance to try it yet. Just got a package delivered today, 256mb ram so now have 384mb. It was taking 5 minutes to do anything with the scanned images with 128mb, at least more will allow me to send them to the recycle bin a bit quicker so i can start again! It might be Monday before i do get to try this - im still in a lot of pain with my back. I think ill buy one of those funny looking chairs that you kneel on....! Anyway, i must go and recover a bit cos i need go along and laugh at the mackems when we stuff them tomorrow. might be a game worth watching (skysports1)...thanks again for all your help. Ill let you know how it goes when i try it.Geordie Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

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