Printing on line maps

[Mike777]

Hi all

Having palnned a route on bikehike co uk I tried it print it but the scale was not too good and the map only prinnted on half a page.

I wondered if any one could recommend the best way of printing such maps ?

Many thanks

Mike

[fraxinus]

I know it is a bit naughty but I have scanned parts of OS maps from the libary and printed them of on A4. It is possible to blow them up crop them etc to get exactly what is required. Beware if they get wet the ink runs.

[patricktaylor]

If you have an image editing program you could try a screen dump, then crop it for printing.

If you press the Prt Sc key (print screen) on your keyboard, an exact image of everything on your screen is saved to the clipboard, which you can then paste in a new file in an image editor and see it exactly the same. I use this method often.

[cavasta]

Hi all

Having palnned a route on bikehike co uk I tried it print it but the scale was not too good and the map only prinnted on half a page.

I wondered if any one could recommend the best way of printing such maps ?

Get the map, or required section of the map, to the scale you want using the zoom tool on the left. At this point it doesn't matter if you can't see the entire route - what you're interested in at this stage is getting the required scale. Next take a screen print (using the 'Print Screen' key on your keyboard) and paste it into a new word document. Then using the drawing toolbar's 'crop' facility cut the screen print image to include just the map area. Next, go back to bikehike and move the map to the next section of the route and take another screen print and paste this into the same word document but below the first screen print you pasted. Repeat the editing/cropping process. Keep doing this until you've got your entire route copied, pasted and cropped to size and then print the entire document. Using this method is a bit tedious but the beauty of it is that you can set the scale of the map route using the zoom tool in bikehike and then in word both cut out the unwanted parts of the pasted image and resize the resulting image to suite your needs. Thus you can crop and resize each image to fit nicely into a barbag map holder. You can also customise the maps by adding text boxes, directional arrows, remarks, etc using the drawing toolbar's other facilities.

If you're worried about getting the printed maps wet and the ink running, use memory map's waterproof paper. (Tip: set your printer settings to print at the highest quality, as if you were printing good quality photos. This not only makes for a better quality image but also improves the waterproof paper's ability to absorb the ink, thereby making the image even more water proof.)

[irc]

Or subscribe to Grough Route and print OS maps legally at 1:25000 or 1:50000 for £1.50 per month. Less hassle. It also arranges the map printouts in the most efficient way angling then to follow your route.

http://www.grough.co.uk/route/

[Barrenfluffit]

Contrary to common belief you can take limited photocopies of OS maps in Libraries. So multiple copies of the same bit of map are out as is copying the whole bit by bit as is commercial use; i.e you need to read the notice. The awkward bit is when the map you want is missing.

[Edvardus]

Beware if they get wet the ink runs.

You could always laminate them. If I'm doing a circular ride I'll scan and print out the section of map I need, then laminate it. This saves carrying the whole map and gives me a waterproof item I can use again and again.

[raybo]

There is a website that offers a way to print bike maps off of a Google Map route: http://www.ridefreebikemaps.com/map-creator

It is a new site and not as polished as it will be in the future.

Here is a discussion about the site.

Ray

[Shimma]

There is a website that offers a way to print bike maps off of a Google Map route: http://www.ridefreebikemaps.com/map-creator

It is a new site and not as polished as it will be in the future.

Here is a discussion about the site.

Ray

I've used this before, really cool

[mjr]

Having palnned a route on bikehike co uk I tried it print it but the scale was not too good and the map only prinnted on half a page.

I wondered if any one could recommend the best way of printing such maps ?

My current approach is to use Viking to plot my downloaded GPX files onto suitable base maps. I've added Stamen Terrain for overview maps and Hike Bike Map for detailed ones, with Waymarked Trails Cycling over the top of them, using the instructions on the Maps page of Viking's site - although I've just figured out how to add eu.cycle.travel to maps.xml in a similar way. ETA: https://cycle.travel/about/terms now says "you are expressly prohibited from accessing our map content [...] by directly accessing the image tiles" so don't do that. That seems rather anti-social to me, taking our maps, creating a derivative work and then refusing to let us use it to produce printed maps.

Then I centre the map and use "Generate Image File" - a 1480 x 2100 pixel image seems to look OK printed at A4 (180 pixels per inch, I think that is). At 512 metres per pixel, it'll give a good overview of the Netherlands and half of Belgium on a sheet of A4 (see attached). The other zoom levels I use are 4mppx for town/city centre plots where I want to see street names (see attached - I sometimes put two or four of these to a page for a trip), 16mppx is the widest zoom with junction node numbers on Waymarked Trails Cycling or cycle.travel, 64mppx is when most roads appear on cycle.travel but it's 128mppx on Hike Bike Map.

Neither of the other print options work for me. Generate Directory of Images complains it wants to be in UTM map mode, but then the base maps don't load, while Print produces lovely black rectangles. I don't seem to be able to find any other reports of this problem online. I don't suppose anyone here has seen it?

Other than that, any advances on the above map printing since 2010?

[fausto copy]

I've always had the same issues as the OP.

I use bike hike to plot routes and save them as GPX files (download onto computer first) which I can then (sometimes ) use on my smartphone.

If I want a paper copy I use: osola.org.uk
In there you can open the file you've downloaded, show it on screen at various scales and then I use print screen (on my Mac) and print it off.
Works a treat, just hope this is all above board?

[mjr]

If I want a paper copy I use: osola.org.uk
In there you can open the file you've downloaded, show it on screen at various scales and then I use print screen (on my Mac) and print it off.
Works a treat, just hope this is all above board?

It is as far as I can tell, at least for private study. Only OS maps (UK) and IGN (France) though, so not much use for me for the Netherlands and I don't like OS for cycling - good to have options, though!