Tool for fading out old maps for laptops ?

DetectorMoe

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Is there a tool I can download on a laptop for fading out old maps photos that I have loaded on my laptop, For fading out over google earth or google maps??? I know theres apps for Ipods but something like that for a laptop???
 

airscapes

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The reality of it is, CSI and most other TV show that "Fix" Photos and videos.. are just that TV shows, it is fantasy. If the data isn't there, you can't make it up. Sure there are some high end tools that could maybe make stuff up.. but that is not something we have for free. You can download Irfanview (a free photo editing software) IrfanView - Official Homepage - one of the most popular viewers worldwide and use it to make some auto adjustments on the images or manually change contrast brightness and other things to help you make out items in the image.
However, once a physical image is turned into a digital image, you only have a fixed number of pixels to work with and there is no magic like you see on the TV.."I can clean up this image to see the license plate in the dark form 300' away" It just don't work that way!
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DetectorMoe

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Well I was wondering if I can do this on a laptop.. Or anything like this video from Youtube... click link here
 

jackc

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I personally don't know of any apps that do that. But I accomplish about the same thing using Inkscape. It's a free
software that I have used in the past for designing logo's and making flyers and such.
All I do is take two screenshots.
One of google maps location and the old map and just over lay the two in Inkscape.
Then I just adjust the opacity of one or the other till the old features lay right on the new google map.
Works like a charm and is absolutely amazing when you can see how things have changed.
I use images screenshots from historicareals.com but any mapping site will work.
It's nice also that you can draw circles and lines on the image and then print it out to take to the field with you.
 

hoosierguy

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You can do that with most any decent image editor that supports multiple layer image editing. What it involves is loading up two images into two layers and changing the transparency level of the map you want to overlay onto the base map. If you want free try a piece of software called GIMP. It's got a lot of features and is considered the open-source version of PhotoShop. There are other images editors out there that will do the same thing.

A important part of the process of course is to scaling both maps to a equal scale so you can get landmarks or streams/rivers to use as a reference for matching the two maps up as closely as possible:

GIMP - The GNU Image Manipulation Program

Adobe Photoshop Elements 12 for PC - Walmart.com
 

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DanFL1962

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When you say "fading out", do you mean Overlay? This is a common function in Google Earth software. Its called "Add Image Overlay". You can import old aerials, plot maps, Etc. and overlay those images to the current image from Google Earth.
 

hoosierguy

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When you say "fading out", do you mean Overlay? This is a common function in Google Earth software. Its called "Add Image Overlay". You can import old aerials, plot maps, Etc. and overlay those images to the current image from Google Earth.

That's much easier than the method I mentioned!

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gollum

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bulrush

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Google Earth Free does this, but you might have to be connected to the internet for it to work. On Google Earth you can take your image of a map, rotate and scale it until it matches up with current roads, then "place" it on the map. Once it's placed, you can look in My Places for the name you gave your overlay, right click it, and choose Properties to adjust it.

You do Add menu, Image Overlay. You can also change the opacity of the overlay map.
 

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Metal Detecting Stuff

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As the previous posters have said, right click after you add the overlay, there is a slider for clear to opaque you use to make the overlay transparent.

Wayne

www.metaldetectingstuff.com
 

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