Ontario Atlas Map

[MojaveMan]

Yes! Let's have a peek!

Do you know how to view the .kmz I provided in Google Earth?

Definitely. I have the desktop version installed. I can do that much! xD

So, do you think the provided .kmz file is "close enough" for your needs?

I have not seen a reply from you, but I pretended for a moment that you were happy with that, so I went ahead and tiled it.
I'm attaching it here, and you can put it on your garmin in the "/Garmin/CustomMaps" folder.  Then you may have to enable custom maps on the garmin.  See here for help with that:
https://www.garmin.com/us/products/onthetrail/custommaps

[AgentDBCooper]

Yes! Let's have a peek!

Do you know how to view the .kmz I provided in Google Earth?

Definitely. I have the desktop version installed. I can do that much! xD

So, do you think the provided .kmz file is "close enough" for your needs?

I have not seen a reply from you, but I pretended for a moment that you were happy with that, so I went ahead and tiled it.
I'm attaching it here, and you can put it on your garmin in the "/Garmin/CustomMaps" folder.  Then you may have to enable custom maps on the garmin.  See here for help with that:
https://www.garmin.com/us/products/onthetrail/custommaps

WHAO! That's awesome! It looks perfect!

Is there any way everything else except the yellow part can be cropped out?

I'm reading through the link you provided right now.. definitely something I can wrap my head around.

[MojaveMan]

The short answer is yes, but what you want would be better accomplished by a "vector map" as opposed to a "raster map".  We just did a raster map - we took an image and slapped it onto the map.  A "vector map" would place just the rectangle right where you want it.
You can, however, take that .jpg and edit it in any way you want, and place it into Google Earth.  So if you take the .jpg I first made and cut away all the parts you don't want, then you could load it into Google Earth and georeference it and create the .kmz for your garmin.  You can do that with any image you like - the fact that the image resembled the underlying terrain is mere coincidence.

[AgentDBCooper]

I think I'm making some progress here...

One question though.. how exactly do you get the scale to match between my image file and Google Earth? Can I input custom scale? If that even makes sense.

For example, the PDF I printed off the site, then converted into a JPG, I cropped, is scaled at 1:25,549. How do I match that with Google Earth? Do you eye ball it?

[AgentDBCooper]

I'm getting real close!!

I'm using the Transform function of the overlay to stretch and getting the lines to fit. Super tricky.. or I'm not well practiced. Clearly. But it's starting to look like something!

[MojaveMan]

I think I'm making some progress here...

One question though.. how exactly do you get the scale to match between my image file and Google Earth? Can I input custom scale? If that even makes sense.

For example, the PDF I printed off the site, then converted into a JPG, I cropped, is scaled at 1:25,549. How do I match that with Google Earth? Do you eye ball it?

Yeah, so there is no "scale" you have to worry about.  For maps without any control markings, my procedure goes something like this:
- in the Places tree, add a "image overlay" and use your image for the overlay
- drag the 4 corners of the image around the map manually
- rotate the image if necessary
- repeat until you have something close
- zoom waaaaay in to a corner and find some feature of the map image that you can match to the background and drag the image to match it.  The corners and the exact middle of the image are best for this
- zoom into the opposite corner and see if you can lock it into place
- check the center of the image, and all 4 corners
- lather, rinse, repeat

Its a very iterative process, complicated if the image requires rotation.  You can NOT apply a rotation to a Garmin Custom Map, but you can use Google Earth to figure out what rotation is required and use imagemagick to rotate the image.  You then use that rotated image in the Custom Map.

[AgentDBCooper]

Wow. One could really go insane doing this..

[MojaveMan]

Wow. One could really go insane doing this..

One can really go insane with a map with a matching projection.
Most map images I use have a different projection, adding an entire second level of insanity.
If I knew how to add maps here, I would add my latest - a map of the Fresno area of Big Bend State Park.  Its *huge*....

[AgentDBCooper]

Thanks man! Really appreciate your time! Now that it's not as intimidating, it'll just be a matter of practice. Like anything else.

[MojaveMan]

Don't forget, you have to "tile" the image before copying it over to your Garmin.  There are programs out there to do it for you...they tend to screw up the compression on the jpg, so be careful.
I used OKMap for this example....

[AgentDBCooper]

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!

Took me forever to finally get the damn thing aligned nicely, saved a kmz and tried to make my own map in Google Maps, but it won't load the kmz file. "1 row couldn't be shown on the map". Do I have to tile it for Google Maps as well?

Is tiling required in order to break the map down into the 1024x1024 resolution for Garmin devices? What's the purpose of tiling? Is this essentially just cropping the image into smaller puzzle like pieces? Can I do this with Photoshop?

[MojaveMan]

I'm a little bit confused about your statement that you made a .kmz and tried to load it into Google Earth.  Generally, you *make* the .kmz with google earth.  What are you creating the .kmz with?

Is tiling required in order to break the map down into the 1024x1024 resolution for Garmin devices?

Yes, the 1024x1024 tile is a Garmin "limitation".  Garmin used to have a page detailing these limitations, but for some reason I'm having trouble pulling it up at the moment.  You could google "Garmin Custom Map limitations" to read more.

The general idea is to follow these steps:
- find a map you like
- convert the map to .jpg and into the projection that GoogleEarth likes (this is where I have spent much time and effort)
- georeference the map by creating an Image Overlay in Google Earth (generally easy if your map has control points)
- export that image overlay as a .kmz
- use a "map tiler" to cut that image into a bunch of tiles that will automatically georeference each tile for you based on the larger image
- copy that "tiled" .kmz into your CustomMaps folder

I did provide you with a tiled .kmz in this thread, if you wanted to check it out.

I did find that many tilers were hosing my carefully crafted images (adding compression artifacts to the image), so be careful.

[AgentDBCooper]

I'm a little bit confused about your statement that you made a .kmz and tried to load it into Google Earth.  Generally, you *make* the .kmz with google earth.  What are you creating the .kmz with?

Is tiling required in order to break the map down into the 1024x1024 resolution for Garmin devices?

Yes, the 1024x1024 tile is a Garmin "limitation".  Garmin used to have a page detailing these limitations, but for some reason I'm having trouble pulling it up at the moment.  You could google "Garmin Custom Map limitations" to read more.

The general idea is to follow these steps:
- find a map you like
- convert the map to .jpg and into the projection that GoogleEarth likes (this is where I have spent much time and effort)
- georeference the map by creating an Image Overlay in Google Earth (generally easy if your map has control points)
- export that image overlay as a .kmz
- use a "map tiler" to cut that image into a bunch of tiles that will automatically georeference each tile for you based on the larger image
- copy that "tiled" .kmz into your CustomMaps folder

I did provide you with a tiled .kmz in this thread, if you wanted to check it out.

I did find that many tilers were hosing my carefully crafted images (adding compression artifacts to the image), so be careful.

Sorry I wasn't very clear.

In Google Earth desktop, I imported the image as an overlay. Once I got it all aligned, I exported an KMZ file and then went into Google Map on Chrome, tried to create a custom map with this KMZ file, figured the overlay would appear. It doesn't. I get that error message I mentioned. I figured that I should just work between Google Earth and Google Maps. No? I haven't even begun the process of making it Garmin compatible.

Your instructions here will be helpful for sure. Just not sure why I can't load it into Google Maps, I can can view the overlay I added on my Android device.

[MojaveMan]

Sorry, I have no experience in using the Map web app with .kmz.  I only use Google Earth.

[AgentDBCooper]

Do you use your maps on your smartphone? Using the Google Earth app? Or do you use it only on GPS device?