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Check to make sure you have the latest version (2.3). If you still have the problem with 2.3, email me the KMZ file at leszekmp at gmail dot com, and I'll take a look at it. It shouldn't have anything to do with it starting life as a PDF; once it's converted to a JPG, it should work fine.

As usual, you are doing nothing wrong; I introduced a bug into the last version that causes this problem. Just uploaded a fixed version of the program (version 2.2); download and install it, and it should work fine:

http://moagu.com/?page_id=155

Problem with scrambled/bad imagery has been resolved. The 8-bit aerial black and white imagery from the Seamless Server was being converted into 8-bit JPG files, which the Garmin units apparently don't support. Version 2.1 now converts all imagery into 24-bit format before further processing, and aerial imagery that had the problem before shows that it works. I hope. Download it here:

http://moagu.com/?page_id=155

Can you post the problematic file somewhere? I'd like to take a look at it.

Version 1.6 out; now supports KMZ overlays with rotation (version 1.5 required that the overlay not be rotated, just moved or stretched).

http://moagu.freegeographytools.com/?page_id=155

For GeoTiffs with full metadata, G-Raster doesn't need you to specify projection/datum. Only imagery with worldfiles needs that info.

I'm stumped. G-Raster works for lots of people, so I don't know why you're having these problems with high-res imagery.

Oh, there is a new feature in G-Raster 1.5: it now accepts KMZ image overlay files as input. So you can calibrate a map larger than 1024 x 1024 in Google Earth as an image overlay, save it in KMZ format, then open it in G-Raster and have that large image chopped down into smaller tiles.

Couple of limitations:

- Image overlay can't be rotated, only stretched and translated. So it only works for images where up is North. If you have an image where up isn't north, you'll need to open it in a graphics editor, rotate it to fix that issue, then load it into Google Earth to create the overlay. Fortunately, most maps that will work as overlays do have "up" as North.

- For the unregistered version, images are cropped down to 1500 x 1500 pixels; the registered version allows up to 10,000 by 10,000 pixels.

A few comments:

- It may be something odd about the exact format of jbensman's imagery that may be causing the problem. If you (jbensman) could send one of your bad KMZ files to somebody else to try on their Garmin, and concurrently get a high-res file created by G-Raster and known to work to try out on your system, that might help in figuring out what's going on.

- Didn't know about the problem with non-alphanumeric characters and spaces in filenames. Just released 1.5, and pulled it back to fix that issue. Oddly enough, like GlobalMapper, I'd been using "_" in the jpg filenames without any problems, but I've removed them from those files too just in case. Non-alphanumeric characters are now automatically pulled from all filenames. If that's the problem, the latest version should fix that.

- The problem with not resizing when the number of tiles is greater than 100 is driving me nuts - sometimes it shows up, other times it doesn't, and with the same image file. I'm working on it ...

- The default JPG quality factor for G-Raster is 80, which should result in a 100-JPG-tile filesize of roughly 35-40 MB or so. But I think maps4gps may have been talking about the original GeoTiff filesize, not the KMZ filesize.

You also might try posting a link to one of your overlays that doesn't work, and see if others have problems viewing them in their units. Don't have a compatible unit myself yet, so can't help you there.

People have reported no problems with resolutions better than 1 meter per pixel, so I don't think that's it. Thought for a second that it might be a problem with grayscale imagery, in that Garmin units might not be able to display grayscale JPGs. But if you had success with the 1-meter black-and-white image, then that's not it.

Don't know what the problem is, then, and without a compatible Garmin unit handy, it'll be hard to debug it. I'm waiting for enough people to register G-Raster at $5 to cover the cost of a compatible unit; at the current registration rate, that may take a while ;-).

AFAIK, there's currently no way to set the zoom limits. G-Raster tells you roughly the maximum zoom level you can get before pixelization sets in (based on GPSFix's chart), and adjusts this based on your rescaling factor.

Default settings should work fine. The fact that you got one of the images to work suggests some peculiarity with the imagery you had problems with; I'll take a look at the image formats to see if there's anything obvious. In the meantime, I'd recommend using the 1-meter color imagery; I've found that color imagery is actually more revealing of ground detail than higher-resolution black-and-white imagery.

Odd. No one else has seen this (or at least, no one else has reported it). And lots of people have reported success with aerial GeoTiffs. The program treats all TIFFs the same, regardless of whether they're topos or aerials. I'd need more information to figure this out.

The only difference between 1.3 and 1.4 is that 1.4 drops the pop-up at the beginning about it still being beta firmware.

You might try dropping back to an older version of the firmware, then re-installing the new firmware that supports custom maps.

Version 1.3 now available from the download page:

http://moagu.com/?page_id=155

Thanks! Version 1.3 should be out shortly, maybe even tomorrow. It adds:

- Image preview, with a slider that changes JPG compression and shows those effects on the fly

- User-selectable image rescaling algorithm

- For images that are too large, you now have the option of either cropping or rescaling them before processing