Raster maps of arbitrary areas: free conversion utility

You can have maps of areas you are interested in converted for PrettyMap, including satellite, air, geological, city plans and virtually any type of maps. Use our converter application below and then copy converted maps to your mobile device. Just prepare an image and coordinates (longitude and latitude) of image corners. As an example, see two small converted maps of the San Francisco Bay area (roads and satellite view).

1. Prepare the image.
   • Use any image/photo that you already have, scan a map, or look for a map of your location on the web. You can use the "print screen" key to capture the screen image / copy it to the clipboard. There are lots of sites with maps available.
   • Sites worth visiting are google, yahoo, arcwebservices, mapquest, flashearth and usgs, but please follow the respective terms of use.
   • Save the image on your computer (preferably in the PNG format). You may need to crop the image (use your favourite image editor) so that the image contains the map only. If you know computer graphics, you can reduce the number of colors in this image to 250 or less (indexed/palette/dithered mode).
2. Get the exact coordinates of top left and bottom right corners (this is georeferencing).
   • Use the decimal form, i.e. −122.712135 instead of 122° 42.7281' West.
     
     Deg. Min. Sec.
     Use negative values for West and South, and positive values for East and North.
     You need four numbers: longitude left, latitude top, longitude right, latitude bottom.
     This site may be helpful in getting accurate coordinate numbers (activate "GPS" mode and click on the map).
   • If you get the image from arcwebservices, click the "Share" button and then "Copy URL". The URL contains accurate coordinates and you can paste the URL into our converter! There is no need to acquire coordinates manually, but if you decided to crop the image, the original center must remain in the middle of the image.
3. Think about a short name for your map.
4. Convert.
   If you have java installed on your computer, [click here] and do the conversion yourself using our converting application. When a "Warning-Security" window appears, press "Run". The warning is issued because the converter needs to access your image map and write a converted file to your disk.

If you don't have java installed, get it here.
If you are not sure what to enter into the text fields in the converter application, read the tooltips that appear when you stop the mouse pointer over each field.
If you have problems performing these steps, ask questions and get support on our forum, or send us the image file, suggested name and the four coordinates.
The converter does not need Internet access: run it once and then you can use it offline.