Map resolution....

[Kefrem]

is there a way somehow to say take an existing map I have that's too grainy when zoomed in and make it a higher resolution so it isn't grainy when zoomed in?

[Zacchaeus]

You might have some success with photoshop or Gimp, but I don’t know. Usually it’s the other way around with people needling to reduce the quality to make the map size smaller.

[Kefrem]

hmmm its just I got a few maps I'm taking out of a pnp module I got for my own use to run my girlfriend thru...sadly when I zoom it for mini's it gets ungodly grainy and you cant make anything out.

[Andraax]

You can't take a grainy photo and make it look better (contrary to what's shown on TV; wow TV is not real, how trippy).

However, if you have the original high quality image, you *can* reduce it in ways that don't make it too grainy when zoomed.

[Trenloe]

If the original image is low resolution then there's not much you can do to add in information that isn't there. You can try increasing the resolution and then using a sharpness filter - which can make the lines appear less out of focus. This may work for some images and not for others - see how it works for your images. But the bottom line is - there is no magical way to make a low resolution image into a high resolution image and have it look good when zoomed in - because the fine image detail needed just isn't there (unless it's a very simple, straight line map to start with).

[LordEntrails]

Unfortunately reality is not like the fantasy you see in movies and TV shows, where they take an image and zoom in and the computer adds details that are not in the original image (data).

Using image editing like PS or Gimp you can blend, smooth, and interpret what to do. But for maps, such techniques really don't help at all. since generally what you want on many maps are sharp edges, not blended areas of color.

Anyway, I'd suggest either just accepting low res, or finding a map program to make up something high res you do like

[Kefrem]

bugger....*thinks* now what am I going to do.....

[damned]

As all of the posters above point out you cannot add detail back into an image that has been sized/scaled down.
I use selective gaussian blur in this instance. It doesnt add detail in but it removes a lot of pixellation by blurring the image.
Sometimes I will do the unsharp mask and then the selective gaussian blur.
Sometimes I will duplicate the layer and multiply the layer to enhance the existing detail followed by selective gaussian blur.

[Three of Swords]

Just to clarify, how are you getting the maps from the module? Scanning them? From a PDF?

If it's from a PDF or scan, you could probably redo it at a higher resolution and start over.

Keep in mind that from what I've seen, FG's map are a bit funky. If your map image file is 2000x1000, but your map window is 1000x500, it won't zoom in on the image making the higher resolution useful. It will get as pixelated as if the image were only 1000x500 to start (worse really, since it had to do some extrapolation to get it down to 1000x500 at the start). So keep your map windows as large as you can to help out with pixelation.

(Maybe someone can point out something I don't know in this regard, as I'm still very new to FG. But this is one of my very few gripes about FG so far after coming from Roll20.)

[Zacchaeus]

Keep in mind that from what I've seen, FG's map are a bit funky. If your map image file is 2000x1000, but your map window is 1000x500, it won't zoom in on the image making the higher resolution useful. It will get as pixelated as if the image were only 1000x500 to start (worse really, since it had to do some extrapolation to get it down to 1000x500 at the start). So keep your map windows as large as you can to help out with pixelation.

Not entirely sure what you mean here. If you open a map for the first time in FG it will open in whatever size the map is. So if you have a map of 2000x1000 it will open in a window of 2000x1000. If you have resized the map window then the map will open in whatever size you last used the window in. If you have resized the map and want to get it back to the original then right click and select resize and then original size.

No matter what size the window or the map is you can zoom in and out using the middle mouse button or used the small gold button bottom right of the map along with left mouse click to resize or with the CTRL ket to zoom.

More information on image manipulation here.