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Background Images and joining lines
I'm finally getting around to doing the post-holocaust map of the Western U.S. I wanted to do. I found a .jpg of the coastline and surrounding areas that I've set as a background, and am more or less trying to trace features over. I'm running into two things I haven't found any help for in the documentation (which could just be me being blind).
1. Is there any way to have the program join lines? Since I'm doing this manually, I have to sometimes stop and start tracing, so there's usually some sort of tiny gap between the places when I started. I know CC has functionality for this, and I'm wondering if FM does the same.
2. Is there a faster way to turn the background image on and off than going through and deleting the pointer to the image in the Map Setup menu? Sometimes I just want to get a look at how the map is coming out, but that's a pretty tedious way to do it.
3. Oh, and this is just me being lazy, since I'm sure it says somewhere: is there a way that FM actually can distinguish a coastline or a river if drawn manually? In particular, rivers seem to have a different identity, and I'm not quite sure how to change one after the fact.
1. Is there any way to have the program join lines? Since I'm doing this manually, I have to sometimes stop and start tracing, so there's usually some sort of tiny gap between the places when I started. I know CC has functionality for this, and I'm wondering if FM does the same.
2. Is there a faster way to turn the background image on and off than going through and deleting the pointer to the image in the Map Setup menu? Sometimes I just want to get a look at how the map is coming out, but that's a pretty tedious way to do it.
3. Oh, and this is just me being lazy, since I'm sure it says somewhere: is there a way that FM actually can distinguish a coastline or a river if drawn manually? In particular, rivers seem to have a different identity, and I'm not quite sure how to change one after the fact.
Comments
Are you using the freehand drawing tool? If so, the better alternative is usually using the polyline or polygon tool to click around the shape, and letting a low fractal setting fill in fine details.
Even better is using the vector flood fill. For this, you want a simple outline of the shape you are tracing over. The vector flood fill will instantly fill in the shape.
No, but you can make your objects partially transparent so you can see behind them as you draw.
No - to FM a line is a line.
Its possible I tried that not that I think about it and it didn't work--likely because I had neither of those on.
I think I started with the freehand one and shifted to the polyline once I noticed it. I probably need to fiddle with the fractal setting though.
The problem is the opposite; the background image sometimes makes it hard to see if the tracing is going well.
Its just the color, then? That I can figure out how to do, I'm sure. Though it seemed like when I did an attempt at that the line changed thickness or some such.