Creating image files

Once you have created a BattleMap, you can put it many uses. One such is creating separate images for inclusion on websites, in electronic documents, printing or publishing. This section deals with achieving this.

Beginning the process

Either select 'tools', followed by 'Create image files of the individual phases' or choose 'BattleMap files' followed by 'Create image files of the battle phases'. Both option take you to the same window.

Two ways of generating images of phases

Choosing the options

The options window which then appears allows you to choose which phases to create images of, and details of those images.

Phases and location

The first section asks whether you want to produce just one image of the currently selected phase or whether you want to create images of all phases at once.

If you choose 'all phases' then in the box below it you need to specify a folder into which these images will be created. When the images are created, they will be named 'Phase_X.jpg' where 'X' is the number of the phase in sequence.

If you choose 'just current phase' then in the box below it you need to specify a filename for the image file to be created.

In both the above cases, you can click on 'Browse...' to display a window which you can use to find or create the folder or file you want to use.

Size and quality

In this section, you specify some choices about what the image is intended for, since that affects the final file size and image quality.

If the images are intended for use on-screen, for example on the web or in a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation then a computer screen can normally only show 72 pixels or dots per inch of screen space. hence you only need to create images at that resolution and they will display just as you created them in BattleMaps.

If, however, you intend using the images in printed or published form, the number of dots per inch on a printed page is much higher. Therefore you should choose the other option which creates a file with 300 dots per inch resolution.

The last question is the image quality you require for the final result. This should be compared with the size of the file it generates. The reason is that the image file can be compressed to a smaller size to make it easier to handle, upload to the web etc. but this comes at a price. When an image is compressed it loses some of it's detail. This may or may not be desirable. The best idea is to try a medium quality, see how it looks, then adjust it higher or lower and compare the results.

Producing the images

Finally, press the 'generate the images' button to create the file(s) or click 'cancel' to return to the main screen without generating the images.

If you've selected a large number of images to generate, a 'progress window' will pop up while it processes the files, telling you how far it has reached.