Moving from Paper to Digital Maps

OziExplorer supports a number of different digital map types that use georeferenced data (information that allows a program to precisely identify locations and coordinates on a map). But one of the program’s most powerful features is its ability to turn your own graphics files into georeferenced maps. This means if you have a paper map, you can scan it, load it into OziExplorer, and effectively make it an electronic (digital) map. This is a three-step process:

1. Scan the map. Use a scanner to create a digital image of the paper map. Stitch individual map pieces, if necessary.
2. Edit the map. Make changes to the scanned map before it’s used.
3. Calibrate the map. Load the edited map into OziExplorer and associate georeferenced data with the map image.

The following sections explore the above three steps in further detail. Scanning and calibrating your own maps can be fairly time consuming and sometimes frustrating if you can’t seem to get the map coordinates to match up with reality. Some maps are definitely easier to calibrate than others. If you’re not technically inclined or are somewhat impatient, you’ll probably want to stick to importing maps that are already georeferenced, such as freely available United States Geological Survey (USGS) DRG topographic maps.