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Image Edit For Garmin Color Units


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With the 3.50, I created three waypoints with consecutive custom icons (I didn't dork with the images themselves) I then watched what came down the wire with an instrumented GPSBabel and observed the new icons had numbers of 7680, 7681, and 7682.

 

However, attempts to programmatically write the user icons resulted in 'small city' icon being displayed and when I read them back, I see they're stored as 8198's and not the 768x brothers. So at first blush, it appears that writes from teh host to create such icons (as one might wish to do to provide customzed geocaching icons) are trapped and converted.

 

So it's not looking like the host software "merely" needing an update, it looks like the firmware might very well be munching these when they come from the host...

 

I could be wrong.

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Robert,

 

Man! Isn't Garmin just wonderful... I really respect their efforts, but why in the world do they have to make everything they implement half a** and so difficult/complicated? Of everything they do, you'd at least think that icon implementation would be straight forward. Oy! <_<

 

I won't be holding my breath waiting around for this to ever be done right that's for sure. Too bad...

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Hey all,

 

Just discovered this little chat about Ximage. Was wondering if anyone has a total palette of allowable colors for lets say Photoshop 7?? Some of my masterpieces didn't make it thru and I'm sure its due to the color limitations the GPSMAP 60C has.

 

Also, has anyone with a 60C been able to get a splash screen option to show up on their copy of Ximage?? Or are we all S.O.L. on that option??

 

Thanx for answering the newbie questions <_<

 

-Jayloki-

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Just discovered this little chat about Ximage. Was wondering if anyone has a total palette of allowable colors for lets say Photoshop 7?? Some of my masterpieces didn't make it thru and I'm sure its due to the color limitations the GPSMAP 60C has.

 

The customizable waypoint symbols only support 8-bit color depth (i.e. 256 colors). Therefore, you can only use valid colors in the 256 color spectrum in your BMPs if you want them to show up properly on your GPSr.

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BTW,

 

Just so every one knows... I have tested one of the new Quest units with Garmin's xImage program and it works great! You can indeed create a custom splash screen for the Quest using xImage, and the Quest allows you to have 64 custom waypoint symbols (or "My Locations" as they are now called in the Quest) instead of the 24 that's available in the 60C(S), 76C(S), Legend C, and Vista C.

 

Also, just as an FYI, the Quest allows 30 character length waypoint names and 100 character length waypoint notes/descriptions which is quite an improvement over the 10 character waypoint name length limitation and the 30 character waypoint name/description length limitation in the 60C(S), 76C(S), Legend C, and Vista C.

 

Cool! :laughing:

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Is custom icon support planned for GSAK/Babel?  Just curious.

In my Aug 4 post, I observed that the units appear to munch the custom icons when uploading from a host program. They appear to be available only from the keypad. My posting in this thread from Jul 22 highlights some of the problems trying to use them from a program even if they did work. So even if GPSBabel didn't know what icon a "Headless Chicken" might be, it could know that it's #7689 and programs could feed a 7689 to get custom icon #N which happened to be "Headless Chicken" on your unit.

 

I did modify GPSBabel to accept numeric icon values for those wishing to shoot the numeric values straight in. That's handy for experiimenttion. I must have done that since the last beta, but it would be in the builds that are available now to folks that registered GSAK and are part of that beta or that contributed to the GPSBabel USB development.

 

(Right now, I have too many different development strains in my life. My #1 project during the midnight shift right now is unifying them and preparing for a beta soon.)

 

Edit: oh, and right now I've bitten off about all the Garmin projects I can stand right now, so unless someone hands me a patch to do more with custom icons ready to drop in (which is always welcome) I'm pretty much going to stick my fingers in my ears and go LALALALALALA to more requests for a while. :laughing:

Edited by robertlipe
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Oh sure Robert, make fun of my "headless chicken" series of caches! :laughing:

 

j/k

 

Scott

I was trying to pick something so obscure that a GPS (and host software) would be unlikely to have them as dedicated icons. But given the recent discussions on icons for caches that'll hold an apple but not a grapefruit, I suppose everything is now fair game. Now the "headless chicken" cache lovers will spend all their time flaming the "chicken on aqualung" cache lovers.

 

Wow, and I made it over a thousand posts without derailing things OT...

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My observations on custom icons on my Quest and mapsource is that Mapsource reverts all custom icons to the black dot waypoint icon on read. Inside mapsource, no support exist for custom icons... but I got word from someone at garmin that might just change in the future. :blink:

 

I suggest either just naming custom icons Custom00 to Custom63 (or higher?) or display them in the same form xImage saves them (from a user dir).

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That's pretty much what I did in GPSBabel, though I named them "Custom 1" through "Custom 24". I stopped at 24 for now since that's where the handhelds stop and Quest doesn't work with GPSBabel for now anyway. Besides, other firmware issues make this kind of a bust for now. This thread is kind of two threads in one, but has a decent overview of the situation:

 

http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php...0entry1084378

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Well, I just upgraded from a Legend, to a Legend C a couple of weeks ago, and Just happened to read this post. After some playing around and learning how to make/edit Icons, capture a screen shot and get the image on a webpage, I can finally now show my custom icons. Thanks for starting this post, it has been alot of fun playing around with these custom icons. ;) Thanks for everyones explinations and tips, I had good success because of them.

 

icons.jpg

 

Waypoint Symbol 0-23.zip

 

Edit: added link to zipped Icons.

Edited by HawkesNest
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What you got there is a "Screen Shot". A "Splash Screen" is a momentary and unavoidable display of a logo or some other information when starting something. Image Edit will allow you to customize or otherwise create your own splash screen on the Garmin Quest.

Edited by Neo_Geo
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I noticed in this thread that some are sharing their custom symbols and including a screenshot. I will share some of mine as well but I can't seem to figure out how to add the screenshot to my message. I tried copy/paste - nothing showed up in the message box. I see the IMG (image) code button above the message box but it only asks for a hyperlink.

 

Is there a better webpage location where others are sharing these custom symbols - like on geocaching.com?

 

I'm working on forestry-related symbols.

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First you have to upload the image file somewhere on the Internet. Once it's uploaded, copy the URL address of the file. Then you compose your message here, click the little "IMG" button just above the message text editing block. A little pop-up window will appear, and you paste the address of the image file in there and then click "OK". The necessary formatting code will be added to the text to allow the image to be displayed.

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Anyone using Photoshop to mod the icons.

 

I am trying it but when I go to save the BMP file (same name) I cannot reload it into the 60C. I downloaded other symbols provided here and they work, but if I open them in photoshop and resave them as BMP file, it will not load.

 

What are the correct save setting for the BMP file in Photoshop for it to be able to upload properly?

 

Thanks,

 

mrking

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Mr King: I have the same trouble. I think it has something to do with the color pallette we are using in Photoshop. I asked someoen if they had the proper palette of possible colors but no dice. If you have any luck, let me know ok?? I'll be monitoring this forum :mad:

 

Good luck!!

 

-Jayloki-

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Ok I figure it out. Instructions below...

 

1) Open any image you want to use in any format

 

2) Crop the area you want to use (if necessary)

 

3) Make sure the image is SQUARE (IE. equal on all four sides)

 

4) Goto IMAGE>IMAGE SIZE>reduce it to 16x16 pixels at 72 DPI

 

5) Goto to IMAGE>MODE>INDEXED COLOR

 

6) In INDEXED COLOR menu under PALLETE make sure you set it to SYSTEM (WINDOWS). Under OPTIONS you can select the DITHER to NONE, DIFFUSION, PATTERN or NOISE. Select whichever makes you image look best (have preview selected to see the difference)

 

7) Hit OK and let the changes take effect

 

8) Goto FILE>SAVE AS and select BMP. Enter the name you want in the format of "Waypoint Symbol xxx.bmp" where xxx represent what number the image will be when xImage uploads them. Select SAVE

 

9) In the BMP OPTIONS menu under FILE FORMAT select WINDOWS and under DEPTH select 8bit (these should be defaults) All other boxes should be UNCHECKED. Select OK and it will complete the save for you.

 

10) Open xImage and upload the icons as it requires.

 

Cheers,

 

mrking

Edited by mrking
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I know I'm late on this topic, but if you start a thread in the Geocaching.com discussion area we can work on putting together downloads on Geocaching.com proper for these images, and a "standard" for using them with various software apps.

Did this ever happen, if so please post the link.

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Hi folks,

 

I am new to all this, just having got my Legend C last weekend & only one cache under my belt (only two more to go here in Qatar). :P

I didnt find a sand dune waypoint icon so did a little experimenting of my own and came up with one simply using MS Paint & uploading with ximage. It might be handy for anyone else, I am happy to send it on or pass it to someone running a central database, if there is one around here somewhere. Like a previous msg, it seems a little tricky to simply add it into this window

 

Cheers

Kelvin

Edited by Islandstyle
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I know I'm late on this topic, but if you start a thread in the Geocaching.com discussion area we can work on putting together downloads on Geocaching.com proper for these images, and a "standard" for using them with various software apps.

Did this ever happen, if so please post the link.

I bet a couple people have already turned the geocaching symbols into 16*16 icons and sent them to their GPS. Including ME. Jolly-Rodger posted a link to here but I did not like the big checkmark so I redrew it with the lid off instead and I am currently using that now.

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the easy way :) to get 16x16 icons.

2-13 (not 7 and 10) will work fine. what the heck is the number 9? B)

happy hunting.

At first I compressed the geocaching icons, but they didn't turn out to good. Then I realized that GSAK had perfect 16*16 icons(except for the webcam, which looked like it had been compressed). If anyone wants them I can send most of them in a compressed folder

Edited by david g
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