Google Map with Custom Icons Tutorial

[kq76]

Have you ever wondered how to do maps like the one attached below? Well, I recently learned how to do these maps with custom icons (it was a lot easier than I imagined it would be!) and I figured I'd share.

First, if you're doing a map that is largely the same as existing league, go to sportsleaguemaps.com. Find the map you want to use, like MLB's. Then click on the link below labeled "Open ... in Google Maps". Click the 3 vertical dots and select "copy map" to add a copy to your own google drive.

You could, however, create a completely new map for a fictional league if you want. Just go to Google Maps, then click on "saved", "maps", "create map".

Now to add a city enter the city name in the search field and click on "add to map". Notice I added Portland, Nashville, and Charlotte.

Then to change the pin icon to a team logo, click on the tilting paint bucket icon labelled style and then "more icons". Click "custom icon" and browse for the file you want to use.

Now you can use whatever file you want to use, but if you want to use a file similar to those already on the map I'd recommend finding or making a transparent logo file. You may have or want to resize it as well. I noticed on this map the icons were a max 128 pixels high or wide (you can save a map as a kmz file and extract it to save the custom icons added to it). Using smaller will work (google seems to rescale them), but the larger they are the more pixels google will have to work with to make a higher quality image.

If you don't know how to make a logo transparent, in GIMP (it's free and easy to use), first make sure you have an alpha channel (if you already have one, the layer's label text will not be bolded. Then use the fuzzy select tool to select the part you want transparent. If you want multiple transparent selections, hold down ctrl while selecting the parts. Then select Select > Grow by 1 px to enlarge the selection a bit. Then select Colour > Colour to Alpha to change the selected colour to transparent. Maybe adjust the Opacity Threshold. Then File > Export As to save it.

To resize the file, in GIMP, select Image > Scale Image. If the file you're using isn't a perfect square (it's a rectangle), choose the height or width that is larger and change it to 128 (or whatever size you want), press Tab, and if the scale lock is locked it will change both the height and width. Press Scale. If you find you have a lot of unnecessary white space in the image you might want to crop it first. To do this you can either select Image > Crop to Content, or use a Select Tool, select the area you want to keep and then select Image > Crop to Selection. Then scale it as before.

Okay, now you've add some new cities with new custom icons, what if you want to get rid of some? Click on the city icon you want to get rid of and select the garbage pail icon labelled "delete place". Notice I moved the White Sox to Nashville and renamed them the Stars.

What if you want to move an icon? Like in mine below the Yankees logo is hidden by the Mets logo so I should move one of them. Let's click on the Mets, delete them, then click the "add marker" icon under the search field, and then place a pin a little southeast of where the old marker was. Name it New York Mets and change the custom icon back to the Mets logo (it'll still be available).

If you just an image file of it all, make sure it's center by selecting "Preview", then "Edit", then "+". Then from the legend on the left, click the 3 vertical dots, select "Print Map", select A3 to get the biggest size for the best quality, landscape, and then image. It'll still have "Save as PDF" in the destination and you can still save it as a pdf if you want, but if you just want the image, click on the map and drag it to your desktop and it'll save just the map as mapimage.jpg.

As a bonus, if you want to draw shapes around the cities to group them into divisions, open the map image in GIMP. I'd recommend changing the canvas size height to 2822px to crop out the parts well north of Seattle and south of Miami by selecting image > Canvas Size, change height, press tab, then click on the image and move it up or down as you want, then click Resize. I'd then recommend creating another layer. Select Layer > New Layer, change "Fill with" to Transparency. Then select the Paths Tool and click around the areas you to draw a shape. Once you want to close the shape, hold Ctrl and then click the first anchor you made. You can then curve the shape by clicking between the anchors and the drag a little in or out (I didn't do this in mine, but you can make yours look nicer than mine). Then once you're ready to colour the shape, click the foreground colour, change it to what you want, and then select "stroke path", "paint tool", and "stroke". You can change what you want the stroke to look like by changing the paint tool settings, but I'll let you google that.

File > Save it as xcf file in case you want to change anything later. And then finally, File > Export As to save it however you want.