The other day I posted a blog titled “Looking Ahead To New Mexico and Utah” and in it I showed a map of our intended route(see figure 1.) Since then, a few readers have left comments and/or emails asking how I inserted this particular map. So, I thought for them, and anyone else who might want to do this, I’ll show you how I did it using MS Streets & Trips plus the Picasa 3.6 Photo Editor; then, explain how it can also be done using Google Maps and any other photo editor you might use.
Figure 1. This is the route map I used for my New Mexico and Utah blog
My first step in this process was starting MS Streets & Trips and plotting my route – the program automatically puts in the green route line along the highways. Next, and this is the neat part about using Picasa 3.6, I simply launched Picasa then hit the “Prnt. Scrn” key on my laptop.
Picasa automatically imports a screen image from your laptop right into the Picasa “Screen Captures” folder (see Figure 2.). One important point to remember – always make sure Picasa is running before hitting the “Prnt. Scrn” key or it will not automatically import the screen capture into Picasa.
Figure 2. The route map Picasa imported after I hit the “Prnt. Scrn” key
Next I cropped it using the Picasa “Crop Tool”. The highlighted area in the screen shot below.(figure 3.) is the only part of the image I wanted to keep. After applying the crop selection in Picasa, I now had the result I wanted – see Figure 1 above. After that, I simply inserted Figure 1 into my blog as normal.
Figure 3. I highlighted the area I wanted to keep and applied the crop feature
So, that’s it, with MS Streets & Trips plus Picasa, this process couldn’t be easier. Now, anyone can download Picasa 3.6 for free – what a deal! It’s the photo editor I use for 95% of my pictures. But, MS Streets & Trips comes at a cost so what do you do if you don’t have, and don’t want to buy, this Microsoft product? And, what if you don’t want to download Picasa for whatever reason? You can still do this!
You can accomplish pretty much the same thing with Google Maps, which is free, or if you have any other route mapping software. All you have to do is use the software to make a route map and display it on your computer screen. Then hit the “Prnt. Scrn” key and the image will be copied into the Windows Clipboard. In figure 4. below, I then pasted the clipboard image directly into MS Word, just as an example to show that you can copy it anywhere you would like to.
Figure 4. I used “paste” to copy the map from the ‘clipboard’ to MS Word
Since the screen image of your route map is in the Windows Clipboard, you can now go ahead and paste the image into the photo editor of your choice as a new document. Then, you can go ahead and crop the image just as I did using Picasa. Once you have your final image done, just save it and then import it to your blog using whatever blog editor you normally use.
So, that’s all I do whenever I want to put a route map into my blog. The trick is to use the “Prnt. Scrn” function to copy the image and from there it’s really up to you to use whatever software you want. All good photo editors have a crop function so you shouldn’t have any trouble there.
Have a great Thursday, and thanks again for visiting!
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