Contents - Index


Editing the Master Overlay

You may wish annotate the master overlay, showing your location or the names of features in your region.

Making the Master Overlay writeable.

Normally, the master overlay is read-only to stop you accidentally deleting it.  You need to make it writeable for successful updates.

Locate the master overlay file, Overlay.bmp.  This is normally in the  same folder as the WXtrack.exe program file.  In Explorer,  right-click the file Overlay.bmp, and from the Properties menu uncheck the Attributes, Read-only check box and click OK.

Editing the file with Paint Shop Pro 6.02

(These instructions are PSP 6 specific.  You can use any image editor that you like, as long as the editor is capable of working with paletted images, and the palette is not altered in any way by the image editor.)

Open Overlay.bmp with Paint Shop Pro.  As this is a 30MB file, it may take a few seconds to load.  Locate the region you wish to annotate. Click on the foreground colour selector and choose either red (palette index 13), yellow (palette index 15) or cyan (palette index 18).  (Any red annotation will be controlled by SatSignal in the same way as grid lines, yellow annotation as country/state boundaries, and cyan annotation as the Graphics layer.)  The behaviour with other colours is not guaranteed, however the present mapping includes "sea" (index 4) and "land" (index 2).

Select the text tool.  Click where you wish the annotation to be.  Enter your annotation text in the Text Entry dialog.  Note that you must create your annotation as a floating selection, not on a vector layer - ensure that the Floating radio button is selected in the Create As panel.  Click OK and drag your text to its final location and unselect it using the Selections, None main menu.

You can now add other graphic elements as desired, but note that only the red, yellow and cyan palette index colours may be used.  Again when using PSP ensure that "Create as Vector" option is unckecked

Save your edited image.  If you get messages about numbers of colours, or combining layers, then most likely you did not stick with the palette colours and therefore your new master overlay will not work.  You can only use an image with exactly the same palette as the original Overlay.bmp.
 
If you wish, you can make the file Overlay.bmp read-only again.