UKC

Hey all!

Wasn't quite sure which forum to put this in, but could anyone recommend me a free software for drawing dashed route lines on photos, and putting the little numbers at the bottom in guidebook style, on a windows laptop?

Best I've found so far is using Word but its a bit of a pain and tends to tank the picture quality!

Cheers!

Inkscape (Illustrator Equivalent), or if you want to design a whole guide, Scribus is the free InDesign equivalnet 

https://topoeditor.com

a simple way if you have already have Office is use Powerpoint.  Import your map image.  Select Shapes, then you can draw using curves, freehand or straight lines.  Use the line fill drop down to alter weight, type (dashes etc)

You can add little shapes for waypoints and drop in numbers easily.

Export out as PDF/JPEG etc.  You can change export quality in settings.

I use Gimp for drawing topo diagrams, overlaying lines and numbers onto a photo background, then put the doc together in Word and save as pdf. It wouldn't be ideal for commercial use, where a vector imaging program would be much better, but it works fine for the occacional use I need it for.

For publication you’d actually want to use a vector image editor followed by a publisher - the rich person (adobe) combo would be Illustrator and InDesign 

Brilliant, thank you everyone for the help!