Podvignaroda website

[matteti]

Thanks Auke and Marc. I've downloaded and tried HTTPAnalyzer and I can see that there are around 300 small jpeg files (around 20-30KB each) per map. No I have to figure a way to save them and re-assemble them... doesn't seem easy... I must not be doing thing right. Marc, any suggestion on how to proceed?

I tried PDF24, but I cannot figure how to print to a JPEG. It doesn't seem any different than my CutePDF (Pdf printer) I already had. I am able to print to a PDF or to a PostScript (.xps) file and I must choose a paper format (among standard ones) or in .xps, I can go 400 x 400 inches, but it shows a very small map in the middle of a huge blank printout. Any further help would be greatly appreciated!

For the citations, I use a pdf printer and then bundle all the citations of a single prikaz into one big file very smoothly.. but for the maps, that's another story ;(

[Lapa]

Originally Posted by matteti

Thanks Auke and Marc. I've downloaded and tried HTTPAnalyzer and I can see that there are around 300 small jpeg files (around 20-30KB each) per map. No I have to figure a way to save them and re-assemble them... doesn't seem easy... I must not be doing thing right. Marc, any suggestion on how to proceed?...

It is usual to "tile" a large picture using many smaller ones. What you need to do is to download each one of them (they all will be of a standard size, except maybe the last ones on the right and bottom edges), then you must reassemble them into one large file. I use PhotoShop to do that. You determine the necessary width and height (# of pictures X individual width/height), create a new blank picture, then copy each small file into the big one by placing it in its proper spot in the grid; I go either from left to right then down, or from top to bottom then right. Once you have paste all the small files, save the big one as a .jpg and your are done.

Marc

[matteti]

Originally Posted by Lapa

It is usual to "tile" a large picture using many smaller ones. What you need to do is to download each one of them (they all will be of a standard size, except maybe the last ones on the right and bottom edges), then you must reassemble them into one large file. I use PhotoShop to do that. You determine the necessary width and height (# of pictures X individual width/height), create a new blank picture, then copy each small file into the big one by placing it in its proper spot in the grid; I go either from left to right then down, or from top to bottom then right. Once you have paste all the small files, save the big one as a .jpg and your are done.

Marc

Thanks for the details Marc. That's what I came to suspect... this seems a lot of work and we must be very precise when placing the tiles beside each other. I was hoping for an easy (and automated) way to quickly re-glue all the pieces together and with perfect alignment.

UPDATE: I might have found what I was looking for. A small utility called "TotalImageSlicer" that should be able to merge back all the sliced tiles into a big map in one single file. Will let you know.

[Auke]

Originally Posted by matteti

I tried PDF24, but I cannot figure how to print to a JPEG. It doesn't seem any different than my CutePDF (Pdf printer) I already had. I am able to print to a PDF or to a PostScript (.xps) file and I must choose a paper format (among standard ones) or in .xps, I can go 400 x 400 inches, but it shows a very small map in the middle of a huge blank printout. Any further help would be greatly appreciated!

When you click on the print button above the map and select PDF24 as your printer, the PDF24 menu appears after a short while. Here you can choose 'save as' and then in the new menu you can select 'JPG' on the left. Then you can choose quality and resolution.

[matteti]

I finally was able to achieve the end result I wanted. It's not exactly as what was suggested by Marc, but it's very easy and almost fully unattended.

I got a small vbscript that takes care of downloading all the tiles (sometime over 3300 per map) sequentially.

Once I have all the tiles, I use TotalImageslicer and it will merge all the tiles to obtain the full size original map automatically. However, it seems it cannot merge more than 2200-2500 tiles together (or around 30MB file size). I will have to do some tests to see if this can be improved, but at least now I get two halves of a map and I can manually join them together.

So far, I was able to download 5 full maps since yesterday!

[CtahhR]

Sounds great!

Will you be sharing the fruits of your efforts with other forum users who would be interested? Because I'd certainly like copies of the "complete" finished full maps. I'm sure there's a vast amount of time needed to fully embrace them.

[matteti]

Originally Posted by CtahhR

Sounds great!

Will you be sharing the fruits of your efforts with other forum users who would be interested? Because I'd certainly like copies of the "complete" finished full maps. I'm sure there's a vast amount of time needed to fully embrace them.

I would definitely be happy to share the full maps. However, they are huge. In pixels, they are ranging from around 14000 x 14000 to over 22000 x 22000 pixels. The single files are from 35MB to around 100MB. Ideally, I would like to find an online place where I could upload them to make them available for all. Please let me know if you have some public online storage.

I was interested to get one of the map printed at my local print shop and have it laminated for display on the wall... but when I calculated its physical size, I obtained 4 meters x 4 meters (or around 13 feet x 13 feet). And this was one of the small-medium sized map

[CtahhR]

Who needs carpet? Just lay a map! Or a million piece jigsaw?

[matteti]

This thread (like many of my threads) went in all directions, but since it was discussed here, I will keep the update within this thread....

About Podvignaroda maps: So, I have downloaded all the tiles of 9 maps and have fully re-assembled them. They are all from April-May 1945. 8 of them are from General-Lieutenant Boykov and show position of forces of 1 Belarussian Front at various stage of the Berlin offensive. They are pretty detailed showing positions of up to 4 days on same map and down to division level, with the path and place of crossing, etc... The last map is about 8 Guards Army only from Colonel Tolkonyuk and is dated 7 May 1945 showing the Berlin Operation. It is also very detailed showing all the streets, buildings, parks, metro stations (I think this is what they are), etc..

I would be very happy to share, but they total 690 Megabytes for the 9 jpeg files. I would need a volunteer to offer online storage where I could load them and share with our members. Any volunteer? Please PM me with details if you are interested.

About Podvignaroda and the fact we don't find a big % of our awards despite they have near 13 millions records: I got 3 new hits since after the last update of the site. I know for sure at least 2 of them are really new as I have attempted to search for them many times. So, my thought is that they might now be working on fixing some issues with the searching and indexing of the records and that's why I got new hits. So, I invite you to try again from time to time to search your soldiers and see if anything new comes out. You might be happily surprised!

[Auke]

The details are amazing! Not only the sharpness and size of the scan are great, the staff officers also put a lot of work into the map. Here's a fragment from map 5, depicting 1st Belorussian Front's headquarters in Strausberg (slightly less sharp than the original to stay under 100 kb):