Turning blank maps from elsewhere into election maps

[Miles]

Hey guys,

Lately, some have inquired about how to make blank maps from other sites into election maps to post here. Specifically, coloring in some county/district-level external maps can get messy.

I know some of the screenshots here may be redundant, but I want to make sure I got every step!

For this, you'll need to have both Paint and Paint.Net (the most recent versions I think are free).

Lets say I wanted to make an election map of North Carolina. I Googled "NC blank county map" and came up with this image:



The first step is to hit the "Print Screen" key (upper right in the keyboard). Then, open up Paint. Hit 'Paste' in the upper-left and your screenshot will appear:




Ok, cool. The map is in Paint now. But when I start to color in the counties to make a cool election map...what the hell is this!? The counties aren't filing out!



Looks like we're gonna need another program. Undo the coloring so the map is back to blank. First, crop the image so that its mostly just the map:



In the upper-left corner, click the 'Select' button and 'Select All':


Next, right-click and 'Copy.' You won't be able to copy if you haven't previously hit 'Select.'


Open Paint.Net. It should already have a blank canvas when you open it, but go to the top-left and click 'New'. You should then get a canvas that will fit the image you're about to Paste in.



Once you've pasted the image in, make sure to hit 'Deselect' after:



Then, go to 'Adjustments' on the tool bar and hit 'Brightness/Contrast':



Put 'contrast' to the maximum (100). The 'brightness' doesn't necessarily have to be at -100, but the lower the value, the thicker the lines will be.



Now, you can start to color the counties and they'll actually fill in all the way!



One thing that you should look out for now is isolated white pixels. Some pixels will get isolated through the process and they stand out (I've circled then in yellow):



To fix it, I usually just fill them in with the border color:



After you've colored in the counties, just save it and upload it like you would with any other picture! If I need to make any clarifications, let me know!

[Oldiesfreak1854]

Thank you so very much, Miles!

[Antonio the Sixth]

I just make sure to use blank maps that can be filled out with Paint. Such as the Atlas ones.

[Oldiesfreak1854]

I just make sure to use blank maps that can be filled out with Paint. Such as the Atlas ones.

That's what I've always done, too, but I still greatly appreciate this.

[Cranberry]

I just make sure to use blank maps that can be filled out with Paint. Such as the Atlas ones.

I do as well, but it can often be really hard to find such a map. That's solved now

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

Thanks again, Miles.

I've had problems trying to work the Atlas maps, and Dave even admitted to me that it's not user-friendly, but it's nice to have this information even though I don't contribute real maps.

[justfollowingtheelections]

Beautiful!  Thanks!

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

Just an FYI: I found this site a couple days ago but forgot to share it.  The site itself is a paid membership site designed to aid cartographers in compiling data and making visuals for them (which some of you might be interested in... I dunno), but it also has a list of clean images for county maps for all US states plus regions and territories.  There are PUMS files and some ZIP code maps for counties and cities, as well.  It's basically only useful for US elections, but still a great resource.

Miles, you might want to include the link in the OP, if you think that would help.

[Oldiesfreak1854]

BTW Miles: do you know where you could find blank maps of Census divisions (cities, townships, towns, villages, etc.) to convert to maps?

[Miles]

BTW Miles: do you know where you could find blank maps of Census divisions (cities, townships, towns, villages, etc.) to convert to maps?

I don't have a sure-fire answer, but I'll browse around the Census site. Dave has started to break down Presidential results by town, so that might be helpful. Homly also may have blank town maps of northern states, 

[Oldiesfreak1854]

I was thinking blank maps of them, but if not, that's OK, too.  I have a few anyway.