Map Print Quality

Anton Franzone

• May 28, 2021 03:06

Can someone tell me why the quality of the downloaded and printed maps is poor? Would it be something ive missed? They are blurry and not clear at all! you would expect better with the Pro version!

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  Rebecca

  • July 22, 2021 14:49

  Hi, our team is working hard on improving our print function and we apologize about the inconvenience here. Our developers are looking into these issues and we hope to greatly improve the printing process in the coming weeks. Instead of clicking the "Print" or "Download PDF" buttons, can you please try using the keyboard commands "Ctrl" (or "Command") + "p" directly on the print preview screen? This should help circumvent the PDF creation process in the backend, and will keep the formatting on most browsers - we recommend Google Chrome. Please let me know if you are still running into issues after trying this!

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  David

  • August 20, 2021 13:05

  I have the same issue.  The Ctrl P method didn't give any better quality.  It looks like you're rendering the vector based map to an bitmapped image when creating the PDF or printing.  Can you either keep it as a scaleable vector format when going to pdf, or at least use a higher resolution bitmap?

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  Josh Webb

  • August 23, 2021 19:44

  I'd say having the map that's exported to PDF be in vector format is a must. (Of course, with the exception of things that can't be produced in a vector format, like satellite images)

  The map printing/PDF generating feature as described at https://support.alltrails.com/hc/en-us/articles/360019244551-How-do-I-print-or-download-a-map-PDF- sounds great! If/when they're generated with vector graphics in all the appropriate places, I'll get a pro subscription for sure! (At that point, I'd consider the print feature to be worth it, by itself.)

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  David

  • August 24, 2021 02:27

  @Josh - Don't get me wrong. Printing as it is now is workable. It's just not as clear as it should be. I make printed maps for every new hike, just in case my phone dies. Old school map and compass always works. The pro subscription is well worth it.

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  Josh Webb

  • August 24, 2021 17:40

  @David - I decided to give it (a pro subscription) a shot, and you're right - while it is rasterized and vector graphics would be an improvement the current quality (in my limited testing) is definitely usable. Having a few more options for setting "exact" scales would be nice, or even better, being able to enter an arbitrary scale and have the print area snap to that zoom level. (To be able to match the scale to whatever UTM grid tools (for example) a person has, making the paper map much more "usable" for paper-map-based land navigation.)

  I suppose I'm venturing off-topic though. Just thinking of things I'd like to see from the work being done to  improve the print function, as Rebecca mentioned.

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