Press release Garmin:

This news should be a minor sensation for the GPS world: World market leader Garmin is fulfilling a long-held wish for its users and enabling the display of raster maps on some handheld GPS devices. With a small firmware update and just a few steps on the computer, owners of GPS devices from the Colorado, Oregon and Dakota series can now also use pixel and raster maps on their Garmin. The new function called "Custom Maps" is integrated into the latest firmware version and is therefore available completely free of charge. Garmin users are no longer restricted to Garmin map material or limited OpenStreetMap data.

In fact, the entire world of maps is now open to them - even self-scanned maps and site plans! After an extremely successful and therefore very short beta phase, Custom Maps now officially opens up "unlimited possibilities": Any type of paper or digital map can be displayed and used on the Dakota, Oregon and Colorado device series. It doesn't matter whether it's a paper map from the national surveying offices, historical maps, site plans of zoos or parks or maps you have created yourself - as long as they have been "calibrated" (the technical term is "georeferenced").

To use the maps on a Garmin handheld GPS device, just a few steps are required, which can be carried out very easily on your home computer - whether PC or Mac OS X - and with the help of the free Google Earth software. The desired map must first be available as a JPEG image file. Paper maps are scanned and digital maps are converted into a JPEG image using image processing software. This image is placed on the aerial photograph displayed in Google Earth and adjusted accordingly so that the geographical points of the image and aerial photograph match. The image is then saved via Google Earth in kmz format. The saved kmz file can then be loaded directly onto the device and, like all other maps, activated or deactivated in the device's map settings. Your own maps can be created and ready for use in just a few minutes. To make it as easy as possible to get started, Garmin has published detailed, German-language and easy-to-follow instructions for creating custom maps online: www.garmin.de/custommaps "Deutschland Digital 50" on an Oregon 550

If a raster map is activated on the GPS device, it is automatically shown on the display. Other maps that are also loaded, such as the new TransAlpin, can remain activated in the background, which also preserves the routing function of these maps.

Facts about custom maps

• Attention: Every user is responsible for compliance with any copyrights!
• Runs on the Oregon, Dakota and Colorado device series
• Free of charge: only firmware update (via Web Updater) and Google Earth required
• Data size of the map maximum 3 MB
• Maximum of 100 maps can be saved
• Easy georeferencing via Google Earth

www.garmin.de/custommaps