Using a 'Fill' indicator on the map

If you've set up a map you probably know there are 3 types of Site Indicators -- Circle, Rectangle, and Fill.  You might have tried the Fill indicator and couldn't get it to work.  While the fill type can sometimes be the most attractive, it requires the background image to be very precise.  We don't normally provide support on the image editing portion of map setup since it's outside Campground Master, but here are a couple tips that may help if you want to try getting Fill to work.

This idea behind a fill indicator is to fill up the site with the status color no matter what its shape, so you're not restricted to rectangular sites on a map -- think of it as pouring a bucket of paint on the site -- it will flow outward until it reaches a border of some kind, so it becomes the exact shape of the site.  

The concept is simple enough, but in practice it can be a little tricky since it requires the image to be "perfectly flat" color-wise for the area you want to fill.  Any slight variation in the color value will act like a border for the fill.  Even though you can't visually see any difference in the color, a "white" background can actually contain many different almost-white colors as far as the computer is concerned.  So you might end up with an oddly shaped fill, or maybe even just a single dot.

Another type of problem occurs if the image is flat enough but the site has a "leak" -- any gap in the border will allow the fill to get outside the site, possibly filling the whole map.

These problems can be corrected using an image editing program like Paint Shop Pro to edit the image.  It has simple tools you can use to "flatten out" the color and close any leaks in the sites.

If your map image is basically black and white, then the easiest way to flatten it out is to convert it to a 2-color image (using the "Decrease color depth" function in Paint Shop Pro) which will flatten it to absolute black and white, then increase the color depth back to 256 colors for saving the BMP file (using "Increase color depth").

If instead of a black and white map you have various coloring you want to keep, then you can use Paint Shop Pro's "Color replacer" tool with a suitable Tolerance value, perhaps 10 or so.  For instance this can replace everything "close" to white with a solid white so that the Fill indicator works.  Once the tool tolerance option, size, and color is set, just move it around on top of the sites to flatten out the color.

Finally, inspect each site's border for leaks -- close any gaps using a small paint brush tool.

The specific functions mentioned above are for the Paint Shop Pro software which we recommend, however any good image editing software should have equivalent tools.  And by the way, Paint Shop Pro does a much better job of resizing images than the Windows Paint program (which often results in a very rough image).