Hi Matt,

New user here - just wanting to say that this is an AWESOME piece of software and I'm completely impressed with the capabilities thus far. My question pertains to a feature that I don't THINK is currently possible.

I'm wondering if it's possible to have a dynamic color palette. What I mean by that is, when choosing a given color palette for an at5 map, it would be nice to have the ability to increase resolution on a subset of the depth range from within the Lowrance menu structure somehow, on the fly. There are a few lakes we have mapped that have depth ranges from 0-120 ft, but much of the fishing occurs in the 0-30ft depth range. Thus, it would be nice to be able to make everything from 30-100ft a single color, and give more resolution i.e. more colors to the 0-30ft range. This may be something that Lowrance would have to first develop/enable, not sure (?) but thought I would throw it out there. Is there any chance of this being added in the future?

Hi Rob,

It depends on how important the "dynamic" aspect is!

It is possible now (very easily) to restrict colours to a depth range - use the Range feature (available in project properties) to set a lower and upper depth value. Colours will be interpolated across this range, and any depths below or above the specified range values will be shown in the max/min colours. You could also limit the minor contours to the same range.

A slightly more involved method would be to create a User Map, which is just a collection of contours, isobaths and custom polygons/paths. In a user map you have complete control over the appearance of all objects, so you could specify the colour of each individual depth range (or even different areas within the same depth range).

The AT5 format does allow for different features to be shown at different zoom levels - we do it by default with minor contours - so if you were willing to get stuck in you could create a map where finer-level depth areas became visible above a certain zoom level. To do this, you'd have to create a couple of sets of Shapefiles from e.g. maps with 10ft and 3ft isobaths. You'd then need to edit these (in something like QGis) to tweak the upper and lower visibility levels for both, to get a seamless transition from one to the other.

As far as being able to change this "on the fly". Again, possible with a bit of work. You'd need to use custom Chart Categories, which you could then turn on or off within the unit. For example, say you had a set of 3ft isobaths between 0-30 ft, you could change the category attributes for these to something like "30 foot detail" (again, in QGis or similar). You'd then combine these with the existing map and build the AT5 map in the IMC. We do a similar thing with our depth highlight layer.

Matt

Hi Rob,


i believe what You mean is a hexadecimal color scheme. As You can read in the IMC manual, this is a future optuion for the Lowrance units.

You must wait a little bit - this solution is dependence from the development of the IMC, not of RM.
But at the current time You can simulate this with vector transparency over raster.
The result is the same, You only need a background raster.





Best wishes
fjordfischer

Here's an example made using the demo lake.

• isobaths generated with depth-range 0-30ft, all isobaths > 30ft deleted from user map
• 3ft majors 0 - 27ft
• Minor contours 3 - 30ft
• 10ft majors 30ft and above

The white colour for everything > 30 feet is the shoreline fill colour - this can be changed if required.

Sort of the same topic.
I would like to have a lot more colours in the (custom) palette. I use a custom palette, but would like to be able to have at least 20 colours in it. Some of the lakes we map are very deep (300-400 meters deep), and with 10-meters intervall between colours i have to use User Map to have different colours down to 100 meters. I use 5-meter major contours on all our deep lakes and 3-meter on the more shallow ones.

Team Colibri,

You need to create new palette, export it, edit the file with notepad or something like that, copy and paste, to add <int>color#</int> lines x the number color you want... If you want 40 color, you need 40 int lines in the file... After that, import it in ReefMaster and you can now edit each color...

I'm also interrested in dynamic color palette, while I make map for rivers, between two dam (South and North)... And it's deeper in the south... Exemple, you can get 110 foot depth in one of my river, and the other, it's 350 foot depth in the south... While it's 10 foot depth in the north of one river, and 40 for the other river... And between that, you can have section of 60 foot depth, 30, 20... etc...

What I've done is one custom palette for each section of the river (split 38 miles of river in 4-5 sections)... Since depth is relative (in 110 foot, 50 foot is deep, so it's begin to be in the blue... But in 20 foot depth, 10 feet is deep, so it begin to be blue...

Here is a little exemple of color palette I use:



But for a river of 38 miles long, I need more custom palette, which I didn't had time to built yet...

But, a dynamic color palette relative to the depth could be great addon to this software...

Fred, if you have multiple maps that you want to appear with the same colours for each depth, then use the Depth Range function in the map project properties. Set the range so that it is the same for all maps. The colours used will be based off the range, not the max/min depth in each map and will therefore be the same for each map, regardless of each maps depth range.

Cheers fvignola, that did the trick and explained in a way that even I could understand. :)

Fred,

I dont think your "dynamic palette" is going to work. Think about it. You would have one colour to represent water that is say, between 45 and 55% of the maximimum depth (where ?). 20 yards down stream the depth is different, but may still represent45 - 55% of the maximum depth. This means that you need to define an area within which to determine a maximum depth, and base your colour on that - then you move into a different area and have an interface between the two. What happens to your colours ? You need to dispense with isobaths completely, and have "relative isobaths", the only trouble with this scenario is that they have to be relative to a depth somewhere. Is it 100m down the river, the mid point, the deepest depth perpendicular to your track...or what ?

Keep it simple Fred.

T

Thanks for the replies all.

To better define what I mean by "dynamic", I'll use the following example. Imagine I was on this water body pictured below where the basin bottoms out at 100FOW, no max depth range specified by default (pic 1). When I fish shorelines in the spring I want more resolution on all structure at 20FOW or less. On my HDS, I would then navigate to a menu where I could specify a max depth to be displayed, and then I would see pic 2. That's my what I meant by "dynamic". However, in trying to mock this up with these pics I've noticed the results were not quite what I expected; the resolution was actually no better, rather the same isobaths appeared with different colors assigned to them when comparing pic 1 to pic 2 - need to also reduce max contour spacing (pic 3), then I see the level of detail I want. So there's a bit more to this than I thought. In going from 99 to 30FOW max depth (factor of ~3), contour spacing also needs to decrease by the same factor. To complicate it further, ideally, all purple isobaths would remain with 3ft contours so as not to not clutter the screen unnecessarily. I know this is fairly picky, and it sounds like developments leading to having it work like this would be on the Lowrance side. (p.s. - what does IMC stand for?!?)

Related question - is it possible to store multiple "configurations" of maps for the same lake on one SD card and have them set up as I describe and toggle through which one is visible/active?

IMC = Insight Map Creator

... is it possible to store multiple "configurations" of maps for the same lake on one SD card and have them set up as I describe and toggle through which one is visible/active?

Yes - use the chart categories (coded with MAJ_CAT and MIN_CAT in the attribute table from the shape) for switch on/off the prefered chart. You can do this e. g. with QGIS.

As Jorg says,

it would be a relatively trivial issue to create chart objects (all of which are loaded) to represent depth optimized palettes and switch them on and off as you need. You'd have one Maj_Cat called e.g "Max depth20m" which had Min_Cat objects within it called 5m, 10m, 15m. The objects would obviously be isobath areas and lines.

Much simpler than some horrible programming solution. Don't raise the bridge - lower the river, as they say.

T