[Paddlewise] Charts for Macintosh users

There was an article last year in Sea Kayaker magazine about digital  
charts - Joel McNamara "Cheap Charts".

United States charts are now free as digital downloads. I am a big fan  
of using these as a basis for custom kayak charts.
I am supplementing the information provided by Joel McNamara in that  
article "Cheap Charts". It is a solution to accessing the .BSB format,  
which NOAA uses for their Raster Nautical Charts (RNC). Joel describes  
the free application, Chart Reprojector, which is able (awkwardly) to  
open the .BSB format and convert it to TIFF, but mentions that it is  
only available for Windows. One is left with the impression that  
Macintosh users are out in the cold.

For the Macintosh user there is an excellent (much better)  
alternative, although it is not free. GraphicConverter is a long-time,  
well-established graphics program that many Mac users already own. It  
is a $40.00 program, available on line, that does a slew of things but  
one of them, as it's name suggests, is to convert graphics formats  
from one to another.

It handles the NOAA RNC charts without any difficulty. They simply  
open with GraphicConverter and you can annotate, edit and crop the  
charts in that program if you like. GraphicConverter can save them in  
essentially any graphics format (including, of course, TIFF) that you  
might want.  This allows you to edit the charts in any graphics  
program that you might prefer.

GraphicConverter is shareware. This means you can test the product  
without obligation and free of charge. It is highly recommended.
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