GPSMapEdit

GPSMapEdit is a powerful tool that enables you to perform visual authoring of GPS maps. It’s a comprehensive and feature-rich application that also supports a large variety of cartographic formats, including Garmin (MapSource), Lowrance (MapCreate), CityGuide, Navitel Navigator, ALAN Map 500/600, Holux, etc.

Among its many features, the most remarkable ones are, in my opinion, the fact that it allows creating POIs and setting up speed camera alerts for various types of devices. Anyway, it also supports loading and converting GPS tracks, waypoints and routes of all kinds.

The fact that it’s a comprehensive tool somehow backfires as it makes its interface quite difficult to understand and use, especially by beginners. I’m not a beginner and I still have some trouble finding specific features and functions and understanding how they work. Furthermore, there are other downsides as well, such as the lack of support for the quite popular MrSID files and for the GeoTIFF format. The availability of saving to Garmin IMG maps is still missing.

The paradox of this application is the fact that though it has some rather obvious flaws it still represents a great solution to create custom maps. It also enables visualizing and editing simple custom data like POIs. In conclusion, GPSMapEdit is worth being tried by anyone in need of authoring and editing custom maps.