I'm new here so I hope I'm posting this in the right spot.
I'm trying to convert contour line features on a scanned topographic map and I'd love some help. My end goal here is to create a DEM for these maps. Here's what I've tried so far in ArcMap with corresponding images:
- Georeference the map
- Clip the frame and isolate one color band
- I set each color value on the one band as a unique value on a new spectrum. This was in Unique Values under Symbology. I did this to identify the contour lines as foreground and the rest as background. I zoomed in so you can see the different colors of the black roads and blue rivers (green), the dark red/brown contour line (yellow) and the beige background (red)
- I then grouped all unique values as black (foreground) and white (background)
- I then used played around with the grouping and used ArcScan to clean this up a bit so I only got the bold contour lines and could remove the numbers.
- Finally, I converted it to a feature and got this!
You can see even in the super zoomed in section on file 6, it's rough, unconnected, and only includes the major contour lines. Any help would be INCREDIBLY appreciated. 🙂