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Wildlife and Forestry Tools for ArcGIS Pro — Tool Reference
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Tool Reference › Cartography › Manage Custom Graphics and North Arrows

Manage Custom Graphics and North Arrows

Cartography · ribbon tool with its own window · by Jeff Jenness
Works at every ArcGIS Pro license level

Summary

Registers your own images as graphics and north arrows, so they appear in the add-in's Add Graphics and North Arrows galleries beside the built-in ones. Once an image is registered, a company logo, an agency seal or a favorite north arrow goes onto a map or layout with one click, with no browsing for the file each time. The same window sets each image's focal point, the point that the Circle Background tool can center its circle on.

The Manage Custom Graphics and North Arrows window on its North Arrows tab. The list on the left shows four built-in north arrows under Jenness Enterprises and one under My North Arrows, named My_North_Arrow, which is selected. On the right are its name, its file (a PNG image, 170 by 503 pixels) and a preview: a tall black arrow with a round maroon logo on its shaft and a red crosshair on the center of the logo. Below the preview the Focal point boxes read X 0.5 and Y 0.453, with a Center button and an Apply to Selected Element button
The Manage window, with a north arrow registered. The crosshair on the preview marks the image's focal point.

Opening the window

On the ribbon, Add Graphics and North Arrows are each a button over a gallery. Click the arrow under either button to open its gallery, then click Manage... at the foot of the gallery.

The Add Graphics button on the ribbon with its gallery open below it, showing four compass thumbnails under the heading Jenness Enterprises. Manage... at the foot of the gallery is highlighted in yellow, with a blue arrow pointing to it
Manage... at the foot of the Add Graphics gallery. The North Arrows gallery has the same entry.

The window has two tabs, Graphics and North Arrows, and it opens on the tab of the gallery it was called from. The two tabs work the same way, and each keeps its own list. An image registered on the Graphics tab appears in the Add Graphics gallery only. To have the same image in both galleries, register it on both tabs.

The North Arrows button and its gallery are available only while a layout view is active, because a north arrow belongs to a layout. The window itself does not block ArcGIS Pro while it is open, so the map or layout can be worked on with the window beside it.

Registering an image

This example registers a logo as a graphic.

  1. Click Add Image..., below the list.
The Manage Custom Graphics and North Arrows window on its Graphics tab, listing the four built-in compass graphics, with the Add Image... button at the lower left circled in blue
The Graphics tab before anything has been registered. Add Image... is below the list.
  1. Browse to the image and click Open. Several images can be selected and registered at once. PNG, JPEG, BMP, GIF, TIFF, SVG and EMF files can be registered.
A file dialog titled Register Images as Graphics, showing a folder of images with one selected: My_Logo.png, a round maroon logo. The File name box reads My_Logo.png
Choosing the image to register.
  1. The image is added to the list, in a section of its own below the built-in designs, and it is selected. The line at the bottom of the window says which gallery it has gone into.
The Manage window after registering the logo. The list now has a My Graphics section with one entry, My_Logo, which is selected. The preview shows the round maroon logo with a red crosshair at its center, and the Focal point boxes read X 0.5 and Y 0.5. The line at the bottom reads: Registered My_Logo. It is now in the Add Graphics gallery
The logo, registered. Its focal point starts at the center of the image.

Each image is named after its file. To change the name, type a new one in the Name box and press Enter. The name is shown under the image's thumbnail in the gallery, and it is the name given to the graphics and north arrows placed from the image. If the name is already in the gallery, a number is added to it.

Remove takes the selected image out of the gallery, after asking. Graphics and north arrows that were already placed from it are not touched.

The add-in keeps its own copy of every registered image with your user profile, in the folder %LOCALAPPDATA%\JennessEnterprises\WildlifeTools\CustomGraphics. The images are therefore available in every project, and the original file can be moved or deleted afterwards.

Transparent backgrounds A logo or a north arrow usually looks best with nothing around it, and that takes an image type that can hold transparency: PNG, GIF, TIFF, SVG or EMF. A JPEG cannot hold transparency, and a BMP as a rule does not, so a logo saved as a JPEG arrives with its background, usually a white rectangle, and the rectangle goes onto the map with it. The preview in this window is drawn on white, so a white background does not show there; the dashed line around the preview marks the edge of the image. If the only copy of a logo is a JPEG, save it as a PNG with a transparent background in an image editor, and register that instead.

Placing a registered image

The registered image now has a thumbnail in the gallery. Open the gallery and click it:

The Add Graphics gallery with a new section, My Graphics, below the four built-in compass thumbnails. It holds one thumbnail, the round maroon logo named My_Logo, which a blue arrow points to
The logo in the Add Graphics gallery, under My Graphics.

Then draw a box on the map or the layout where the graphic should go, or click once to place it at a default size:

Part of a layout showing a topographic map, with a dashed square being dragged out on it and the crosshair cursor at its lower right corner
Drawing a box on a layout.
The same part of the layout with the round maroon logo, reading My Logo, now in the place where the box was drawn, with selection handles around it
The logo placed in the box.

The Add Graphics page has the details of placing a graphic.

Registering a north arrow

A north arrow is registered the same way, on the North Arrows tab. With a layout view active, open the North Arrows gallery, click Manage... at its foot, click Add Image... and browse to the image. The figure at the top of this page shows the result.

North arrows point north A north arrow turns with its map frame. Register an image that is drawn with north pointing straight up, so that it points the right way when the map is rotated.

The new north arrow is then in the North Arrows gallery. Click it there, and click the layout, or draw a box on it, to place the north arrow:

The North Arrows gallery with a section My North Arrows below the four built-in thumbnails, holding one thumbnail: a tall black arrow with a round maroon logo on it, which a blue arrow points to
The north arrow in the gallery, under My North Arrows.
Part of a layout showing a topographic map with green and yellow point symbols, and on it the north arrow: a tall black arrow pointing straight up with a round maroon logo, reading My Logo, on its shaft
The north arrow, placed on a layout.

It is a real north arrow, so it turns with the map. Here the map's rotation is set to 45 degrees, and the north arrow follows:

The Map Properties dialog on its General page, with the Rotation box set to 45.00
The map is rotated 45 degrees in the Map Properties.
The same layout with the map turned 45 degrees: the place names now run diagonally and the north arrow points to the upper left, with its round logo turned with it
The north arrow has turned with the map.

The North Arrows page has the details of placing a north arrow.

Setting the focal point

Every registered image has a focal point: the spot that counts as its center. The current version of this add-in only has one tool that uses this focal point, so it only matters if you plan to use the Circle Background tool and you want a circle centered on that focal point. The Circle Background tool draws a circle behind a selected graphic or north arrow, and it can center the circle on the focal point instead of on the middle of the element.

The two are often not the same place. In the north arrow shown on this page, the logo sits below the middle of the image, because the point above it is longer than the tail below it. In a compass rose, the hub is below the middle when the north point is longer than the others or lettering sits above it. If you want a circle centered on a particular spot of your image, such as the logo or the hub, that spot has to be registered here as the image's focal point. If you never use Circle Background on the image, the focal point can be left where it is.

The north arrow on the layout with a pale circle behind it. The circle is centered on the round logo, so the point of the arrow reaches well past the top of the circle and the tail just past the bottom
A circle background centered on the north arrow's focal point, which was set on the center of the logo.

The window shows a preview of the selected image with a crosshair on it. There are three ways to move the crosshair:

Center puts the focal point back in the middle. A new image starts with its focal point at the center, which is right for most symmetrical designs.

Every graphic or north arrow placed from a registered image carries the image's focal point with it. The focal point moves and scales with the element, so it stays on the same spot of the picture however the element is resized.

Changing a focal point later

Select the image again and move the crosshair. Graphics placed from then on use the new focal point. Graphics that are already on a map or layout keep the focal point they were placed with. To update one of those, select it on the map or layout and click Apply to Selected Element. If several elements are selected, all of them get the focal point.

Apply to Selected Element works on any element, not only on one placed from a registered image. It is therefore also the way to give a focal point to a picture or graphic that was put on the layout by other means.

The built-in graphics

The add-in's own compass graphics and north arrows are listed in the window too, at the top of each list, with their focal points shown as examples of where a focal point belongs. They cannot be renamed, removed or changed.

Recommended citation

Jenness, J. 2026. Manage Custom Graphics and North Arrows. Wildlife and Forestry Tools add-in for ArcGIS Pro, v. 1.113.62.1 (October 2026). Jenness Enterprises. Available at: https://github.com/JeffJenness/Wildlife_Tools.

Credits and references

By Jeff Jenness, Jenness Enterprises (www.jennessent.com).

The basemap under the maps in the figures on this page is Esri's USA Topo Maps basemap (copyright © 2013 National Geographic Society, i-cubed).

Licensing information

Works at every ArcGIS Pro license level (Basic, Standard, Advanced). No extension licenses are required.