This is me trying out a "hand-drawn" look...
Well, this map has no name, and I don't think it ever will get one, it is just me trying out a hand-drawn map style, and I think I could use some advice. I started out with Gidde's Hand Drawn Map Tutorial for GIMP and tried to convert it to Photoshop, and ran in to a couple of problems.
I can't get the tree / mountain / symbol brushes in Photoshop (CS3) to still be transparent but with a white color as a background. If I just use the brushes the result is a big mess since I cant "cover a black part of a mountain with a white part of a mountain in front of it". Hope you understand what I mean here... it seems GIMP is capable of this? For this map, I did a workaround painting with the mountain brush all the different mountains I would use, then create a layer beneath them and manually paint in the white areas on this layer. Then I could add them to the map with the Clone Stamp tool. However, this way I lose a lot of options you have with a regular brush, such as the size jitter. Is there an easier way?
Next, my rivers don't look very good. They are basically stroked paths with a faded brush, then blurred. All suggestions welcome here.
I also cant seem to find a simple way to get the mountains to cover the black coastline, look at the top of the bottommost mountain chain, you can clearly see the coastline in a mountain. I suspect this is related to the brush issue above. The mountains layer is set to Multiply, and the colors get really screwed up if i change it to any opaque mode.
Also, I can't duplicate the results in Gidde's tutorial with the "bleeding ink" effect using Photoshop. Any tips here? My labels layer is duplicated, blurred slightly and then each duplicated layer is moved a couple of pixels in different directions.
Lastly, I just applied some "random" filter on the final (?) map, I think it was Poster Edges...
All comments are welcome!
Looks good and 'old fashion'. I think with the rivers having them open in the center with two thinner lines on either side will help that more. Plus it will show how they open up to the ocean rather than being thick chunks of line work. For me at least, I found the names hard to read. I like the mountains though!
Originally Posted by krolac
Yep, this is one of the places GIMP kicks PS's butt... PS has the edge on quite a number of things, but I would hate to upgrade to PS just because of this lack of functionality.
My Finished Maps
Works in Progress(or abandoned tests)
My Tutorials:
Explanation of Layer Masks in GIMP
How to create ISO Mountains in GIMP/PS using the Smudge tool
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Unless otherwise stated by me in the post, all work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
It's a tad more blurry than I prefer to make things myself, but for what it's worth, that looks pretty darn hot.
You're right, Clone Stamp is pretty much the only way around what you ran into, the only way to mess with size jitter etc would be to actually resize and place, then clone the different sizes one at a time (unless i'm missing something somewhere).
The other way i found around it was just to give in and draw out all the mountains by handIt takes a lot of practice, but it's worth it in the long run too, since you get more flexibility.
On the plus side, work has finally settled down .. yes, i'm back to work now, lots of meds, and work helped customize the workstation so I can actually work without being in complete pain
My finished maps
"...sometimes the most efficient way to make something look drawn by hand is to simply draw it by hand..."
OK, here is another try at this... I think that the rivers are somewhat better at least, and the labels are a bit more clear. The texture effect has also been reduced.
I have never worked with GIMP, would it be possible to create the mountains / forest layers in GIMP and export them to Photoshop somehow? For a rather small map like this, clone stamp works well, but I would not want to do that for a really large map.
I totally suck at drawing with pen & paper so I really need this kind of "cheating" to make a decent map.
I really like that map a lot. The only thing that I think is overblurred now are the labels and the markers you've used for the cities. Mountains, hills, trees, coast, sea... all looks great to me.
Royal: I'm very sorry for your loss, your mother was a terribly attractive woman.
My Cartographer's Guild maps: Finished Maps
More maps viewable at my DeviantArt page: Ramah-Palmer DeviantArt
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