Thread: Generic nameless first map

There is an excellent tutorial by Pasis called "Rising up the Mountains in photoshop" which I would check out. It also goes into rivers and forests in later versions in that post. It could point out more ideas than I can, LOL.

Other than that it is a nice first pass at the map and quite serviceable. The hard edge on the coast is a bugger for my eyes, however.

Nice work - and a map in your first post = bravo :-). I actually like the sharp coastline, but if the intent is a photorealistic orbital view, it feels out of place. The rivers could stand a bit more random wiggling than smooth sweeps. The high degree of detail on the coastline says "photo" or "super-accurate high-res" -- it would pin things down for you to give us a scale bar (I realize you're not done yet). What scale were you thinking of? That would have a lot of bearing on whether the mountains should get more crinkley or not.

Too, you have every bit of the coast with the same level of fractal jagginess. Even in a small-scale map it's fine to have some coastlines smooth - look at real world landforms, and you'll see the sandy/beachy/muddy bits having quite smooth edges.

It's already pleasant, and I like where you're going - keep working on it!

The colors are really awesome, kind of want to try this tutorial now.

Thanks for the replies - I'm going to look into the "Rising up the Mountains" Tutorial - hopefully it helps me. I think you are right on the sharp coastline and I should change it - maybe change the colors or take it away completely. On the topic of rivers - you are absolutely right. This was my first time working with paths and I should try to make them more realistic.

On the topic of scale - I honestly haven't thougth about this. At first I wanted to make a whole continent but the outcome seems more like a medium sized island to me. Is there too much texture? I don't really understand why it looks like an island to me rather than a continent.

Hey there. If you created the mountains like Tear's tutorial said, then increasing the opacity of the mountain layers should do the trick.

So I worked on it a bit more, reduced the border, tried to elevate the mountains a bit - thanks to s0meguy for the hint. I also added a bit of noise to the mountains but not too much - I hope. Changed the color of the water a bit and lightened up the coastal areas a bit. The rivers are still unchanged but not as visible as before so I think about leaving them as they are.

What I still need to do is soften up the coastal areas a bit. They still seem to be too rough for my taste but I need to experiment a bit with them.

This is what I've got so far. What do you think? Better than before, or have I overdone some effects? Please let me know.