Small inlet in a larger world.

[Kagehito]

Ok so first off, let me just say that I almost didn't post this cause I looked around and Wow! I suck compared to all of you >_<

Any way, Heres the map.
It's for a small little forum based RP, just all the surrounding locations around the City of Miyr, the central point of the campaign.

Hand drawn and colored in Fireworks.



Feeback is awesome!

[The Cartographist]

Kagehito - Never NEVER stop yourself from posting something, because you think that you "suck". This place is super friendly and there are people that will offer good, constructive criticism (and praise) for anything that is posted.

The map is clean and gets the point across.

Others will probably offer you lots of thoughts (heed all of them) regarding specific strengths, weaknesses, and suggestions, but I think that it's fine.

[Kagehito]

ok one thing I want to ask...

How do you stop that "Fuzzy Text" thing from happening?

The .PNG didn't have that, but if i convert it to Gif or to Jpg, it does that..

Any work arounds?

[pyrandon]

Kagehito, this is, as Cartographist said, clean and effective. The font, colors, and the drawing style are very plain, which is not incorrect in the least, although bland to the eye. But then. this would depend upon your purpose for use in the map: if a handout, I would say insert more interest &/or authenticity & style; if for a quick & effective snapshot of terrain, it's fine as is!

I do think you may make the mistake of splitting rivers downstream--which in reality only very rarely ever occurs. The swampy area may be justified, but is that what's occurring east of the mountains?

Also, the outlines of the coasts stop at unusual places, which gives it an unfinished appearance.

I wonder if Fireworks is the best program for taking that "next step" in improving your maps? I do not know the software, but can it do more sophisticated things like applying filters, overlays, and blending modes? Can it import and use textures and other effects? If not, these are major reasons to switch to Photoshop (if you can afford it) or the GIMP (it's free).

As for the fuzzy fonts, I do not know. I'm sure Arcana will be able to answer that. I usually have my maps as attachments rather than inserts, and I have never had this problem. Maybe that's it?

Thanks for posting this! Looking forward to seeing more from you.

[Midgardsormr]

That's an artifact of the compression algorithms the jpg format uses. If you use a png export from Fireworks, though, you can upload it here. You can't use the working png, though. You have to actually export it rather than simply save.

You should not be seeing artifacts in gif, though--it's lossless. There might be a problem with the way Fireworks does the conversion.

I really like your mountains. I tend to overdo the mountains, putting more symbols than I need on the map.

I think instead of using "call-out" lines for the labels, you would do better to simply place the labels in close proximity to the icons. Also, the labels that cross solid black lines are a little bit obscured. Especially Crater Fountain and Goblin Cave. If you put a semi-transparent, light-colored object behind them they'll stand out better. I don't recall off the top of my head if Fireworks has any glow effects that can be applied to text, but that would also work.

[Badger]

that is because PNG is a lossless format, you don't lose any pixels to compression, where jpg and gif skip pixels to make the file smaller... if you lower the compressioin rates on the jpg and gifs... it might help

** we all answered at almost the same time... too funny, but at least he's getting some anwers, eh??

[Badger]

Does fireworks use vectors? ... I know nothing of this software at all...

[Redrobes]

that is because PNG is a lossless format, you don't lose any pixels to compression, where jpg and gif skip pixels to make the file smaller... if you lower the compressioin rates on the jpg and gifs... it might help

** we all answered at almost the same time... too funny, but at least he's getting some anwers, eh??

PNG is lossless and up to full color.
JPG is usually lossy and either full color or grayscale only.
GIF is at best 256 palette but is lossless once color depth is dropped. GIF is inferior to PNG for everything except animated icons. If your seeing a loss with GIF its probably the lack of full color range. There should not be any option to set the compression rate for a GIF.

[Midgardsormr]

Does fireworks use vectors? ... I know nothing of this software at all...

Fireworks is the Macromedia raster editor. It is exceptionally good at preparing images for display on the web, but it lacks the versatility of Photoshop or Gimp. Macromedia's vector app is called Freehand.

When Macromedia was absorbed by Adobe, they kept Fireworks as part of the web-development kit because it was so good at its job. I imagine they'll eventually fold it into ImageReady, though.

[Badger]

sorry about giving out bad advice... I should probably leave the answering of questions to people who actually know more about it than I do...

and ImageReady I do know... so that gives me an idea of it. I've had maps do this in the past to me... back when I was using CC2 and I believe I was using PSP to compress jpg's... maybe it has something to do with the actual exporting stage... If i remember correctly PSP has several options about web-safe colors and the fuzziness might be from choosing a form of compression like that.... just a thought anyway

Del