July/August 2011 Lite Challenge Entry: Glandred's Hollow

[anomiecoalition]

Hey all...figured this challenge would be a good excuse to try to get to know photoshop better and go beyond the few tutorials that i've attempted. I've decided to use the shape provided as the rough outline of a mountain with interior space used to depict a river valley and town. (I've taken a few liberties with the shape - i.e. I filled in a big hole that was in the top of it - figured that it was very unlikely that my entry would be competitive anyway).

Next step is to start the town...but...i'm really really new at this and would certainly appreciate any comments, critiques, suggestions that could be thrown my way.

### LATEST WIP ###
Glandreds Hollow_v1.jpg

*In particular - not really sure about the scale I should be using. I figure that most of the buildings should be pretty small - but any advice here would also be helpful.

[Korash]

I think scale would depend on how tall the "mountains" are. If you want to make this a town and environs, I would think of them as Hills more mountains, and that would allow you to have a larger scale, with the town around the lake instead of on one side of it. Think along the lines of a Box Canyon town sort of thing. Just a suggestion though

A couple of comments though...You might want to place the river layer on top of the mountain layer because the sources fade into the mountains. Another is maybe to blur the lower layers of the mountains a bit more to have them blend in a bit better. As is they look quite a bit "stepped".

[anomiecoalition]

Thanks for the feedback...I've tried to smooth out the mountain edges a bit and will try to play around the with the rivers soon (I saw someone on these forums talking about a path tool and playing with the stroke settings - might give that a try).

This version contains my attempt at the walls, road, bridges, and buildings. (I was quite excited to learn how to import brushes for the buildings - And if anyone knows where I can find more/knows how to rotate brushes, please let me know). Anyone have any advice on how to do fields and trees? How to do bridges better? Any other comments/criticisms are appreciated.

### LATEST WIP ###
Glandreds Hollow_v2.jpg

[anomiecoalition]

Not much of a change...just experimenting with brushes

### LATEST WIP ###
Glandreds Hollow_v3.jpg

[anomiecoalition]

### latest wip ###
Glandreds Hollow_v3.jpg

[anomiecoalition]

Made some more progress. But having a real problem with exporting the image. Can anyone tell me why my mountains look flat in the export compared to the screen shot? I've tried increasing the quality of the jpeg export and that didn't seem to help. (*I'm a real noob when it comes to photoshop.)

Glandreds Hollow_v4.jpg Screen Shot.jpg

[Korash]

hmmm, I don't know either...Shame, 'cause I definitely like the screen shot very much better. The hills do really stand out in that one and has an overall better feel to it.

[lostatsea]

I would guess that when you are flattening the image you are losing your layer effects. It is a real problem sometimes and other times It doesn't seem to have an effect. Trying putting a blank layer "BELOW" the mountain layer and then merge it down. That sometimes helps. Also if you are not flattening the image before "Saving as" to the jpeg you will lose all the layers effects. BE SURE to use "SAVE AS" and not "SAVE" then you can simply "UNDO" the image flattening and continue on with the editing progress. It is looking very good. Lets hope this lets you keep the layer effects as it looks much better that way.

[anomiecoalition]

Thanks Lostatsea...unfortunately that did not fix my problem. However it did give me some guidance in terms of what to scour the internet for. After lurking around for 2 hours, I finally found a forum entry on some random website which suggested that you try scaling down the image size. My image size was gigantic (4000 pixels x 3000 pixels). I reduced the image size to 1000 pixels x 800 pixels and now the export works properly. I guess i'll just chalk this one up to newbie error and remember to work with more manageable image dimensions from now on.

### LATEST WIP ###
Glandreds Hollow_v5.jpg

I still consider this a WIP - so any suggestions on how I can improve this are welcome.

[arsheesh]

Oh, I really like the border you've added to this! Nicely done.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh