Brushes, Etc. from Chashio

[Chashio]

A consolidation of my mapping element creations. In this thread I'll be offering a variety of useful scribbles like brushes (in flat jpeg, or png/abr form if you're lucky), photoshop actions, textures, illustrations, etc, and I may even include some examples or suggestions for using them if I have time.

Everything I post here is for free, non-commercial use. Attribution is appreciated. If you would like to use something from this thread commercially (as in: use some of these creations in your own project which you've done extensive work on; NOT redistributing these creations as your own or charging others for using them) then please send me a message and ask for permission directly. Thank you.

I would love to see what you do with this stuff, so leave a link if you want to!

Thread Content Links:
HandDrawn Brushes: mountains, trees, grass, cattails
Photoshop Actions: Fading parallel Coastal Lines for Oceans and Lakes

[Chashio]

Some hand-drawn mapping elements. Originals were drawn in pen/brush-pen on paper. Includes: mountains, trees in various styles, and marshy stuff like grass clumps and cattails. They are sort of hodgepodge, as I wasn't thinking "mapping set" when I doodled them on paper. Oh well. EDIT: Individual elements are now isolated as photoshop brushes and uploaded in two .abr files. Here's the LINK.

HandDrawn from2012.jpg

In the new picture (above) they've been reorganized on the page, and grid-spaced. If I have time I'll mask them onto a transparent layer for use with the clone tool and other programs, but for now... I tried to sort them logically by type and size, or by the type of tool I was using to draw them... they are what they are. They're also in the order they appear in the brush files, if that helps.

The Files:
Vegetation includes, in order: conifers; pines; broadleaf (w/ground); broadleaf (no ground); broadleaf (bare); grass; cattails.
Terrain includes the mountains.

[Schwarzkreuz]

This are very splendid brushes. I Hope to see more of you soon!

[Wingshaw]

I really like these. Hard to imagine how some of them would turn out when miniaturised, but they're fantastic drawings in their own right. Repped.

[gbsilverio]

Those are awesome!

Made me feel ashamed of my mountains, though!

[Chashio]

I really like these. Hard to imagine how some of them would turn out when miniaturised, but they're fantastic drawings in their own right. Repped.

Thank you. I'm glad you like them. =) Admittedly, I was just scribbling in my sketchbook to get a feel for a couple of new pens I'd acquired... so a lot of them have too much detail for the map part of mapping... but I've also found similar drawings useful for putting together border decorations like you see in old parchment maps.

[Chashio]

Those are awesome!

Made me feel ashamed of my mountains, though!

Thanks. I looked through your current project thread... and I see nothing to be ashamed of. I enjoyed watching your progression of style experiments. Very nice =)

[arsheesh]

Lovely work Chashio, thanks for sharing.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[Chashio]

Inspired by another thread in the forums, I put together a small set of photoshop actions to create a few variations of parallel contour lines which are often seen as a design element on the watery parts of maps.

There are, as always, quite a few ways to go about creating anything in photoshop, but for these actions I used a style:stroke approach. All of the lines created with these actions are 3px wide, the fading effect is via opacity on the stroke itself, and the final layer each action creates has a transparent background (not white) so you don't have to set the layer to multiply unless you have other reasons to. If for some reason you want to adjust the opacity or stroke-thickness of the individual lines, just click back in your history to before the merge and then edit the specific layer's effect.

Included in the folder which I will link to below, is a jpg preview of one of the actions which also lists the contents of the atn file, the atn (action) file itself, and a psd file with layers showing the effects of the included actions. You can download any or all of these files.

Hopefully the use of these actions is self-explanatory (their titles include what part of your map to select), but if you have trouble please don't hesitate to leave a comment below; I or someone who knows the answer should be able to offer assistance.

This offering is for free, non-commercial use, so please don't redistribute anything for money. You're welcome to distribute a link back here if you find it useful enough to share with others. Attribution is also appreciated (see above for details).

Oh, before I forget... here's the folder link: LINK

And so everyone knows what we're talking about, here's the jpg preview image.
Fading parallel Coastal Lines for Oceans - Lakes.jpg


LATER: I was asked if the general style of the lines could be edited simply. I came up with this:

Here's an example of using a pattern fill on a mask to affect the style of the coastal lines... this example shows one of the actions in the atn file, before and after I apply the mask to the layer. With two additional things you can do, which are only necessary if you're obsessed with details, like I am.

53354d1365297830-lines-off-set-parallel-photoshop-masking-affect-style-coastal-lines-maps-before.jpg 53355d1365297867-lines-off-set-parallel-photoshop-masking-affect-style-coastal-lines-maps-after.jpg 53358d1365299411-lines-off-set-parallel-photoshop-masking-affect-style-coastal-lines-duplicate-l.jpg Masking to affect the style of coastal lines - add blur.jpg

[ravells]

Thanks for this Cashio.

If I start without a selection active I get the error 'the command expand is not currently available'

If I start with a selection active I get a 'could not complete this action because of a program error'

I'm using CS4. Any idea as to what might be going wrong?

Looking at the action step by step, the problem seems to be at this step here:

>Fill
From 12.417 inches, 9.778 inches

I'm guessing those specific measurements mean that the action only works on a canvas of a particular size?