How to make coastlines in Photoshop?

**Corro** · 01-07-2018, 08:22 AM

Hey, so I'd like to make my first world map and then regions of this world (I'm in 8192x4096,300ppi on ps), I read plenty of tutorials but all are outdated and I'm having issues with making coastlines (especially with the cloud tool which I can't find anywhere) I also have gimp but I don't really like the way it looks like with it:
map.png
mostly because the quality of the image is pretty bad and when zoming in it looks awful

So I'd like you to explain me how to make coastline and outlines that go with it in one of those styles please:
Bartas.png
https://www.cartographersguild.com/s...756#post363756

thank you so much

**johnvanvliet** · 01-07-2018, 10:24 PM

practice , and more practice

for a line drawing map the top is not too bad as a starting point
smooth the edges a but

one way is to use the select tool and select the white , then grow it by 3 pixels , then reduce it by 3

this will remove some of the small clutter

as to the outline
that example is hand drawn

the grow / shrink tool can be used also to make those lines
shrink the white by say 10 then use the intersect option and grow by 1 ( there are many different combos that can be used )
then fill with the bucket

for the type of maps i do ,i need to blend into the sealevel tone
heightmaps like this

upload.png

**QED42** · 01-08-2018, 07:58 AM

There are some ways to semi cheat at this. A couple of decent sources for things to base continent or island shapes can be found on google image search. Both space nebula and storm clouds can be find in good quality images that you then convert to black and white images and use the select by colour tool on. Play with the settings till you get some shapes you like the look of. NASA has some great high quality images of both online that you can use but I'm sure there are other sources people could suggest too.

To give some examples this started out as a storm cloud and this started out as a nebula. In both instances I just made a single continent but you can easily combine a few different ones to make up a whole world.

**Corro** · 01-08-2018, 03:09 PM

But I'd like to make my own coastlines :/

**Corro** · 01-08-2018, 03:13 PM

But I did this with Gimp but the quality isn't that good so I'd like to make it with photoshop but I can't make coastlines out of a shape I drew and this is annoying :/
also your map is really nice I'd like to make something like this but I can't figure out how to make them :/

**johnvanvliet** · 01-08-2018, 10:30 PM

for the April challenge i started with this very simple line drawing ( in Gimp )
land.png

then added a over all squiggle
land1.png

from there painted in rough height data and the rest is a lot different than what you are doing .

plasma /cloud /perlin noise makes a good starting point for the outline for a line drawing