[Award Winner] Photoshop Mapping with Chuck

[overlordchuck]

Part 3

Now, make a brand new layer on top of everything, fill with white, and difference clouds the hell out of that sucker. Jezelf suggests 30 times, and that is not a bad number, though of course you can use more or less as desired (see step9).

Now change that layer’s blending to difference (see step10).

Duplicate your original inverted layer and move the duplicate to the top, and set its blending to color burn. Now make a new layer, and use a soft black brush on a low opacity to darken areas that you think shouldn’t be mountainous. The whiter the area is, the higher the elevation will be (see step11).

Now, duplicate visible by selecting the canvas (Ctrl+A) with Ctrl+Shift+C. Open up the channels tab beside the layers tab and make a new alpha layer (basically just like making a standard layer) and paste the picture into the alpha layer. Go back to the layers tab, make a new layer, fill with white, and run a lighting effects filter on that, using settings somewhere around here (notice I haven’t moved from jezelf’s majestic tutorial’s settings; see step12).

Put this layer on overlay, and you should get something like this (see step13).

Now, save this map as a .PNG, something like heightmap.png or whatever. Prettypinkpanties.png if you really want. It’s up to you, and I won’t question your filename preferences.