Mapping in Paint.NET - a basic tutorial

[PeaceHeather]

Stage 2 – Create your layers

Effects > Render > Clouds

Go for a large size and high roughness – size 450 on up to 700 (the default is 250) gives good results for larger landmasses and roughness .75 gives nice edges for coastlines and such.

Duplicate this layer
On the new layer:

Adjustments > Levels

The levels are marked 0 (black) to 255 (white)
Adjust the black output from 0 up to about 64 or lower. This is ¼ of 255 and should give you four usable layers, which is all we need for this tutorial.

[TWEAK ALERT: Try only changing the level only slightly, say to 10 or so, and see what happens. You might end up with more layers to work with, but I haven't tried it yet to see.]

Repeat the above steps, duplicate and level adjust, as many times as you want.

Once you have established your settings in the Levels dialogue, you won't have to reset them – just hit Adjustments > Levels > OK.
Some of the lighter layers will prove to be unusable, but you will be able to weed those out in the next stage.

Interlude – Which layers to use?

At this point, you have a choice to make, and from what results I've been able to get so far, either one will give good results. For an overview, what we will be doing in the next stages is taking each land layer and making it resemble a specific elevation on the overall map. We do this by giving it texture to resemble height, masking some of it off to distinguish it from the other land layers, and then coloring it. We'll do the same thing to the ocean layer, apart from the masking which operates a little differently.

So what's the choice, you're asking me. Well. The original way I had written these directions, when you complete Stage 2, you end up with four distinct layers, then you use each one to create your sea, low lands and plains, hills and mountains, and snowy peaks. But I discovered that the way I was making my maps actually involved using the sea layer to create both the ocean and my lowlands – and then, as far as I can tell, I ended up discarding one of the other three layers. The result of doing this would give me larger landmasses overall (because I'm starting with a lower "elevation", as it were), and correspondingly smaller, more separate oceans. Then, depending on which layer I actually discard, I end up with different proportions of peaks and highlands, compared to the lowlands.

Is this making any sense? Would it help to say that instead of using layers ABCD, I'm using AA, and then either BC, BD, or CD to make my final image?

Well, even if that doesn't make sense, I've either discovered a mistake I'd been making, or a massive Tweak Alert for people to play with. Since this is my tutorial, I'm going to make myself sound wise and declare that I've just given you a whole new set of possibilities to consider. Aren't I great that way?

Whichever option you decide to go with is up to you; at this point, you should either duplicate the bottom layer, or not (this only works for the darkest layer). Then label four of the layers from darkest to lightest with something like Ocean, Lowland, Highland, and Peaks. Or you can call them Blue, Green, Brown and Gray, or One, Two, Three, and Four. Whatever. Call them John, Paul, George, and Ringo if you want to.

Whatever you call them, if you decide to keep a fifth layer for experimenting, be sure to label it too. We won't do any coloring until Stage 4, so you'll be able to hold off on making your final decisions until then.

Right, back to the instructions.