My first attempt at making an Antique map

[Hannibal.Lector]

With a pen and ink type map like this you want to try to give it a cohesive quality. You want it to all look like it was drawn by the same person with the same inks, and the same pens, at the same time, and getting it wrong shows up much more than with a lot of other styles.

Try to avoid scaling symbols as a drawn symbol has a very particular visual size to it. If you see two scaled versions of a drawing next to each other, they will look wrong. If you need a big tree and a little tree, they should be drawn at those sizes so the big one has more detail. Similarly, if you take two symbols drawn at very different sizes, and scale them to be closer, they will likewise probably look off in this style. Consider absolutely everything: the trees, coastlines, rivers, cities, labels, borders, and even the decorative dragons if you have them. Consider levels of detail, size, line width, contrast, etc.

Variations in blur, resampling, or anti-aliasing, are also very noticeable. Again this tends to result from combining symbols from different sources and sizes. That's not to say you can't mix symbols from different sources, you just need to be careful about picking ones that match.

Blur or excessive antialiasing in general is bad. You want everything to be nice and sharp, within the limit that you also want everything to be equally sharp. Good strong contrast is also desirable.

I try to do maps like this in pure black and white to start, and then add colour once I am entirely happy with the black and white. I generally work in vector graphics, but If I were doing raster, I would probably go for a very high resolution while I work in black and white, and then switch to greyscale or colour and downsample it.

Your terrains seem to form solid looking "lumps" often with boundaries that run along rivers. It gives your map a bit of a "patchwork" look. If you don't want to go into climate modelling, try to just give things a more "amoeba" look and don't follow rivers so much. If anything I'd be more inclined to run rivers through the centres of ecosystems than along the edges though being to consistent in doing either would look odd.

A fairly rudimentary climate model would be to pick areas as being "wet" or "dry" Wet areas tend to be forest, dry areas tend to be grassland/shrubland or desert. Areas around humans tend to get turned into farmland or pasture. Wet areas have rivers forming. From there they flow downhill and merge with other rivers as they go, until they reach the sea, they can pass through dry areas just fine if that's the downhill route, they just won't have many tributaries there. For a bit more depth, pick a prevailing wind direction, make the windward side of mountains wet, and the leeward side dry. For large landmasses, the interior will also tend to be drier. There's a LOT more that can go into a climate model, but that one will give you some ideas as to where to but things so that they look kind of natural and consistent.

Yes, I did not know any of those things. Thank you so much for giving such a detailed explanation. I must also say that I'm fairly new to Photoshop as well. I was intimidated by it before I stated working on my map. Now, I know a few menus and options to make my work a bit smooth. But still, I'm learning more and more every minute about it and map making. I am following two of the tutorials right now to understand how landmasses are made to look real and how to make antique style maps. Once I get an idea of those, I will work on making this even better.

I still am blank in many aspects regarding position of the rivers, placement of the mountains and design of deserts. I am making this world for my novel. Now, I know the land and its people well. But, making this map perfect will help me cater to the story even more. That way, the map would be a good companion to my novel and not just a guide. I have some doubts I need to ask:

1. Can a desert appear next to a grassland? Or vice versa?
2. Do forests necessarily need to be placed next to mountains?
3. Do rivers run around the forests or just cut through them?
4. How does one make the edges of the landmass appear a little higher than the sea?

If any/all of those questions are stupid and obvious, kindly forgive me. I accept that I am very dumb in this regard.

Thank you again for all your kind replies and advice.

[Hai-Etlik]

1. Can a desert appear next to a grassland? Or vice versa?
2. Do forests necessarily need to be placed next to mountains?
3. Do rivers run around the forests or just cut through them?
4. How does one make the edges of the landmass appear a little higher than the sea?

Deserts and grasslands make perfect sense being near each other. Grasslands are often caused by being too dry for forest so they make sense being near deserts.

Forests don't need to be near mountains. It's just that those in mountainous terrain are less likely to have been cut down by humans than those on plains. Most of Europe was once forest for instance.

Really the relationship between forest boundaries and river lines is to complex an indirect for there to be any particular rule. I was just trying to point out how odd of a co-oincidence it is for all the forests to have rivers running the entire lengths of one edge.

There are various different symbols for cliffs. A line representing the cliff top, with little perpendicular lines sticking out to the slope side is fairly common.

If you want a purely decorative effect for the entire coastline, I'd recommend against a "raised" look as that sort of thing usually makes it look like the land is floating. Stipples along the coast might work but it's troublesome to pull off (I've put a lot of work into it). I usually put them in the water, but they can work on land too. Offset lines in the water are a simple, unobtrusive coastline effect that's elegant and easy to make.