Contour Lines

[Ascension]

The way I would tackle hand-making your own contour lines would be to just lay down color blobs, lowest areas in black then proceed up through the grays each on its own layer say in increments of 10, set those layers to zero fill and then put a layer style of stroke on it. That way you can get complete control of where your lines will be. It might take a while and lots of trial and effort to get them right but it gives you complete control.

[Dean]

The way I would tackle hand-making your own contour lines would be to just lay down color blobs, lowest areas in black then proceed up through the grays each on its own layer say in increments of 10, set those layers to zero fill and then put a layer style of stroke on it. That way you can get complete control of where your lines will be. It might take a while and lots of trial and effort to get them right but it gives you complete control.

Hmmm, sounds like a good technique. I should also say, however, that I want the contour lines to be overlaid on a shaded relief map. Would the "coloured blob layers" technique work best before or after doing the actual shaded relief?

I think the best way to achieve what Ascension is talking about would be to make a custom action that automatically generates a low opacity layer UNDER the layer you're working on. That way I could overlay all the contour layers on top of the shaded relief layer, painting them up in real time. Have I got that right?