[Award Winner ] Creating an old-school map in Gimp.

[RobA]

Bravo. A question, though (my GIMP-fu is nonexistent): can the Gimp provide this map with a bit of finishing stress? As it is, it looks very aggressively digital ... perfectly-sharp/crisp lines, symbols and labels.

In Photoshop, this could be amended pretty easily in the middle stages with a bit of screened noise, a soft blur, and a re-firming of the "spot ink" by adjusting the contrast - voila. What would be (if you have time) the comparable procedure for those of us just getting our toes wet in Gimp?

The three methods I tend to use (depending on what I want) are:

Spread Filter (this was a 1px spread):


Displacement Map filter using plasma noise:


Displacement Map filter using cloud noise:


-Rob A>

[Ghalev]

The three methods I tend to use (depending on what I want) are:

Thankee; more grist for the mill in my head (ow. ow. ow. ow. ahhh.).

[RPMiller]

So did TSR really produce those maps in nonphoto blue to prevent xeroxing or did they just like the color? Inquiring minds want to know.

[RobA]

I'd think, yes. It was to prevent copying.

-Rob A>

[Ghalev]

So did TSR really produce those maps in nonphoto blue to prevent xeroxing [...]

Yeah. For similar reasons, they did many runs of the official AD&D character sheets on paper with a fairly heavy orangey-browney background that was difficult to photocopy (without great care it would produce a muddy swamp of grey mess), and in some later things they used red screens for similar reasons, since red photocopies as almost-black.

I'm just glad they grew out of their "Blue Period" in time to do awesome maps like the I6: Ravenloft plans

[Badger]

OH man I6 RULED as a map when it came out ... I LOVED that map and it was a fun (?deadly?) adventure too... but I sooo fell in love with that map... we should have a gimp tutorial on creating one of those maps!! ... probably be easier in Illustrator tho ... more than PS or GIMP ... or actually I imagine that you could knock one out in Google Draw pretty quick...

nophoto blue... the earliest form of anti-piracy protection ... you can't hardly find any nophoto blue pencils or anthing like that anymore.. I know.. I've tried on a number of occasions in the past couple years.. I finally gave up ... just sketch with some blue colored pencils...

[Ghalev]

... probably be easier in Illustrator tho ...

It is, yes.

[Badger]

Illustrator just takes soooo long to get used too and to learn.... you see even less tutorials about mapping with Illustrator than you do with CC3... on here that is... I was hoping to put together some when I get the time... it really does help you learn if you make a 'tutorial' about what you are doing... I've been using Xara for a week now and I already feel more comfortable using that than I do my illustrator... for making map objects....

sorry to jack your thread torstan, I'll shut up now