[Award Winner] Making Photo-realistic Trees in GIMP: A Mini-Tut

[arsheesh]

He, he. My wife says these trees look like Broccoli florets. She thinks I ought to rename this tutorial "How to make Broccoli Forests". One other thing I forgot to mention earlier:

• Making room for Rivers: Since I was using a map that already had rivers running through it, I found that after making the shape of the Forests (Step 1.5.d.), I had to go back and paint black over the areas of the white tree shapes where the rivers ran. It's important to do this step before you create the Trees Outline Channel (Step 1.6.). This will save you from having to go back later and do allot of erasing to make room for the rivers. This same tip will of course apply to other geographical features as well. E.g. in the example I gave in my last post, I apparently didn't pay very close attention and allowed the forests to run into the sea. If I had been paying closer attention I could have simply painted black over that portion of the tree shapes to begin with.