The Western Baronies

[Yandor]

Well one way I've found once I've added so many layers of color and other stuff, just grab all those layers (that involved my forests etc) copied it to another image, flattened them together and pasted it back in, there might be a bit of a difference depending on the transparency levels and blend modes, but in general I can usually get the entire group of layers to match up in the one, so then I can do as Ascension purposed, making that cloud layer and putting it over the top.... I haven't read through your tutorial, but just a thought, and maybe you've already done this but hey thought I'd pass it along...

oh and always keep the originals of those layers, as you probably already know about =P

[arsheesh]

I can't believe I didn't think of that... Thanks Yander I'll give it a try and see how it works.

[Yandor]

Just remember if you do that, that if you ever want to adjust the forests (size, shape etc) you have to go back to the originals and redo it there... its a pain but thats the only way I've gotten past what your going through

[arsheesh]

Well, following Yander's suggestion, I went back and tried to tamper with the forests again, creating multiple layers of color set to Hue. I'm still unsure as to whether I've done this correctly, but here are the results of my efforts. The first pic is what the forests looked like before, and the second pic shows what they look like now. To be honest though, I actually prefer the former "greener" look, but perhaps that's just me. I also enlarged the main river a bit as well.

Edit: oh, and I should also mention that I ended up still needing to set the layer mode of the "Tree Bumps" layer to normal, instead of overlay since otherwise there wasn't much texture at all to the forests.

[Yandor]

Well the effect worked, one thing I did also, is once I got the effect in, I went back through with an eraser (I used Grundge Brush) and to low opacity and just went at it, I mostly reverted back to the "greener" but had its spots of more brown/red/dark green forests still their as well. Also another time I used a texture, with similar colors as my map/forests and put it on a lower opacity and messed with the blending layer, so it gave a slight difference in the forest coloring... Just trying to give you ideas, hopefully something will help you out.

[tilt]

looking good - nice work

[arsheesh]

Well Yander, my wife liked the browner forests that I made using your advice (though I have yet to grunge brush it), so I think they are here to stay. I also removed the snow caps layer from the mountains. They looked less like snow, and more like glare. I may toy with them a bit to see if I can get them to look right. For now however, I've added the Baronies and some villages, Inns, logging camps and ruins (as well as the roads connecting them). I have also added a compass. Still need give names to features of the terrain.

Some of you may recognize one of the names of the Baronies: "Falcon's Hollow." This town is at the center of several modules written by Paizo. In fact, I am running one such model right now in my Tales of Darkmoon Vale campaign. While Paizo came up with regional maps for the terrain surrounding Falcon's Hollow (Darkmoon Vale), these maps were set within the Pathfinder campaign world of Golarion. I on the other hand, am running the campaign within my own campaign world of Eriond, hence, I wanted a map of the region surrounding Falcon's Hollow that fit within my world. This map is thus a hybrid of Golarion's "Darkmoon Vale" and Eriond's "Western Baronies."

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[hohum]

Looks good arsheesh. I think all of the tweaks are looking good. Your latest round of forest got me thinking about a technique I learned to make text look like a rubber stamp. I think something like that might also help to punch random holes in the forest canopy. I'll try to put something together.

EDIT - Oops, I was replying to page 1. Still it looks good, I like the change to the mountains. It looks like you added some kind of pattern overlay.

[tilt]

looking really good - the roads are rding a lttle low, they look like they've been carved into the landscape. Now I don't know how you made them, but if you used emboss, try setting the emboss value to 0 or to reverse the direction up/down

[arsheesh]

Oops, looks like my attachments have gotten lost in the shuffle. Well anyway here is the latest iteration of the Western Baronies. Thanks for all of the constructive criticism guys.

Hohum, the forests initially were created with clearings in them, I later covered these up with individual trees because they didn't quite look right. However, I think I might go back and erase some of these trees so that there are at least some forest clearings.

Tilt, you are correct, I did emboss the roads. The indentation was intentional, I wanted them to look somewhat inlaid. However perhaps it is too much. I'll tinker with the layer opacity to try to tone them down a bit. I was hopping to finish this map soon, but I am now facing allot of school work so I'm not sure when the next update will be. Thanks again for all of your help everyone, y'all have helped me to greatly improve my map.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh