Fantasy World using Photoshop

[SkinnyKazoo]

Ok so after having created my first map using CC3 I felt that something was missing for me. After looking through the tutorials I discovered Ascension's Atlas style using photoshop. So all props go to Ascension for the one.

I am posting this as a WIP because I am having trouble with creating borders and placing cities and that kind of thing. Any tips or suggestions are welcome....So without further ado, my new untitled world map.

[Ascension]

First, it looks very bumpy. My suggestion (take it or leave it) would be to take out a big eraser (100 or 300 pixel airbrush tip) and turn the flow down to 5-10% then erase some of those bumps. With the low flow you can go over an area many many times before it is completely gone so the eraser works kind of like sculpting. If you want more refined valleys then use a smaller tip.

For the borders, I assume you're referring to national borders. Grab the pencil tool, use a 2-pixel hard square tip, draw a shape and make sure that the ends meet. Grab the paint bucket tool and fill the shape. Ctrl-click on the "base" layer, select - inverse, then hit delete on the keyboard and deselect. This makes the shape fit the coastline without altering anything inland. Set the fill of the layer to 0, add a layer style of stroke and inner glow of whatever colors you want. When doing the other nations you will also have to delete the parts that overlap inland. For that you ctrl-click on one nation, select - inverse, delete and deselect. If you have 20 nations that process can take a while.

On the plus side, looks pretty good so far

[Slylok]

Agreed with Ascension. I would also blur out that white layer. You can see clearly a bunch of circles where you painted it in. Try using the gaussian blur filter (filter > blur > gaussian blur) and play with the settings until you like it.

I like the colors you chose and I think it's gonna turn out looking great.

[Ascension]

Good catch on the painting, I only skimmed it. You need to use an airbrush tip and not a soft round tip, there's a world of difference.

[SkinnyKazoo]

Thanks for the tips guys, the land does look quite bumpy I will have to take the time to smooth it out and I now understand those national borders. thanks for the advice on the painted circles as well, those were really bugging me...

[SkinnyKazoo]

Well here is what it looks like after I applied the gaussian blur, attempted (key word here is attempted) to smooth the hills a bit, and added names and national borders...I also deleted the lat/long lines because I didn't like the look of them.

[Seretur]

The blur successfully eliminated the little circles, but I dislike the text. It looks really cluttered now. Shrinking the text down a bit would help, I think.

[SkinnyKazoo]

Alright I reduced the country text sizes here and I must say it looks light years better. I've also added stars for capital locations and I am in the process of brainstorming names for said capitals....any more tips and advice is most welcome because what I've got so far has helped me alot....

[Slylok]

Looks much better and is progressing nicely. The arctic continent at the top of the map seems to have missed the blur and the brush strokes are still visible.

[Seretur]

Indeed, much better. And nice catch, Slyok. But how did it escape?