[Award Winner] Using GIMP to Create an Artistic Regional RPG Map

[Rhotherian]

Now using the Magic Wand Tool, (making sure Sample Merged is Checked and the Threshold is 0) click anywhere in the dark area. This will define your coast. (!!!) If you want to adjust it, just undo the selection (ctrl-Z) and change the levels of the “Land Clip” layer. I wand back and tightened the coast a bit.

I'm stuck here (I got it up untill the "(!!!)").

My coast doesn't become "defined". It just stays blurry. Sample merge was checked and the threshold was zero, yet nothing happened when I clicked. =/

Infact, when I followed the steps after that when my coastline was suposed to be more varied than before, it actually ended up being less varied - smooth, actually! I even lost half my islands.

I continued anyway, but when I came to the sea part the layer-mask-thing didn't work. Nothing became transparrent.

To make things worse, I just realised that my "brushed, gradients, etc." widdow doesn't display pallets. I also couldn't fins any options to display them. -_-


I followed the instructions exactly as intructed, but I gave up at the sea part as nothing seamed to work... =(


Please help.



Edit: Nevermind, I found the "pallets" tab, so that problem's sorted.

I think I found the probelm. I think it may just be a case of misunderstanding. You see, my GIMP (2.6.7) doesn't have a "lighten" blend option for layers. The only options remotely simmilar are "hard light", "soft light" and "lighten only". The hard and soft light options gave an effect simmilar to what I wanted, but too random, having created or removed land regardless of the blur (I got islands and seas in the middle of nowhere, nowhere near the blured areas). The remaining option, "lighten only", had no effect whatsoever, shining through directly onto the origional map, blurs still showing.

This may be because of the blend mode applied to the "land noise" layer. You see, "overlay" made it invisible. Only when I changed the blend option to everything from "grain extract" to "multiply" did I get results simmilar to the ones above.

So, the main problem boils down to the layer blend options... =(