Dominion of Darkness

[spiderfate]

first attempt at the shadow effect.

[spiderfate]

added some features

[PeaceHeather]

That - is freakin' gorgeous. You probably already know that you'll need to dull down the added compass and such, and add the slightest drop shadow to the map so it isn't "floating" on the wood background.

Gorgeous. Have some rep.

[Ascension]

Resist the urge to decorate your map with things like the compass, ruler, and calipers. First, they never seem to have the same light source and that creates different shadows. Second, as you can see, they get blurry or blotchy when resizing. Instead, put things that you need in those places - a scale bar, a title or cartouche, compass rose, borders/frame, and legend/key. That way you can kill the dead space and not hokey it up.

[jtougas]

This turned out Great !! I'd agree with Ascension on the decorative bits however.

[spiderfate]

how about just the compass?

[jtougas]

Thats not bad but it's still bright. Also I just noticed your "table" texture is made up of hundreds of planks. you might want to either resize it or use one with bigger planks

[spiderfate]

lol...how do you know its not a giant table.. ill have to do it at the end when i resize it to small

i wish you could easily scale patterns in photoshop

[Yandor]

lol...how do you know its not a giant table.. ill have to do it at the end when i resize it to small

i wish you could easily scale patterns in photoshop

I usually cheat this (depending on the quality of the texture/pattern) but I make a layer, fill with white, apply a layer mask on what ever the layer is suppose to cover, so in your case the background around the map, and go into the Layer Style and apply a Pattern Overlay, and your able to scale the texture/pattern to get a fairly decent result, I usually will do a copy merged, so you have a flat layer (no styles or anything) of the pattern

Just an idea...

[spiderfate]

finished