Originally Posted by
Ascension
Well that depends on if you're going for art or for realistic terrain. For "artsiness" you'd need some color knowledge (split compliments, contrast, color weight, etc) but for a realistic terrain color palette it sort of doesn't matter about color theory. Mother Nature doesn't design her terrain according to what is symmetrically balanced or if the proper purple is balancing out the yellow. Good blending is a must so you have that right. Get a screenshot of a satellite image and just take some sample colors from that. Photoshop makes that rather easy as we can create a whole color swatch from a screenshot. Take your colors and put them wherever you want them with a few exceptions - swamps don't live right next door to deserts; deserts are largely on the 30th parallel (not the equator) and have yellows, tans, oranges, whites, and reds; white is either at the top or bottom for the poles; mountains can be lots of colors like brown, black, gray, purple, blue, rust, red, etc; forests are various darker greens and browns than plains, oceans are black, blue, teal, cyan, green; stuff like that.
If you were doing color for a political map then color theory is much more important since each country will be a different color. You would not want pastel blues and greens combined with vivid reds and oranges.
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