Tips on Making a Town Map less Photoshoppy

[EricPoehlsen]

The general question is, what style do you want - more a 'map' style or more of a 'aerial image' many fantasy maps are somewhere in between. Often they seem to detailed for a pure map and the same time to simplified to be 'real'.

So tips depend on which direction you want to go. If you are looking for the more 'realistic' map, one idea might be different shadows which correspond to the height of the buildings. Towers have longer shadows than walls, two story buildings higher shadows than huts.
And the classic 'drop shadow' has one problem, it is not the shadow of a three dimensional object, but of a hovering plane...

[poochwheels]

Right! So are there any quick and dirty solutions that address the shadowing, or must it be done manually? Thanks for your help!

[EricPoehlsen]

The quickest and dirtiest way I can come up with - not looking into the software, would be multiple shadow layers which are offset by only a small amount each - so not a 5 or 10 px offset, but 4 Layers with 2px offset each...