Brushes, Etc. from Chashio

[Chashio]

Inspired by another thread in the forums, I put together a small set of photoshop actions to create a few variations of parallel contour lines which are often seen as a design element on the watery parts of maps.

There are, as always, quite a few ways to go about creating anything in photoshop, but for these actions I used a style:stroke approach. All of the lines created with these actions are 3px wide, the fading effect is via opacity on the stroke itself, and the final layer each action creates has a transparent background (not white) so you don't have to set the layer to multiply unless you have other reasons to. If for some reason you want to adjust the opacity or stroke-thickness of the individual lines, just click back in your history to before the merge and then edit the specific layer's effect.

Included in the folder which I will link to below, is a jpg preview of one of the actions which also lists the contents of the atn file, the atn (action) file itself, and a psd file with layers showing the effects of the included actions. You can download any or all of these files.

Hopefully the use of these actions is self-explanatory (their titles include what part of your map to select), but if you have trouble please don't hesitate to leave a comment below; I or someone who knows the answer should be able to offer assistance.

This offering is for free, non-commercial use, so please don't redistribute anything for money. You're welcome to distribute a link back here if you find it useful enough to share with others. Attribution is also appreciated (see above for details).

Oh, before I forget... here's the folder link: LINK

And so everyone knows what we're talking about, here's the jpg preview image.



LATER: I was asked if the general style of the lines could be edited simply. I came up with this:

Here's an example of using a pattern fill on a mask to affect the style of the coastal lines... this example shows one of the actions in the atn file, before and after I apply the mask to the layer. With two additional things you can do, which are only necessary if you're obsessed with details, like I am.