[Award Winner] Making a continent in photoshop

[Ascension]

Ah ok the reef, now that I know where we are I can help a bit to point ya into another method of experimentation. Render up some green to blue clouds then cut em down to keep em close to the land. The layer's mode was set to normal but an additional layer on top of the reef was set to color dodge, thus lightening and brightening things. If GIMP doesn't have color dodge then just render up something lighter or use some black n white clouds as some other type of adjust, like screen or lighten or overlay or soft light. The bottom line is all about experimenting to see what you like best. I myself just went back the other night and made a whole bunch of tweaks to the tutorial based on nothing more than changing the way I did things to see what would happen and if I liked it then I added it in (I spent about 3 hours trying to create some of those cool white waves around the coast but didn't like anything).

[bryguy]

Ah ok the reef, now that I know where we are I can help a bit to point ya into another method of experimentation. Render up some green to blue clouds then cut em down to keep em close to the land. The layer's mode was set to normal but an additional layer on top of the reef was set to color dodge, thus lightening and brightening things. If GIMP doesn't have color dodge then just render up something lighter or use some black n white clouds as some other type of adjust, like screen or lighten or overlay or soft light. The bottom line is all about experimenting to see what you like best. I myself just went back the other night and made a whole bunch of tweaks to the tutorial based on nothing more than changing the way I did things to see what would happen and if I liked it then I added it in (I spent about 3 hours trying to create some of those cool white waves around the coast but didn't like anything).

uh okay......

i cant figure out what exactly it is you wanted me to do, but by playing around a bit, i managed to make an O.K. looking reef.

edit: hmm... it looked slightly brighter on GIMP...

[Ascension]

I'd say so far that looks spot on (except for that lil neon green ring in the mid to lower right side). Good job

[Larxene18]

Thats a great Tutorial ^^
But i need a little help now D:

Im from Germany and a few points are very difficult to understand for me .____. Sepecially point 14 and 15. These two points are knocking me over D:
I did everything i could do, but i wont work O.o my steps doesnt look like your examples in the tutorial.

[Steel General]

Cool! You should post your "tutlet" in the tutorials for others to see.

[bryguy]

Cool! You should post your "tutlet" in the tutorials for others to see.

ok sure


it may be a little confusing, cause im not that great at writing, but I tried my hardest to make it good

[Bedwyr]

I should probably add that I'm experimenting with mountainous relief artwork. I'd like to take a look at your (Ascension) technique and then figure out a way of applying the climate colors selectively rather than in a gradient. It might take some blue marble samples and painting textures onto the layer. Thoughts?

[Ascension]

Bedwyr -- your base layer should be white with all of the black deleted...this is important for later steps in that you will have to omit every step that says to Select > Inverse. You will also have to add in a step every time it says Select without a Select > Inverse. What you currently have is the white parts deleted.

The point is just as you have guessed...to delete the "water parts" while leaving the "land parts" intact.

As to the mountains, the layer that they are on it set to Hard Light. This darkens or multiplies the darkness of everything below that layer directly underneath the object (in this case mountains). The brown color overlay then takes that darkness and gives it a brown tinge. The color overlay itself is set to soft light (I think) and white enhances the lightness of layers underneath. So what gets affected is the color gradient of the land layer (white to green to tan) resulting in light snowy mountains where it is white (in my example the white is in the north pole), normal mountains where it is green and sandy mountains where it is tan. As far as climate affecting the color of the mountains...(like more arid on the leeward side and more lush on the windward side) that is covered in a later step where we add color tweaks.

If you want to change the colors of the mountains by hand (for instance to make them sort of grayish for granite mountains or reddish for iron mountains) follow these steps as I have done it myself:
1. Create a new layer above the mountains layer and rename it to "mountain tweaks".
2. Ctrl-click on the mountains layer (in the layers palette)...this loads the mountains layer as a selection so that you do not paint outside of it.
3. Grab whatever size airbrush you want and set the flow to whatever you want. I start with 10% and then just keep applying more "paint" until I get the color I want. Choose your color and paint until you're happy. When done remember to deselect. Also, you can change the blend mode of the layer..."screen" will show more white while the darker areas are colored, "multiply" will show more black while the lighter areas are colored, "overlay" is sort of a halfway between screen and multiply, "soft light" is like screen but brightens everything up, "hard light" is like multiply while brightening, etc, etc, etc.

[moriturimax]

I completely lose it when the tutorial gets to the hills mountains reef ocean layer, not sure if I am supposed to deselect at some point before hitting it with filters? Also, it's very confusing to switch back and forth between duplicate and copy, especially when I keep getting "background copy" layers, and the tutorial is getting "base copy" layers.

Arg, the results look sweet, but it gets too confusing for me to understand when something goes wrong, was it me, or was it not understanding what he wanted when.

ps, plus,render > lighting effects filter seems to have lost a few options between the version the tutorial uses and the one I use.

[Bedwyr]

Well kudos for those suggestions. I came up with this. A few things I changed or added.

I used the eraser and clone tool a lot on the mountains. I just plain needed spinal ridges in exact locations and couldn't leave it up to a math algorithm. Likewise the continental shape (this is, again, a kitbash of a recent commercial product) is a selection outline.

I used only the ocean layer for reefs, didn't need more than that and simply used the eraser liberally. I've noticed in whole-earth nasa pictures that the amount of reef area visible from distant space is patchy.

The reef layer did double duty. I applied a gradient lighter than the ocean color via image adjustment and erased segments until I got a nice continental plate falloff. It'll look cool for fantastic stuff, but I'm not sure if that's visible from space so I'll remove it in the final image.

I also used several segments in my other desert areas. It took awhile to figure these out but I think I came up with a scheme.

1) I drew a very squiggly selection line, going around mountains and terrain features in ways that could sort of make sense (basin areas for heat collection, etc... who cares what the coriolis forces or albedo are doing, I'm restricting myself to the existing map and, well, it is sci fi).

2) Feathered the selection by 5-10 pixels depending on size of area.

2.5) Already had several copies of the reef layer. Did a couple more difference clouds filters to taste. Mostly just stuck with what I had.

3) Inverted selection and deleted a copy of the reef.

4) Applied a desert gradient. See the tutorial for desert color suggestions. Did use hard light blending. Played with the scale to taste.

4.5) On a black 128x128, I already created a grey crinkly paper template by doing multiple difference clouds and then an emboss filter, exporting by selecting edit > define pattern.

5) Applied the new layer (named Desert 1, 2, 3, etc for each one) via normal blending.

6) Stretched and adjusted the image at its edges by alternately using a soft eraser and smudge to taste, getting the desert into the nooks and crannys of the mountain ranges.

7) Applied the crinkly paper texture as a layer style, using hard light blending and scale to taste. Also applied bevel and emboss layer style: smooth, down, size: 2, soften: 4, highlights and shadows to taste.

If you want a scrub desert or some other feature, like forest, the same techniques might be applied along with the texturizer filter, using the sandstone texture to taste. It makes things a little less realistic, but if the viewer goes "oh that's a forest", it might be worthwhile.