Hi

I've had a look around, but can't really find anything concerning this.

After finding this tutorial for creating relief shading using elevation data collected of the earth or known as DEM (Digital Elevation Map), I wanted to get some of that grey scale data to cut and paste into my own fictional maps.

Photoshop's Difference Clouds can only go so far and though you can get away with something passable to the common eye, I think it's just not cutting it really for something realistic...


So my next step is to use DEMs and cut and paste real world 'bits' on to my fictional map before rendering out the relief. I have found some things on the web and in the process of trying to achieve my goal, but it's a lot of fumbling about.

After these kind of things...

(image taken from the tutorial mentioned at the start)

...to make the relief on my maps to be more realisitc...



(image taken from the tutorial mentioned at the start)

Does anyone know if a stash of free, donwnloadable, decent resolution, grey scale height maps of mountains, valleys, flatland , etc? in a TIFF or PS friendly format? Or gone through what I'm trying to do themselves?

I have tried the USCG seamless data distribution online application but cant see anything in their viewer (even though I've followed their screen res instructions)

I've also tried Bryce, but it's height maps don't come out very defined in photoshop. I'll keep at it.

thanks for looking and any help you might have.

Jez