[Award Winner] Making maps in Photoshop

[Southern Crane]

Hi

Just going to provide some potential solutions to this as I've had other people have a problem with this step. My humble apologies to you all! - it bugs me that it's not working out for you.

I would say there's a couple of things this could be. Top of the list is that my Blur value of 0.3 just worked for me at that time - try a much higher value like 40.

Q1: Have you sketched in your colours like I did or do blobs in different areas like Wreed58 did?
A: Similar to me: Go to Q2
A: Similar to Wreed58 -> could be that...
a: you're not overlapping your sketchy colours? Not essential, but it will help to draw them all on the same layer try not to isolate them in such a high contrasting way . It makes no difference in how you draw them really, but if they are too far apart then they wont overlap unless you have a large blur value. I like to add some colour variance to make it look more interesting - BTW there's a brush setting for that called colour dynamics. . Also for the green strokes (in my tutorial PDF) I used a sketchy brush and drew them on, but with the circles I switched to the round brush and used spacing and scattering in the brush tools.


With Wreed58's I would whack up that blur radius. BTW in Photoshop (Win) Ctrl+F repeats the last used filter, so you can keep pressing that and watch it blur until it get where you want.

these may help provide clarity - appologies for the typos! DOH!

Attachment 80917

Attachment 80918

Q2: Are you working to a specific document size?

A: I think I was working to 72ppi/dpi - if you have a big image for print ( usually 300dpi) then the blur radius could be too small. The blur size is on a pixel radius, so 0.3 may be fine for 72dpi, but for a 300 dpi you may need 30 (I'm guessing - you'll need to try it out ) - but that dpi thing will effect your results.

Q3: Have you tried the Layer properties options?

A: Layer properties. I see in my document I have it set to 'Linear Burn' for the coastline edge, I can't remember if I changed it for the blurred colours but could need setting to 'overlay'. I usually just go down through them and see if any 'pop' into looking cool :-) . I would have mentioned this step if it was important though so don't worry if that's not the solution.

Also, I didn't put specific colour values in the tutorial because it's all just done on the fly and wanted you to have creative freedom etc. but if you want the same colours I picked, then you could simply..
1: open the PDF page step image on your computer ,
2: hit 'print screen' button ( usually at the top right of your keyboard)
3: then in PS, create a new document (File > New> OK the dimensions it provides)
4: Ctrl+V (Paste) your new screen grab into you new file
5: Use your colour picker tool to pick any colours you like and use them in your work.

Hope that helps.
Thanks
Have fun!


Jeremy

Just wanted to thank you for updating this post with this more in depth information. As a writer/worldbuilder who is a rookie hobbyist at cartography this really helped a lot and gave a lot of neat tricks. Cheers

[nobodi12]

Just wanted to tell you thank you.

I used your tutorial to make a map, so thank you for making it. It was extremely helpful.

[ajrittler]

Fantastic thread. One of the best tutorials I've seen. Created a map this evening using them and it turned out pretty good. Could you expand on steps 2.0.4 (the cloning of the sea layer) and steps 2.0.7 - 2.0.9 from the 4th document? I muddled through them but Not accurately.

Thanks again for the wonderfully done tutorial!

[Phanues]

Thanks for these tutorials. I'm currently in the process of reworking a basic map made by someone else in something a bit more high spec.
While i was already familiar with some of the techniques used and did not follow your tutorials a 100%, there was also a lot in there that helped me out during the process and i managed to pick up a few new tricks, so i'd just like to thank you for your effort in making them.

[Nikademis]

These are brilliant! Thanks so much for making these tutorials available <3

The texture/parchment tutorial is great as I always feel like my maps feel too flat and lack real texture. My PS skills are still very much novice so techniques like this are a massive help to me. Thanks again!

[swiss]

I appreciate you putting these together. Unfortunately, I tried the texture tutorial and could only follow about 65% of it. I know at least part of the problem is I'm using PS Elements 14 and some of the options just don't exist, but for some of it I just could not follow your English. Does an updated version of this tut exist anywhere?