Reply With QuoteYeah that's what I've done on the current one - the other texture wouldn't have worked because it wasn't very even, so I'd have been really bugged by the repetition of some of the main bitsOriginally Posted by Ilanthar
I had the same problem so often! Lately, I resolve this by this rather simple method : taking a texture of, let's say 2000x2000 px, copy it to the wanted size, side by side, then using cloning/smudge tools to make a big one texture by making the repeated pattern disappear/change.By Raptori
It's the highest resolution one I could find with the right kind of texture... any ideas where I could find a better one? Everything I've found so far is even smaller than that one
I hope to be of some help.
Yeah that's what I've done on the current one - the other texture wouldn't have worked because it wasn't very even, so I'd have been really bugged by the repetition of some of the main bits
/sigh...
Saving regularly doesn't do much good if you save and close Photoshop just after flattening the whole damn thing. Luckily I hadn't done anything more since the tests a couple of posts back (plus the coastlines are a separate vector file), so I only lost a couple of hours work.
Still a hit to the motivation though
Oh man! I feel your pain!!! >.< That is why it is a good idea to have a duplicate psd file sometimes. Also, when I flatten a map, I will open a copy of it in photoshop as there is a specific button on the layer or history window (I forget which) that lets you do that. That way I reduce the chance of saving over a flattened image. If you want to be more safe, you can cycle through multiple psd files overwriting the last one or just save a new psd file each save, although that is extreme. I have seen it done for extremely time tight projects or for programs with unstable save files./sigh...
Saving regularly doesn't do much good if you save and close Photoshop just after flattening the whole damn thing. Luckily I hadn't done anything more since the tests a couple of posts back (plus the coastlines are a separate vector file), so I only lost a couple of hours work.
Still a hit to the motivation though
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That is a shot straight to the heart of motivation and enjoyment. You have my sympathy. This is how I end up with files several gigs in size for fear of ever merging layers.
Ouch man, my sympathy. Having experienced things like this quite some times too many myself, I know exactly how frustrating that feels. What I do nowadays to prevent that from happening: every time I want to flatten some layers, I save my PSD file under a new name. That way whenever I want to go back to parts of the map I flattened, I just have to reopen an older PSD. and when the project's finished, I delete everything but the last version.
In fact, now that I think of it, maybe it's not a bad idea to copy the layers to be merged to a new PSD file. That way, if you give it the same name as the resulting merged layer, you can always find it without any hassle. And the total size of that folder would be only marginally larger than when you kept all layers unmerged on one humongous PSD.
Oh well, good ideas always come when it's too late. I hope you'll manage to find back your motivation, Raptori! A map like this deserves to be finished.
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I think it's just been so long since I've worked in PS that I've forgotten some good habits, since you don't get this kind of issue so much in Illustrator. Makes me wish there was an automatic rolling save feature, would help a lot. I'd never spotted the "Create new document from current state" button, which looks like a great solution for this, so thanks for that!
Fortunately I really hadn't done that much in PS, and all the important work was still there in AI files - if I'd had to start again it'd have taken a while to get back in to it, but since it's so little work I've almost got back to the same point already. I can't remember what settings I had used to get that effect on the coastlines - I know which layer styles and filters, just not the numbers - and after a while fiddling I can't get the exact same look. I managed to get something that's good enough, though I'm not sure if I like it as much.
Original / New
The new one doesn't have a texture, but other than that the only difference is the style of the coast. Should I just leave it as is or try to get it closer to the original? :/
The only bit missing now is the label styles, which will only take 5 minutes when I get round to them, then I can carry on from where I got to. So happy that it happened now and not after spending ages on it!
Thanks for the support everyone, I'll have to be more careful from now on!
Has anyone else read this map projection guide website? I'm just going through it now and it's incredibly helpful. It does a great job at explaining the different aspects of map projections, which makes it really easy to work out which would be most useful in which situation.
As such, I'm going to change my projection from Lambert Conformal Conic to Azimuthal Equidistant centered on one of the capital cities I'm working into the map. The reason for this is that this projection preserves distances and directions radiating from the central point - if you got out a ruler and measured from the capital city to anywhere on the map, you'd be able to accurately measure the distance and direction in which you should travel. I'm thinking a series of such maps for major trading ports in each area of the world would be a great set of maps for traders to use
Hmm. Could definitely do with some opinions on whether the new graticule is too intrusive or not. I've put both the polar graticule (6 degree intervals, similar to the previous version), and another one centred on the capital city. The additional one has parallels every 100 miles, since that's roughly a day's travel for the slowest ocean-going ships. I've made them both relatively faint, but they're clearly visible at full size. Is it too much or can I leave them both in?
Other things present in this version: different projection with styling roughly as per previous version, mountain test, river test, plus a few different test labels. Just now I've put the sea/ocean labels in front of the graticules so they're more legible, can't be bothered re-uploading though. Any feedback would be welcome!
Does anyone know how to stop PS from making the letters in angled text jitter up and down like this?
Full map - small (2000px wide).
Attachment 62595
Detail - full size cropped to the bit with the samples.
Attachment 62596
Full map - large (~5000px wide).
Attachment 62597
Last edited by Raptori; 03-25-2014 at 01:54 AM.
The links are no worky for me.
