How to make concentric coastal ripple effects with outer glow in Photoshop

[morikahn]

This is a method to quickly make that coastal ripple outline effect you've seen in old maps. It is an alternative to the slower method involving multiple layers, selection modifications, and stroke effects. However, it is only capable of making 5 concentric outlines, so if you intend to make more you'll have to use the slower method, or get creative with this one.

This tutorial assumes you are moderately proficient in photoshop, layers, and layer effects.






Step 1
Paint in the land mass. The land will need to be on a different layer than the water underneath.

If you are using line art to define the coast, like in the image above, I recommend that the pixels of the land interior match the outer edge of your lines. Otherwise, the ripples might start further inland.

This can be done in several ways; I suggest simply creating a selection from your line art, and using the Fill option on the layer where you've painted the land.


Step 2
Create an outer glow effect in the layer styles for your land layer.

• Set the outer glow Blending Mode to normal
• Set Opacity to 100%
• Set the Color to something that contrasts to the water
• Set Technique to Precise (this one is very important)
• Set the Size to how far you want the ripples to project (you can change this later)
• Set Anti-Aliased to true in the Quality settings.

You'll now have a fuzzy mess around your coasts.


Step 3
Customize the Contour of the glow to mimic the image on the tutorial.

If you've never created a custom contour:

• Simply click the Contour box, then click the displayed line to make vertices you can move.
• By default, these vertices will be curves. Check the Corner box to make them straight like the image above.
• You can adjust a vertex with your mouse, or you can use the input fields to place them exactly.
• It will take you a few minutes to get used to it. Vertices can't be moved past each other, for obvious reasons.
• Once you've made your contour, save it so you can quickly load it again when you need it for another map.

The spikes in the contour are where the lines will appear, the height of the spike is how opaque that line will be.

There is a limit of 15 vertices on a contour, which creates the hard cap of 5 coastal lines through this method.

I've included my contour file in the zip below if you want to just use mine and save some time.


Tips

• Once you've created the ripples, you can easily expand or shrink them with the Size slider.
• You can use the Range slider to push the first ripple outward or inwards towards your coast line.
• You can rasterize the ripples by opening the layer menu (right click on a PC) and select Rasterize Layer Style. This will transform the effect into standard pixels on the land layer. To get your ripples on a layer of their own, copy your land layer, set the copied layer Fill to 0% and then Rasterize Layer Styles. Delete the original outer glow afterwards.
• You can create new and interesting effects by adjusting the Contour lines. The alternative wave effect image above uses leaning triangles instead of spikes. The contour file for this effect is included in the zip below.

Photoshop contour files: ripples.zip

Note: these files were generated in photoshop CS6. I do not know how backwards compatible they are, but contours in photoshop haven't changed in a very long time so I'm assuming most people should be fine using them with earlier editions of photoshop.

[Midgardsormr]

If you'd like to upload the file here, simply put it in a .zip.

And excellent technique! I've never even glanced at the custom contour dialogue before, but it seems so obvious now that you've pointed it out.

[Meshon]

Thanks for this, highly satisfying. I've never used contours before. Look what I've been missing!

Even with time for fiddling around (and for some reason putting beaches on a "map" that's not going to be used for anything), it only took about 10 minutes to go from a new photoshop document to magical ripples!



I really like how malleable it is after it's on there too. I'm sure I can think of some clever uses for this technique in other areas too.

(to be perfectly honest I'm hoping that someone else will think of clever uses, I'm not sure if "clever" is on today for me!)

cheers,
Meshon

[morikahn]

I'm glad you guys like it. Its fun to paint new land mass or erase old land mass and watch the ripples change live.

I've changed the original post to include the contour files as a zip rather than a link to offsite hosting.

Maybe I'll make some other photoshop tutorials, like how to link layers or use masks to draw quicker.

[Chick]

Thanks for making the tutorial, but just so you know, this particular technique has been around for a long time here. It's in at least one other tutorial I know of, and it was discussed also in the thread that I posted, where I showed the simpler way to do this in a different tutorial.

More tutorials would be great, but you might want to check around and see what others have already been written on a subject before spending a lot of time on a topic

[Diamond]

I for one have never seen this technique before. Can't possibly read every post of every thread, y'know.

[morikahn]

Thanks for making the tutorial, but just so you know, this particular technique has been around for a long time here. It's in at least one other tutorial I know of, and it was discussed also in the thread that I posted, where I showed the simpler way to do this in a different tutorial.

More tutorials would be great, but you might want to check around and see what others have already been written on a subject before spending a lot of time on a topic

I looked around on the tutorials first and didn't see anything on it, nor have I ever seen it used anywhere else; I only came across the idea accidentally while messing with contours and embossing effects - then realized contours could be used to create coastal rings easily.

If there is a simpler way to do it than loading a contour file to a glow effect, I'd love to see it. Could you provide a link?

[Chick]

Well, you have to define "simpler" first. The expand and stroke technique is much simpler for someone fairly new to photoshop. Your technique, which was described here http://www.cartographersguild.com/sh...ad.php?t=30388 in the post by Waldronate is "simpler" in that it requires fewer keystrokes, but gives you no direct control over modifications unless you understand how to create that contour file yourself. And frankly, modifying the contour file is a real pain.

I've used both methods many times, and I keep returning to the expand and stroke method because it gives me far better control on the spacing, size, smoothness, opacity, and number of lines for each situation. I just got tired of constantly modifying the contour file to get the effect I wanted for each different image.

I congratulate you on writing a nice tutorial, just wanted to hint that if you are planning to do more, a little research will help keep you from duplicating stuff that's already been described. As Diamond says, it's hard to keep up with all the good techniques posted around here, and the forum search function is still a little funky at times, too. It would be awesome if someone were to spend the hours needed to organize and catalog all the tutorials in some systematic way.

[Azélor]

Just need to update and extend that list to include the non pdf tutorials: http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=4987
But not everyone can do that. Only Vandy and the CL.

[Diamond]

As Diamond says, it's hard to keep up with all the good techniques posted around here, and the forum search function is still a little funky at times, too.

Hrmm. I meant it more as in "no one is going to do an exhaustive site search to see if this idea has had a tutorial written for it before and the way the search function is set up makes it impractical to try" and good on morikahn for taking the time to write a nice and clear tut for a technique that I and I suspect others hadn't seen before, and he should be thanked for it, not reprimanded. But yeah, it IS difficult to keep up with everything around here; I do my best, but there's only so many hours in the day.