Yep, I'd say that's pretty fine! What was your general technique?
He there folks!
I've been playing around with PS and got this pretty fine result:
I am pretty proud of it for it is one of the more beautiful things I've created for the last few months.
I'm planning on creating maps with a greater scope than this Island and I hop it'll work on worldsizes!
Lets see!
Well how does it look to you? Any suggestions?
Yep, I'd say that's pretty fine! What was your general technique?
Wow that was a quick response!
Currently I am tinkering around a bit for creating city and route objects that fit well into the yet natural map,
after that I think I am going to create a new map step by step with pictures and explanation.
That island looks like it would be a great place to live.
You've done a good job on it, but I have two suggestions for next time:
--first, if you could do something about the ocean. Leaving it a simple blue doesn't work, in my opinion. Maybe give it some kind of rippling effect and/or colour variants.
--second (and this might just be a matter of taste), I'm not that keen on the plastic appearance that Photoshop tends to give these things. In particular, the highlights on the mountains seem a bit too shiny, and the colour/shape of the mountains seems rather smooth.
Those comments aside, a really good early map. And I don't know if you are making these maps for a specific purpose, but I would be tempted to put aside ambitions for world mapping, and focus on islands like this. Adding detail and substance to these islands might be both fun, and rewarding. It's just a thought, anyway.
THW
Formerly TheHoarseWhisperer
I agree with TheHoarseWhisperer; perhaps you could use a few filters to give it some roughness (I find that Angled Strokes works well) and texture layers help. For example, you can make a difference clouds layer, then go to Threshold, and finally set the layer blending mode to Multiply at 5% opacity, which gives a splotchy look. There's a lot of information on other techniques.
And I was thinking how I like the nice clean smooth shape of this. As a map (not a photograph), the clean style could easily fit the needs of any map user.
Here again we touch on the line between mapping and art. If you want the map to be clean, clear, accurate, easy to follow, easy to use, etc, this is very much so. If you want the map to be pretty, artistic, natural-looking, something to hang above your couch for people to oohh and aahh at, then the suggestions of THW and Neds are right on.
I plan to make the ocean layer look similar to the landmasses, but for now I focused on the landmasses and the stuff I could put into them like forests, mountains, rivers(which are on ocean layer thought ) and even Roads and City symbols etc...
Lets see what I can tweak at the current system.