[WIP] First ever map creation! Only slight proud.

[Diamond]

I'd remove the stroke completely and replace it with an outer glow; nothing too overpowering, just enough to make the text stand out a bit. Any kind of stroke, especially white, really clashes with this map style, in my opinion.

[Richard Meyer]

I'd remove the stroke completely and replace it with an outer glow; nothing too overpowering, just enough to make the text stand out a bit. Any kind of stroke, especially white, really clashes with this map style, in my opinion.

Okay! Replaced everything with outer glow, at a 70% opacity, and changed the font color to white instead of black.

[Diamond]

I like that much better, but again, maybe tone down the FX a little. You don't need much of that outer glow to make the text pop, and in smaller sizes it actually makes it look kind of 'smudgy' to me.

[Richard Meyer]

I like that much better, but again, maybe tone down the FX a little. You don't need much of that outer glow to make the text pop, and in smaller sizes it actually makes it look kind of 'smudgy' to me.

Hm, mkay. I'll try smooth rather than precise for the outer glow.

In addition, I finally found an example of what I originally wanted for the compass rose here. Have you seen any good tutorials for that sort of thing?

[Diamond]

Well, you picked a good example, I'll tell you that. Max is probably one of the best artists here, in my opinion.

You might try this: http://www.cartographersguild.com/sh...ad.php?t=20409 I've found it very useful over the years, and with some experimentation you can usually get what you need out of it.

[Richard Meyer]

Well, you picked a good example, I'll tell you that. Max is probably one of the best artists here, in my opinion.

You might try this: http://www.cartographersguild.com/sh...ad.php?t=20409 I've found it very useful over the years, and with some experimentation you can usually get what you need out of it.

That is quite useful, thank you.

Another question...

I'm considering making a full world map in the style of the tutorial, to try it out. How big an image should I start off with? 11'x17', 8.5'x11'? Or use pixels (which seems more likely, but unsure, because I eventually would want to print it out if its worth doing so) like 2000x2000? It seems making it landscape format makes more sense for a world map.

[Diamond]

That's entirely up to you (and your computer ). The bigger the size, the bigger the file, the longer your computer's going to take to complete actions. You can get around that by doing different sections in different files then merging them eventually - i.e., one file for your raw geography, another file for your labels, a third for the outer border and decorative elements. In my maps, the things that suck up the most space are usually the decorative stuff - the rhumb lines, the outer borders, stuff like that. I usually either do those in a separate file or save them for last.

You could also do a world map in sections (like, North America in one file, Europe in another, etc) and then eventually merge them together. That way no one individual file is going to crash your computer. The tricky part would be getting them to line up correctly if two or more sections share elements, like half a continent on each or something.