Square Grid with Spaces?

[rrcalbick]

I am wondering if someone can help me find...or provide basic instruction on how to make...something I've seen used recently with various maps. I'm talking about the square grids where the lines stop just shy of actually intersecting at each corner. There is a basically a small amount of space at each corner instead of the lines actually touching, if that makes sense.

You can see an example here (I just did a basic search for an example...the map is someone else's intellectual property): Map Example

I'm looking to either recreate this type of grid in Photoshop or even just find a blank image of this type of grid. I've searched a number of different ways but haven't had much luck.

This is my first question here, so thank you in advance for any assistance or direction!

[niekell]

Hello rrcalbick and welcome to Cartographers Guild.

I am by no means more than a intermediate Photoshop user at best but recently the Guild taught me about creating custom patterns in Photoshop (for the classical coastline parallel lines fading away from the coast). So to create a grid pattern like the one you want the following steps worked for me.
1. Open a new photoshop file say 20px by 20px in grayscale,
2. Set your forecolor to black (D) and select the pencil of 1px size with hardness 100%,
3. Zoom in until you can see the pixel borders, draw with the pencil along the outer edges except for 2px near the corners,
4. You can change the shade here, but I wouldn't bother because you can do so via the opacity later anyway,
5. (Optional: to make the lines 1px rather than 2px where the patterns push up against one another when tiled, only draw in the upper and left lines with the pencil... but note this has implications on the bottom and right of the overall effect if you do it),
6. When happy, choose Edit>Define Pattern and save it as something you'll remember,
7. Open the picture you want to overlay and create a new layer,
8. Select the Fill tool (bucket), switch to Pattern Fill and select your newly defined pattern,
9. Click on the empty layer which should be above the picture you want to see the grid on,
10. Adjust the opacity to your taste to make the grid less intrusive.

There, 10 easy steps and you've got what you wanted, and the knowledge to tweak it if you want bigger gaps or thicker lines or a different scale (other than 20px by 20px which was an arbitrary choice on my part).

As it is just a Fill you can easily control where the edges are using a selection area.

Enjoy!

[rrcalbick]

Ahh...I've created patterns using this method before, don't ask me why I didn't think of it. It was late and I was tired, I'll use that as my excuse...lol But thank you for the welcome to CG and for the very clear tutorial steps, it's greatly appreciated! Now hopefully I can move on with what I was intending. Thank you again!

[Redrobes]

Another way is to take a grid where the lines cross and create a copy of the image. Blur the copy and use contrast to get rid of all the lines but leave a little bit in the crossover point. Then use erode or more blur and contrast to expand those little dots into bigger ones then use that image as a mask to remove all the intersections. The advantage of this way is that you can use it on curved grids or lines crossing in any direction or hex grids etc and you get to control the grid spacing over the fill method.

[ChickPea]

If you know Inkscape at all, you can use Tiled Clones. I made the attached grid in a minute or two.

Create a shape similar to the shape in red then clone it (you can use the grid to align properly). I've copied a screenshot showing the settings I used, though these could be tweaked to suit.

[rrcalbick]

Thanks Redrobes, very cool and useful technique, I love the end result. I honestly hadn't even considered this option but I can now see the potential! Thanks again!

ChickPea, I do not know Inkscape although I'm familiar with Illustrator, I just haven't used it in some time. I would imagine many of the tools are similar so I'm sure it wouldn't take long to get up to speed with it. Thank you for the tips, it gives me a reason to work with vector image software again.

[tesagk]

Awesome. Thanks