Rob A's Most Excellent Tutorial

[Steve]

Hi yinz. I introduced myself a bit in the member intro section 'bout a week ago. So, yea. noob. and by noob, I mean total noob with not just cartography, but art in general. I can spray paint my name in GIMP and I am pretty good with computers and I make a really kick butt salmon cake for the hungry folks in the house tonight. Please keep that level of noobness in mind when answering my most likely simple questions. Stet that...subtract 5 levels from that noobie level and keep that new level in mind.

Ok. So learning gimp and Rob's Regional Mapping techniques at the same time. I am using the four part PDF series someone put together based on Rob A's original. I get through the first three layer sandwich just fine. But when I hit hte sea layer the wheels start to come off a bit.

I create teh sea shape layer and invert like I am supposed to. Then create the sea noise layer and merge it down. Dupe the sea shape layer, rename it "sea" then add laye rmask using the land mask I had created and saved to channel earlier. I keep rolling through steps until I get ot the bit with the histogram. It says you can see there are gaps in the histogram. Yup. I agree. The instructions then say: "Right-click on the Sealayer and select alpha to select. This should give me marching ants (they are there) that mark the transparant section of the sea layer. That is to say, it marks what in lower layers is "land".

The next step is "select->invert". So, at thsi point all non-transparent areas should be selected (that is, the sea). Here is where the trouble starts. The next instruction is "Use the bucket tool to fill the selected area white." Because of the noise added in prior steps, things are too splotchy for bucket fill. It seem like paintbrush would be a better choice (and I get it isn't). Just seems that I must have done something wrong somewhere. This uber-noob would appreciate some helps.

I can't upload a file here (I guess I am too new). Here is a link to my old photobucket account to show the map. Hopefully it works...

http://i637.photobucket.com/albums/u...a_tut_help.png

the left side should be land. the right side the sea. Nothing special here. I was just learning trying to learn the technique so the coast line was a fat brush painted and then filled in to create a 'sandbox' to play in.

thanks for helps.

S

[waldronate]

I can't upload a file here (I guess I am too new).

I believe 5 posts is the magic number to escape the waits in the moderation queue, start posting images, and engage in private mail.

[Steve]

I believe 5 posts is the magic number to escape the waits in the moderation queue, start posting images, and engage in private mail.

ahh - okay. that makes sense. I thought it was 5 posts and then the captcha challenge would end. Makes sense there are other restrictions in the probation phase. Small price to pay for access to the knowledgeable folk in these parts.

I did try another run starting from scratch, but the same results. I guess I need to go to the orignal Tut next and not the PDF on line. Perhaps there is a step I am misreading that will be presented differently.

[sword peddler]

I am not familiar with the tutorial but you may be able to use the Fuzzy Select tool (keyboard shortcut U I think) to select the area you want to fill with the paintbucket. To get the area to really fill out and overcome the leftover noise you can turn the threshold up in the fuzzy select tool options section, which will get closer to those black lines than usual.

[Korash]

If I am reading where you are having trouble correctly (post #7 on the 4 part tut), and it has been a while since I played with that tut (it is a really nice one to start with) when you are applying the "Alpha to selection", you SHOULD have the Sea area within the marching ants and once inverted, the "Land" area would have the ants and that area should be transparent. The bucket fill should work correctly then.

Check to make sure that your image looks something like RobA's image, with the Sea being filled with clouds and an area with the checkered pattern that is the transparent, soon to be white, land portion of your map. It looks to me that you might have forgotten to invert a selection somewhere in the process because you have the left side (land) with the noise that should be the sea.

Hope that helps a bit. If this doesn't, can you post up a screen shot of your Gimp window with your map and layers showing so we can help a bit more.

[TJLuke]

Steve,

Welcome. I am also pretty new here and have been working through some tutorials and had some similar struggles as you are having. If you have not gotten it cleared up yet once you select as an alpha and invert your selection, switch your bucket tool options to "Fill Selection" and then you should be able to get the entire selected area no matter the colors. I struggled with this in that I would always forget my alpha selections and end up dumping color over my whole work.



- Justin