Quickly creating land edges you can edit in Photoshop

[Dumont]

EDIT: UPDATED TUTORIAL VIDEO! I made a new one years after the original that updates the process, makes it more intuitive, and has much better production value.


This is a quick video walkthrough to make coastlines in Photoshop that look random and realistic, while still having a level of control over the shape of your geography. I used this method when creating my map of Daxtera.



One of the frustrations I had when starting to work on projects was that the tutorials I followed would end up with something that looked good, but I had little control over the final result. This process gives you more input, even at a very detailed level.

QUICK INSTRUCTIONS:

1. With your FG/BG colors as black and white, Filter > Render > Clouds
2. Create a new layer ("Land"), fill it with black
3. Apply the Hard Mix blend mode to the Land layer
4. With a large, soft, white brush and low opacity, begin to draw on the land layer to add land mass.
5. Switch the brush to black to remove land
6. move the Clouds layer beneath it to create variants of the detail