Criticism requested

[ravells]

My suggestion is to put some noise in the sea to make it a little less 'flat'.

[Midgardsormr]

The first thing that jumps out at me is the artifacts from jpeg compression. I'll bet if you save it out again with a quality level of 80 - 90% it will look much nicer. I'm guessing this one is around 50 - 60%? Jpeg doesn't like areas of flat color very much, which is interfering with the clarity of your coastlines.

I don't know how you're approaching your shaded relief, but if you're doing it with the overlay and dodge/burn trick, put your relief layer above the trees--that way the trees will appear to be on the slopes also.

Beyond that, I agree with Ravs: some variation in the sea would be very nice. Make it subtle, though--you don't want the water texture to overpower the details of your land.

[Asharad]

The first thing that jumps out at me is the artifacts from jpeg compression.

oops. I didn't even look at that. Never fear, the uncompressed full-rez file runs about 107MB.

[Sigurd]

I think Ravell's comment is on the money. Also, vary the blue fringe of the shore a bit and maybe make a beach or two. If the scale permits a rock or an island, a compass rose, or a decorative graphic would also be appealing.


Sigurd

[Asharad]

Try this revision:

[Hoel]

Great! It's getting better all the time.
If you want more variation with the trees set a dark and a light green of slightly different hues as forground/back color and go to brush settings, set the color dynamics to have 50-100% for/back jitter, 20% hue jitter and 10% for the rest. If you want more uniform, lower the values. That's how I did.

You could sharpen up the shores a bit too...

[Asharad]

You could sharpen up the shores a bit too...

Lol, after everyone said the shores were too hard, did I go overboard trying to make them soft?

[Gandwarf]

Lol, after everyone said the shores were too hard, did I go overboard trying to make them soft?

They are a bit blurry right now. The most important part is, you don't want too many hard lines in your coast. That doesn't look natural, unless they are cliffs. The land just below the middle river to the left for example has a really sharp point. You should soften it a bit. Not by blurring it more, but by rounding the edges. Water tends to smooth stuff like that.

[Korash]

yeah that them thar hills under them thar trees !!

looking better

[Asharad]

The land just below the middle river to the left for example has a really sharp point. You should soften it a bit. Not by blurring it more, but by rounding the edges. Water tends to smooth stuff like that.

I was thinking that points add realism. Examples below.