[Award Winner] Antique-style maps in Photoshop

[Ascension]

9. Our layers palette is getting quite long so let’s fix that. Click on the “land” layer. At the bottom of the layers palette you will see an icon that looks like a little folder…click that. This inserts a folder into our layers palette and you can name it whatever you like…I named mine “main map”. Drag each of the layers that are below this folder onto the folder name itself (you will see a brown glow around the name of the folder). Once done, click on the little triangle to the left to collapse the view. Click on the topmost country layer and repeat this process. You should have 4 layers above that are not in folders; rivers, mountains, aging, and brown.

10. Let’s add some cities now. Change back to the pencil and grab the Hard round 5-pixels tip. Click on the “mountains” layer and create a new layer, rename it to “cities”. Put a dot wherever you want it. On the layers palette, right click on this layer and choose “Paste layer style” (this puts that 1-pixel black stroke around the dot and makes the dot itself invisible). Since this is supposed to be something more modern we will need lots of cities and towns…we do not need to make this a sparsely settled map like we would for something medieval. Also, what makes this style map seem nice is the sheer amount of text on it, but I’ll get to that later…for now put in lots of dots. We will only name cities and towns so don’t worry about that too much…yet. I put dots at every river delta, wherever two rivers meet, and then wherever seems kind of empty ((pic antique 16)).

11. Now the ultra tedious part…naming all of that stuff. Cities and towns use Times New Roman but the towns are italicized. Set the font size to 4pt for cities and 3.5pt for towns. As a rule of thumb I use 2 towns to 1 city. Once you have all of the cities and towns named merge them all together and rename this layer to “city names”. Change the layer’s opacity to 75% and add a layer style of outer glow...the color is F5F5F0 (rgb 245, 245, 240), mode is screen, opacity is 75%, spread and size are both 10. What really makes this style of map cool is the sheer amount of text you can cram into it and still be relatively legible. So, although it is tedious, try to name as many things as you can, I have not since this is just a tutorial ((pic antique 17)).

[Ascension]

12. Let’s give our continent a name. For this we’ll use the font Times New Roman again but in all caps and we’ll adjust it a bit. First, go ahead and type the name with a font size of 12pt. Next open up the Character window. You will see a capital T with an up and down arrow beside it; this is the Verticality scale. Change it from 100% to 75%. This squashes our letters a bit and looks cooler. Next, you will see AV with a left and right arrow underneath of it; this is the Tracking (the space between letters). Set this number to 900. Lastly, at the very top of the screen you will see a T with a little hill under it; this is the Warp tool. Set this style to Arc, Horizontal, and a +10% Bend. Position the text somewhere near the center of the continent. Try not to let this text overlap the text for cities and towns but if it does, then click on the “city names” layer and drag a marquee around the text and move it so that you can read it then deselect. Apply the same layer style as in step 11.

13. Oceans are done the same way as in the last step but with a smaller font size and in italic…I use an 8pt font. Also, they are often rotated to fit a coastline. Bays, coves, and smaller water bodies use upper and lower case letters and smaller font size. Once you have all of your water bodies named merge them together and apply the same layer style as in step 11 ((pic antique 1).

14. Country names are done in Arial, in all caps, with the same vert scale and the tracking varies depending on how wide the country is. For countries that are tall and skinny you will have to put the text on two lines (make sure you hit the enter key after the first word with no space) and make sure that the text style is centered and not left aligned or right aligned. Also, change the Leading in the Character window. It looks like an A on top of another A with a line between them and an up and down arrow beside them. This changes the amount of space between text lines. Once this is all done, merge the layers and apply the same layer style as in step 11.

15. Geologic features, like mountains, deserts, etc. are in italic Arial, in all caps, but set the vert to 120% and the tracking is 0%. Again, merge the layers and apply the layer style.

16. Rivers are done in italic Times New Roman with a vert of 125% and 0 tracking (and a small font size). They are also warped to fit the bends of the river. This step can take the longest if you have a large amount of rivers. For this tutorial I am not going to name my rivers as it will take way too long to do so.

[Ascension]

17. This is looking pretty good so lets get to the finish work. Click on the “brown” layer and create a new layer. Rename this layer to “frame”. Zoom in to 1600% so that we can see each pixel and get to know them a little bit Move the map so that you are looking at the very top left. Make sure that the ruler is showing and click the Move tool (it looks like a pointer with a plus sign). Click on the ruler and drag out a guide to the fifteenth pixel from the top. Do this again but from the left side. Move the map to the bottom right corner and drag out a guide to the fifteenth pixel from the bottom and one from the right side. Zoom back out. Grab the Marquee tool. Drag out a selection that fills in this marked area. Fill with black. View > Clear guides. Ctrl-click this layer and Select > Modify > Contract = 15. Hit the delete key and deselect. Create a new layer, name it anything you want and drag out some more guides. These guides will be 40 pixels from the edge of the image. Marquee this area, fill with black, and deselect. Clear guides. Ctrl-click this layer, Select > Modify > Contract = 5, hit delete and deselect. You should now have a thick frame and a thin frame. Merge down (ctrl-e). If you have rings or text showing through, then go and erase them.

[Ascension]

18. Put in your title text…I used Times New Roman, 6pt italic and 12pt normal. The vert was reset to 100%. We need a scale bar now so grab the default Hard square 10 pixels. Create a new layer and rename it to “scale bar”. Zoom in to 500% or more so that you can see up close. Click to make a dot (square, whatever). Move over a bit and put another dot right next to this one but don’t overlap the dots and don’t leave a space between them. Put down 3 more dots like this so that we have a black bar that is 10 pixels tall and 50 pixels wide. Copy this layer and move it to the right so that it abuts the previous black bar. Put a white color overlay on this layer. Copy the black bar again and move it to the right of the white bar. Continue copying and moving these 2 bars until you’re happy. I went with 3 black, 2 white. When done merge these layers together. Click on the title text layer and then grab the Move tool. Drag out a guide (from the left side ruler) to the middle of the title text…guides have a snap ability, they snap to either side and the middle as well as top and bottom. We want this one in the middle. Click on the “scale bar” and move it so that it snaps to the middle of the guide. Move it up and down as you see fit. When happy, clear the guides.

19. Now let’s put the mile numbers in, use Arial and a small font size (I went with 4pt). Put each new number (0, 100, 200, etc) on its own layer. Using the Move tool try to get each number centered above the color stops and make sure that each number touches the scale bar. When done, link and merge these number layers. Move this layer up 5 pixels. Click back on the “scale bar” layer. Add a 1-pixel black stroke with a pencil (not a layer style). Use an eraser and delete the white bars. This is important because we want our paper to show through and there is no white on our paper. Put in “Scale In Miles” and center it (use the guide). And lastly, add in a secondary frame for the title.

20. Put in a compass but make sure that it is not too modern or too ancient. Next, anything that is black and big and above the “brown” layer needs a bit of a blur. Merge these layers together and hit ctrl-f to apply the last filter (the gaussian blur). Move this layer under the “aging” layer and apply the layer style from step 11.

[Ascension]

21. Now you might be thinking to yourself, “There’s something missing” and I’ll say “Yes, there is…but do you think you can handle it?” It’s time for the latitude and longitude lines and it can get a little tricky. The first thing we are going to do is draw out a 2-pixel black line from the very top to the very bottom (on a new layer). Next we need some guides placed 200 pixels apart (our image is 2000 pixels wide so every 200 pixels is 10% of the map). Zoom in to 1600% and put the guides in at 200, 400, 600, 800, 1000, 1200, 1400, 1600, and 1800. Use the Move tool and place the black line directly in the middle of the first guide. Copy this layer and move it to the next guide. Keep going until you get all of the guides covered with a black line. Merge these layers together. Copy this layer. Edit > Transform > Rotate 90CW. Merge down. Rename this layer to “lat long”. We now have our lat and long lines. For that extra “coolness” factor we’re going to distort these lines. Click on the “Background” layer. Image > Canvas Size = put 1000 in each of the windows (this will add 500 pixels to the top, bottom, left, and right of the whole image). Click back on the “lat long” layer. Filter > Distort > Spherize = 50%. Now that looks pretty cool. Click on the “Background” layer. Ctrl-click on the “aging” layer. Image > Crop. Now our image is back where it started (2000 X 2000) but we need to erase any lat long lines that go through the frame. Next, put in the numbers to indicate the degrees of latitude and longitude (use Times New Roman in italic and a small font size). When that is done, do the blur and apply the layer style from step 11 ((pic antique 19)). NOTE: this process works perfect if your continent is on the equator; if your continent is above or below the equator then you will have to add more lines and then move them around after the Spherize is done and possibly Edit > Transform > Scale.

[Ascension]

22. This is now done. Now you can start adding your own things to the edges. I went back and added an outer glow of black to the “land” layer as well as an inner glow of black. I did the same for the mountain line (not the little hatch lines, the original fat line layer) but with a smaller size glow radius. You can use the empty space for doing inset maps of islands or cites or add clipart or whatever. Just make sure that anything you add is genre appropriate (no spaceships). When the map is all done, add your favorite torn edges/burnt edges/ripped edges border and add in some distress, folds, scratches, grunge and whatever else.

Happy mapping to all and to all a good map.

[Korash]

I was thinking of this type of style for my hand drawn map but was worried about the mountains. The way you did them (ridge line and fuzzy worm) is something that I might be able to pull off by hand. I have no prob. (at least not now that I have tried a few tut here) adding the color on the comp, but I wanted the line work for the terrain to be done by hand.

thanks muchly and duly repped and rated.

:edit: might even have rated it twice

[Bohunk]

Beautiful map A. The one thing that bugs me, because I tried doing the exact same thing, is the rings around the landmass. They get too perfect and in contrast to the mountains you (and I, in my map) created they destroy the hand drawn look to the map. When I played with this idea in my map I tried everything but drawing the lines myself by hand. You figure if you smooth each ring it might look better but it doesn't and in the end I dropped the map completely until I had time to draw them by hand.

Great tutorial and great looking map; the comp would allow me to rep ya again!

[Hoel]

So cool. Will definitely try this at home. I've been trying alot of different styles of mountains, but this one looks better than anything i've come up with.

[jfrazierjr]

Beautiful map A. The one thing that bugs me, because I tried doing the exact same thing, is the rings around the landmass. They get too perfect and in contrast to the mountains you (and I, in my map) created they destroy the hand drawn look to the map. When I played with this idea in my map I tried everything but drawing the lines myself by hand. You figure if you smooth each ring it might look better but it doesn't and in the end I dropped the map completely until I had time to draw them by hand.

I have not tried it, but if you space the rings out a bit (at least 8-10 pixels from each other or more) you might be able to do a displacement map against each set of rings with a 1-2 px distort to get a slightly more varied line. Not sure what method A is doing as I have not read the whole thing yet, but if stroking a path, I know GIMP can emulate brush dynamics to vary stroke width during the stroke, so I assume PS can probably do that some to. That would also help make it look a bit more hand drawn with the varied line sizes.