Results 1 to 6 of 6

Thread: Easy Forests for the Photoshop Novice

  1. #1

    Post Easy Forests for the Photoshop Novice

    It may be a little presumptuous of me to be posting a tutorial with only a handful of posts to my name, but I after struggling to make a decent looking forest with my neophyte photoshop skills, and finally succeeding in making something that didn't look like a horrendous mess, I thought I'd share.

    The whole process starts with a very particular brush, namely the 'Rough Round Bristle' brush. Once that's selected, we can begin.

    Step 1: Open a new layer, and using a quite dark green, paint on where you want your forest.

    Step 2: Right click on the new layer, and choose 'Blending Options' and then click on 'Stroke'. By default, this will add a bright red border around your forest, which is no use to man nor beast. Click on the colour box and you'll be taken to a colour picking screen. Choose one of the greens from the bar of colour in the centre, and then pick a slightly darker green than you used for your forest. Depending on the size of your forest, you might need to change the size, but for this example, we're leaving everything as it is.

    Step 3: You should now have something that looks like the third image.

    Step 4 (Optional): This step is entirely optional. It adds a bit of texture to your forest, which may or may not be appropriate for the look of your map. I'm including it for completeness sake.

    Right click on your forest layer again and head back to 'Blending Options'. Click on 'Pattern Overlay' and a weird bubble-like texture should appear all over your forest. Don't panic! This is quite normal and is easily changed. Next to the little preview window for the pattern is an arrow, click on that and you can choose a different style. I've chosen the 'Wrinkles' pattern, which is right next to the default bubble one. Once you've selected it, change the opacity of the pattern down to about 10%, and the scale to about 50%.

    Step 5: Still in the 'Blending Options' menu, head to 'Drop Shadow'. The default options are largely fine, but you might want to increase the distance a little. In the example, I've increased it to 11 pixels.

    Step 6: That's it! If you've followed the steps, it should look something like the sixth screenshot.

    The advantage of this method, especially for novices like myself is that, thanks to the 'Stroke' we used, we can simply erase sections of the forest to make clearings or make a path for roads or rivers. Just use an irregularly shaped brush, like one of the chalk brushes, to maintain the 'foresty' edge to the stroke.

    One world of warning though, you may need to reduce the distance of the drop shadow, as it can sometimes stick out a little too much. See image seven for an example of both the erasing effect, and the 'sticking out' shadow effect.

    You can also easily substitute other colours for the greens I've used. For example, If you're going for the 'olde worlde' look, just use browns or tans.

    Anyway, I hope you find this helpful!
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails Click image for larger version. 

Name:	tut0.gif 
Views:	137 
Size:	131.5 KB 
ID:	9165   Click image for larger version. 

Name:	tut1.gif 
Views:	158 
Size:	95.6 KB 
ID:	9166   Click image for larger version. 

Name:	tut2.gif 
Views:	123 
Size:	14.4 KB 
ID:	9167   Click image for larger version. 

Name:	tut3.gif 
Views:	143 
Size:	55.2 KB 
ID:	9168   Click image for larger version. 

Name:	tut4.gif 
Views:	157 
Size:	18.2 KB 
ID:	9169  

    Last edited by nilcypher; 01-12-2009 at 09:16 AM.

  2. #2

    Post

    Here are the last three images.
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails Click image for larger version. 

Name:	tut5.gif 
Views:	122 
Size:	17.0 KB 
ID:	9170   Click image for larger version. 

Name:	tut6.gif 
Views:	186 
Size:	124.3 KB 
ID:	9171   Click image for larger version. 

Name:	tut7.gif 
Views:	304 
Size:	119.9 KB 
ID:	9172  
    Last edited by nilcypher; 01-12-2009 at 09:17 AM.

  3. #3

    Default

    Please, please please!!!!

    No need to apologise!

    We positively encourage tutorials here and thank you so much for posting!

    Our aim to help people create better maps and this is a very important part of the process.

    You have been repped and rated!

  4. #4
    Guild Novice
    Join Date
    Apr 2009
    Location
    Paris, France
    Posts
    8

    Post

    Ooh yes, it's axactly what I was looking for !
    Last edited by totorr; 04-15-2009 at 11:04 AM.

  5. #5
    Community Leader Facebook Connected Steel General's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jun 2008
    Location
    Ft. Wayne, IN
    Posts
    9,530

    Default

    Nice little tutorial - have some more 'rep' *bonk*

    This is very similar to the method I normally use, except I generally have a pattern overlay and a bit of gaussian blur at the very end.
    Last edited by Steel General; 04-15-2009 at 10:39 AM.
    My Finished Maps | My Challenge Maps | Still poking around occasionally...

    Unless otherwise stated by me in the post, all work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.



  6. #6

    Default

    Found this through search and I know it's an old thread but thank you so much! This helped immensely - couldn't figure out for the life of me how to do the forests. Again, thanks

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •