[Award Winner] My atlas style in PS

[Ascension]

It looks to me like the lighting effects settings were bumped up too high on either intensity or ambience thus creating more whiteness. Set the intensity at 25 or lower and the ambience at 10 or lower and give that a try. Or just throw up a screenshot of your lighting effects settings and I'll know exactly what to tweak.

[Krases]

Is this tutorial possible in GIMP 2? I just tried it and I don't think the programs are similar enough.

Oh well. I should buy photoshop anyway.

[Notsonoble]

It's possible, but rough... I used many pieces from this one and RobA's regional map tutorial to make a world map recently...

I can't promise lots of help, but this isn't the only Ascension tut I've tried to get to work in GIMP... so if you could post some details of your snags... I can try...

[Vascant]

It looks to me like the lighting effects settings were bumped up too high on either intensity or ambience thus creating more whiteness. Set the intensity at 25 or lower and the ambience at 10 or lower and give that a try. Or just throw up a screenshot of your lighting effects settings and I'll know exactly what to tweak.

I followed the one in the tutorial which is different then the suggested, that was one of those moments when I wondered if perhaps this would be corrected down the line. Now I know... I am going to start over since it won't take much to do a new map with all the notes I have and see if I can't get this right.

Thanks

[Ascension]

Krases - as far as I know, the lighting effects filter is the only thing that can't be duplicated in Gimp very well. I use lighting effects for texturing mountains, hills and the land. You could easily use Pasis' tutorial for mountains in that spot and it looks great. You can texture land with a pattern overlay. The point being that the tut is meant as a starting point and then you can jump off wherever you want and start experimenting on your own. I would suggest doing RobA's tutorial first to learn your way around the Gimp techniques first and become familiar with them. Then try mine and see what you think and make changes accordingly.

[Notsonoble]

Krases - as far as I know, the lighting effects filter is the only thing that can't be duplicated in Gimp very well. I use lighting effects for texturing mountains, hills and the land. You could easily use Pasis' tutorial for mountains in that spot and it looks great. You can texture land with a pattern overlay. The point being that the tut is meant as a starting point and then you can jump off wherever you want and start experimenting on your own. I would suggest doing RobA's tutorial first to learn your way around the Gimp techniques first and become familiar with them. Then try mine and see what you think and make changes accordingly.

Without the layer effects scripts from here: http://registry.gimp.org/node/186 overlays, advanced shadowing and beveling and embossing are not accessible in GIMP, and even with the scripts some things don't behave quite right...

The lighting effects should actually be doable, but translating the settings from PS to GIMP is a bear, and I haven't figured it out yet (but I'm getting there)

But yes, RobA's tutorials would be a good place to start, and with the tuts, some scripts (the above and others many of which are in software discussion's scripting child board) you can still do quite a bit...

None of the things I've learned are really worth tutorials at this point, but I'm sorta getting to a point where I can answer questions about things...

Don't give up on GIMP just yet... unless you've really just got money to burn... If I had the cash I'd probably be looking at a copy of photoshop just for the sake of being able to compare the two programs out put at the same time, but that's only because I'm convinced GIMP is worth the effort. (And I wouldn't mind being able to figure some things out well enough to help coding things into GIMP 3...)

[Vascant]

I almost got away with a whole day of drawing and no problems...

If you notice in the attached image, there are some odd discolored lines. I know they comes from when I am making the land mass in step 8. It seems to happen in areas when I am bring the air brush to small perhaps? What I am trying to do is make all the coast lines look alike, as in no difference from the generated coast and the part where I paint. Do you have this problem? Is it something that I will be able to correct when I am at the artistic steps?

Thanks

[Ascension]

If you have a lot of patience you can correct them in the Adjust layers by painting over them with a color. Myself, I'd just scrap it and go back and redo step 8 and not put those stark lines in...if you're making the airbrush smaller the edges become crisper so you will have to lower the opacity even more.

That choice is up to you and I work much faster cuz I know this like my hand. Keep going and do the Adjust layers and see if you can cover them up...Adjust 1 is a colored clouds layer and Adjust 2 is airbrushing colors in places where we want certain colors like swamps and extended deserts.

[Vascant]

Okay, been having a blast and learning a lot of things. Rather then stopping every time I figure out something new or correct an error I decided to run through all the steps so I get a feel for the complete direction of things. This was going great until Step 42 "The Shelf steps". In fact it might as well be Steps 42,43 and 44 since it really becomes a mess there for me.

If I am reading correctly, the Ocean Copy should not have a Layer Style to clear since you just cleared it, so in effect the duplicate should not have one either? Then you are creating a completely new layer or going back to the just created one?

If you could be so kind as to spell out these steps as you have done so in the past it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[Ascension]

In step 42, we are filling the ocean with black, except around the coasts, merge the layers, and delete the blacks. So instead of black and white clouds all over, the white clouds are limited to being around the coast. In step 43 and 44, we give it that shelf look with an outer bevel with a contour. You know how to add a layer style of bevel and emboss, right? Well that's step 43. Step 44 defines a contour...if you look at the layer style window (pic1) then contour is right under bevel and emboss but just above texture. Click on that and then click on the little window with the contour in it to bring up the contour editor (pic2).