International borders

[HandsomeRob]

To get the interior of the country to be transparent, I used the blending mode. Each blending mode uses different rules for what it makes transparent. In this case, I used "darken," which causes any pixels in the selected layer that are lighter than pixels underneath it to become transparent. Since white is lighter than everything, all the white will vanish when the layer is set to darken.

Conversely, if you fill the country with black and set it to "lighten," you'll get the same result--lighten turns pixels transparent if they're darker than what's underneath.

Here we would fill the country with white and use "multiply". Also, I've never done a map for a publisher where the glow was not set to be the same size everywhere. Just FYI.

-Rob

[ravells]

What a great thread...and an excellent mini tut from Mid. Repped.

Good to see you're popping your head in occasionally, Handsome Rob!!

[argaur]

More simple questions for a rookie.... I´ve decided to to the mountains like in this old maps, i think is more realistic for a napoleonic map. How can i get that kind of mountains? It seems that is not difficult, but i have no idea... thanks!!

[ravells]

I think you may need to buy a wacom tablet to do those....is there any chance you could zoom in really close to the mountains if you have the map on a scanner?

[argaur]

No, i have found it on the web, this is the link where you can see it higher

http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/histo...urope_1740.jpg

Another variant it this, mountains more simple like a worm:

http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/histo...urope_1740.jpg

But i fund much better the first option

[Rahva]

It looks a bit like on of the photoshop filters - plastic or something? I can't verify it right now but I'm sure someone could fiddle with it.

[ravells]

You'll need a custom brush for that. I've tried to get this effect with custom brushes before, but it never works out looking anywhere near as good as just drawing it by hand.

[Steel General]

Didn't Ascension do something like this in one of his recent tutorials?

[ravells]

Come to think of it, I think he did.

I've just had a go in photoshop.

1. open a new document with a white background, say 500 x 500 pixels.

2. use a round black brush to make a single mountain line. (See picture below)

3. select all (Ctrl-A), then go to edit/define brush preset.

4. select the preset as your brush, in the brushes pallete choose the settings indicated below.

5. Select the Brush Tip Shape option and make sure that the spacing is set to about 100% or so.

6. This is much easier with a tablet and pen, you can then just draw your mountains. Some doodles attached - you may have to do a bit of cleaning up from time to time if you can't get a perfect 'join' at the start and end of the enclosed mountain shape.

If you become a really dab hand at it, you can set the size jitter to pressure and make smaller and bigger lines as you draw.

[Midgardsormr]

Thanks very much Midgardsormr, i got it... .

Another question about that map... how can i make that sea pattern? those crrosed lines...

That's pretty easy. The first thing to do is to set your foreground color to black (D resets your colors to foreground black and background white). Now, select the Line Tool. It will be in the flyout with the Rectangle, Ellipse, and Polygon tools. Make a new layer and draw a line the width of your image, holding down shift to constrain it to horizontal. Select the Move tool and stretch the line out beyond the edges of your image, then copy the layer three times. You will now have four identical lines on top of one another.

Now, you're going to rotate all but one of your layers to form a radiating pattern. Go to Edit > Transform > Rotate (Ctrl-T). Now, in the tool's settings at the top, you'll see a row of controls. The one you want to manipulate looks like a little angle diagram:


Enter 45 in that box, and the line you have selected will rotate to a 45 degree angle related to the others.

Select another of your copied line layers and do the same thing, but enter 90 in the box. Once more, only enter -45 to get the last line you need.

Now you want to select all four of the line layers (click the top one, then shift-click the bottom one) and Layer > Merge Layers (Ctrl-E).

Now you can move your new layer to where ever you want the lines to radiate from. Give the layer a meaningful name, like "Nav lines" and move it to just above your parchment.

If you want more complex lines, you can add more at whatever angles you like and merge them into your existing layer.

Unfortunately, you'll notice that the lines are visible beneath the countries, too, because the countries themselves are transparent. To fix that, we'll learn about layer masks. At the bottom of your layers palette, there is a button called "Add Layer Mask"


Make sure your Nav lines layer is still selected, and click that button once. You'll see a white box appear in the Layers list next to the Nav lines thumbnail. This is the layer mask. If you paint black onto the mask, portions of the layer will become transparent. We could just paint out the lines we don't want to see, but there's a far more efficient way to go about it.

Select your original map layer (it's still at the bottom of your layers, right?) Using the Magic Wand tool (W), click once on the ocean, the go to Select > Save Selection... Enter a name, like "Ocean," and click OK.

Now, go to the Channels palette. You can reach it with the tab at the top of the Layers.


In the list of channels that appears, find your Ocean channel and click once on it. You should see your image vanish to be replaced by a black-and-white silhouette of the continent. The water should be white and the land black. If that is not the case, go to Image > Adjustments > Invert (Ctrl-I).

Now, Select > All (Ctrl-A) will put the marching ants around the entire canvas. Copy it with Edit > Copy (Ctrl-C). Go back to your Layers palette and select the layer mask you made earlier (the white box in the Nav lines layer). Back to the Channels palette, and you will see a new Channel called Nav lines Mask. The mask is currently hidden, so click the empty box to the left of its name to activate the eye icon. Now paste the ocean channel into the mask channel with Edit > Paste (Ctrl-V). The continent will turn pink, which indicates where the pixels will be turned transparent.

Go back to the Layers Palette and click your Nav lines layer to deselect the mask. Hopefully, you'll now see the Nav lines stop at the edge of the continent.

The final step is to adjust the opacity until the lines look right. Here's the quickie image I made while composing this:


HR: I agree, good to have you pop in on us again. Multiply works similarly to Darken, but it tends to remove more of the glow. On the other hand, it would probably make the glow look more like it was painted on the parchment. Good tip. As for the thickness of the border glow, I hadn't really looked any other maps to see how it was usually done, but it makes sense that it would be uniform. It would look odd if the glow were much smaller on one side of the border than the other.

I notice that the sample map doesn't give a glow to the Ottoman empire at all.

edit: NICE, ravs! Thanks for contributing, and have some rep!