Stern's Bridge

[jfrazierjr]

Quick reply to Korash- Way too long! Days, certainly, but I'm not sure how many. I agonize over very small details.

jfrazierjr- I'm not sure I followed your instructions very well. I did manage to select the area between the paper and the image limits, but could not find 'delete' option anywhere. I tried cutting, to no avail. So I just started looking through the options I did have. At one point I could see the checkerboard behind the paper (though I'm not sure how I did it), but I could still see the parts of the map that ran past the paper's edge under the checkers, so I figured that wasn't it. In the end I filled the selection with white. I then saved it as a .png file. I'm not sure how big it was before this save, but the current image is 6.94 MB. I reduced the image by 50% so that I could post the result.

This is the flat white jpg I'm coloring, also reduced

Attachment 10187

Here is the result of jfrazierjr's instructions, as well as I could follow them

Attachment 10188

Final note, I am again filled with uncertainty. Is this the direction I wish to be going? It seems... I don't know, wrong, but I don't know why. Should the coloring stop? Should the hues change? I will continue coloring for now, because I don't have any better ideas, and I know that on completion they are easily restored to white or altered to another hue.

Your very close. I simply meant the Delete key on your keyboard which removes everything on a layer or whatever is selected and turns it transparent. Note how you have a white border? png allows transparency while jpg does not. If you select the outside edges and delete, the white border will delete out to transparent and when you save to png, that transparency will still be there and make it look muc more like a piece of torn paper.

One other thought if you want to try it is to take a look at my WIP I linked to previously. Notice how the edges of the page have the color fade away so that the very edges are just the parchment? You can replicate this by using layer masks on upper layers to hide what's below using a high blured selection. Check out http://www.cartographersguild.com/sh...archment+paper for some of the details, and if you want help, let us know here.

[jfrazierjr]

In any event, no matter which way you go with it, the map is turning out quite well!

[Feralspirit]

I would really like to add some text on a curve, (the river, for instance, the roads leading out of town, etc...)can someone explain to me how to do that with GIMP? Or point me at a tut that will teach me?

[RobA]

I would really like to add some text on a curve, (the river, for instance, the roads leading out of town, etc...)can someone explain to me how to do that with GIMP? Or point me at a tut that will teach me?

It is in my "really frickin' big" gimp tut.

Instead of making you read the whole thing, I'll point you to the post

http://www.cartographersguild.com/sh...9&postcount=25

-Rob A>

[Feralspirit]

That's what I was looking for! Thank you RobA, much appreciated. Still so much to learn, and I am very slow.

BTW- I have every intention of reading that tut all the through, and did before your post (in fact, I had it up in another window when I noticed your reply). I suppose I should read it sooner, rather than later. It might actually answer a lot of questions. I'm feeling embarrassed now. Thanks again.

[torstan]

This map is coming along very nicely.

For watercolour effects I've had good results with duplicating the colour layer for a region, setting the bottom layer blending mode to overlay and the top one to normal at 50%. It gives a nice washed out look, and allows the paper texture to come through the colour. Also, I tend to change the black lines to a dark brown (or just set the line layer to overlay and duplicate the layer until I get a dark enough line). The black is a little harsh on a parchment map.

This is coming along really well. I assume you're using the magic wand to select your different fill regions?

[Feralspirit]

huh?

I'm sorry, most of what you said just flew over my head. Let me describe what my situation is (hopefully the process you've described is still accessable to me).

I am not working in layers at all. Every time I save, the image flattens out (I don't know how to save in layers). To create the 'washed out' appearance I was using a desired hue and cutting the opacity by 50%. Because the torn old parchment interferes with bucket fill, I backed-up to a flat white page, and I'm working with that (every time I post an image on the torn old parchment it is newly generated).

Regarding the wand selection tool, I am having difficulties. Every time I save, or rather, every time I reopen my map I notice it has gotten fuzzier (pixels migrating outward). I don't know why this happens, or how to stop it (though it has resulted in one happy accident in that my roads now have a dirtier appearance than before). So, whenever I try to use the wand I end up with selected pixels all over the place, . As a result I just use the freehand select.

Even though I am currently on 1 layer, it sounds as though I could apply your effect when I finish coloring. Is this correct?

I am in the middle of roofing, excited by Ascension's tut yesterday (didn't know what bevel was until then, wish I could reproduce the shingled look he has in Brownstone, but I don't know where to begin looking for corresponding GIMP functions, chisel soft what?), anyway this is where my map stands now.

Should have cut thie size by 50% for upload sorry.

As you can see, my colors are now much darker. Because of this I had kind of given up on the parchment idea. If I can use the process you describe, maybe I can still do it

[waldronate]

I am not working in layers at all. Every time I save, the image flattens out (I don't know how to save in layers). To create the 'washed out' appearance I was using a desired hue and cutting the opacity by 50%. Because the torn old parchment interferes with bucket fill, I backed-up to a flat white page, and I'm working with that (every time I post an image on the torn old parchment it is newly generated).

Looks like you're saving as a JPEG. JPEG does awful things to line art. I recommend something lossless like (in order of preference) PNG, BMP, GIF, JPEG. Of course, the best form to save in is the native format of your software to preserve the layers and such (Photoshop has PSD, for example).

[torstan]

Layers are one of the most powerful features of Gimp and Photoshop. I'd highly suggest that you start using them - they will be an enormous timesaver and allow you to unlock some very powerful features of the program.

To save layers you need to save as a .xcf file. This is the native gimp file format and preserves the layers. This will avoid you having to flatten the image every time and is definitely worth doing. When you want to post a WIP, just use Save As... to save a flattened jpg copy of your working file to post up here.

I must say that you are doing an amazing job to have got this far without layers! And I can see exactly why my explanation passed right by.

As for the colours, yes, you can certainly do this at the end. To do this, create and colour your map with nice bright colours for each region - don't worry too much about the faded look.

Now to get the faded look you'll need to add a new layer. It's best to open up the layers dialogue here (Windows->Dockable dialogues->Layers). At the bottom of this dialogue is a button that creates a new layer. Make sure the new layer is transparent. Move it under the layer the coloured map is on (just click and drag the layer icon. Now make sure this (new) layer is selected and paste in the parchment texture. You won't see it because the map is on the layer above.

Here's an example image I used:


To get the parchment to show through, click on your map layer. Now go to the mode drop down at the top of the layers dialogue. Change the mode to overlay. Ta da - the parchment shows through:


To add a bit of the colour back you can duplicate your map layer (right click on the layer in the layers dialogue->duplicate layer). Now change the mode of this new layer back to normal in the drop down dialogue. There's also a slider underneath the drop down that allows you to set the opacity of the the layer. Drop that down until you get a look that you like. Here's the result I got with my example image:


Now the problem here is that the lines and the colour are both muted. Ideally you want to keep the lines dark and the colour muted. This requires that you have the lines on a separate layer (and is probably for experimentation further down the road) but a quick example of this look is here:


And here's the zips of the two .xcf files I used for this:
Example.zip

Open them up in Gimp and have a look at the layers dialogue - it should demonstrate what I've mentioned here. I hope that was a little clearer! I'll answer any questions that you've got as you go along. I'll make sure I keep an eye on this thread.

[jfrazierjr]

I echo everything others have said about layers. Use a new layer for almost everything. My images (what few I have completed) have 30+ layers by the end, not counting any labeling layers. You want to get into the habit of using lots and lots of layers in GIMP and as Torstan says, use Save a Copy to "export" to a different format such as png or jpeg for posting here (PNG is what you want for this type of image). The only thing to keep in mind is that each layer takes up memory, so you have to make a trade off of flexibility vs memory usage.