RRM - Relatively Realistic Mountains using Photoshop

[Zaramis]

STEP 5: With your base mountain texture in place, you will now go on and add another layer. I usually call this "Mountainpeaks". Add this above the mountain layer.

STEP 6: Set your brush size to 1 for a start. Just one tiny pixel. Set the opacity to 20% and the flow to 20% or some low number like that.

STEP 7: Add a "Bevel and Emboss" effect to the mountainpeaks layer. Set this to "Emboss", "Chisel Soft" and a size of around 150-200 pixels, depending on how high your highest mountains should be. Set the shadows to 90% and lights to around 30% in the shading. I also added 1 pixel of "soften" for this map, depending on how.. well, soft and round you want the mountains. Note that the 1 pixel of "soften" makes a huge difference. If you want the maps to be more craggy or pointy, remove it and you will see an immediate effect on the end result.

STEP 8: Add a Texture effect to Bevel and Emboss and adjust to a level where it feels good. For this map, I used "Black Marble" at 75% scale, 2% depth.

STEP 9: Start painting. You will notice that as you paint, if you paint several times over one location, mountainpeaks will start to rise in that place. The thinner or less visible your line is, the smaller the mountains. Experiment with different brushes, different flow strength and such to get the increase of mountain altitude to a point where you like it.

It should look something like this when you are done: