Mountain Experimentation

[Steel General]

OK, its a bit slow at work right now so I had time to mess around. I wanted to come up with yet another alternative to doing mountains on a regional / continental map. This may or may not have been tried before but I don't remember seeing it anywhere.

So the image below is a result of about 2 hours of playing around. I think it has potential - just needs a bit of tweaking.

As always C&C encouraged and welcomed.

Here's a list of the steps I took;

• New image (1000x1000pxls @200ppi)
• Fill with my standard grass texture from Spiral Graphics
• New layer
  
  • Filter > Render > Clouds (foreground = white, background = black)
  • Filter > Render > Difference Clouds x4 (not sure it matters as long as its at least twice)
  • Filter > Sketch > Bas Relief (Detail = 15, Smoothness = 1)
  • Apply layer effects
    
    • Bevel/Emboss (Inner Bevel, Chisel Soft, Depth = 500%, Size=45, Soften = 5). I also adjusted the settings of the shadow/highlights.
    • Color Overlay (Dk. Brown) set to Overlay
    • Pattern Overlay (I used Ft. Hills of Ariloa from Spiral Graphics)
  • Apply Layer Mask
• Fiddle with the shape until you find something that appeals to you
• Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur of about 8 (adjust to taste)