The Planar Gates Region

[Steel General]

Be careful of using red labels over green (even if they have an outline/glow) - the whole color-blindness thing comes into play.

[LamilLerran]

Blended the swamp/jungle colors, added steam to mouth of the lava flow, added the rest of the labels and roads, and recolored the labels.

I'm uncertain about the steam. To my eye, anyway, it's not bad enough to be clearly worse than the map without steam, but it's not good enough to be clearly better either.

I'm also not happy with the new label color. I've yet to find something that looks as good as the red. I think a key problem is that I want the whole map to use the same color label, and most of the other colors I tried clashed pretty horribly with something. I've uploaded two versions with my two favorite label color schemes, or if someone has other label color suggestions, I'd be interested in hearing them.

[Gandwarf]

Hmm, I agree you should change the label color. Especially over the green areas it's very hard to read. Not sure about the steam either...
Did you check this thread? The map has a volcano and the steam turned out great eventually. Maybe it will give you some inspiration.
http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=6138

[Coyotemax]

Yes, the swamps look more like swamps now, for sure!

As to label colouring.. Hrm. I'll need to think on that.

[Steel General]

For the labels...maybe try white text with a darker glow/stroke (have to experiment with the colors).

The steam isn't bad, but you might look for a realistic clouds tutorial and maybe base it off of that.

[Karro]

Hmm. The updates are looking good.

As for label color, why not the old standby: black with a white outerglow?

[LamilLerran]

Thanks for the continued help everyone.

I can't believe I didn't think of black and white for the labels. I'm quite happy with how that worked out. It sounds a bit plain, but it doesn't look all that plain, and it's decidedly more legible than the other colors and doesn't clash either.

I poked around at the steam a bit and didn't get anything I liked more. Gandwarf, I looked at the thread you mentioned, and while the smoke there does like beautiful, I'm looking for more of a light white steam than a dark tumultuous smoke. The only thread I could find on clouds was this one, which I didn't find too helpful: http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=4458

I think I may set the steam aside for a bit and hope that mulling over it in the back of my mind will lead to inspiration.

[Karro]

FWIW, I liked the red labels (I'm not colorblind, and the contrast looked good to me), but black and white is pretty standard and classic, and since colorblindness is not that unusual a problem, probably a good choice.

[LamilLerran]

FWIW, I liked the red labels (I'm not colorblind, and the contrast looked good to me), but black and white is pretty standard and classic, and since colorblindness is not that unusual a problem, probably a good choice.

Yeah, agreed. I'm probably going to use a red-label version with my group, but post black-label versions online, since I know everyone in my group rather well but am uncertain who would be looking at the map online.