[Award Winner] Saderan – a tutorial

[SJS]

Having this same issue. I believe I have followed all the steps correctly but when I paint onto the layer mask absolutely nothing happens. Tried hiding the layer and mask to see if maybe it was just super subtle but there is no discernible effect at all.

I find that if I click and drag my paintbrush, very little seems to happen. However, if I put my brush in a spot and then click, or click repeatedly, I get a definite change in the appearance of the ocean. If you switch to a harder brush or higher opacity, you should see something happening (you can always undo if it's not subtle enough). Another thing you can do is to temporarily turn off the visibility of the other layers to make the changes to the ocean elevation mask more obvious.

[Jaap Visser]

This tutorial helped me really to get things started. Everything is very clear, it also removed the dust off my PS knowledge. Thank you very much for this!

Edit: attached my first tryout

[Swampdog]

First off, this is an awesome tutorial! Glad it is still alive and easy for us newbie cartographers to find! I'm in the process of building a game using Unity3D and have been drawing a blank in my world map designs until now. What I'm wondering is if anyone following this thread has ever had success converting your maps created with the tutorial to a heightmap to generate 3d terrain.

Thanks Tear for such an awesome, well-written guide!

[eViLe_eAgLe]

I have not done this tutorial. But, I believe that you Ctrl I the layer mask -I easily get confused with masks and stuff I also usually forget the name's of the parts of Photoshop so I might not be totally reliable. And, if I am reading it the right way.. >_> - and paint with white.
-I easily get confused with masks and stuff I also usually forget the name's of the parts of Photoshop so I might not be totally reliable. And, if I am reading it the right way.. >_> -
Ps: I am also a noob. So, my help might not be entirely reliable.

[Ukko]

Cool tutorial Tear. I, being a photoshop noob when it comes doing anything more complicated than making sigs, found it easy enough to follow.
Here is my attempt. Doesn't feel right to me. But this is my first go at it.

[coldwarkid]

I'm new here and a novice cartographer whose been scratching around for the right resources and tips for quite a while. Your mapping style is very much in the vein that I aspire to. I look forward to getting everything I can out of your tutorial. Thanks for taking the time. This old dog needs to learn a few new tricks.

Thanks.

[ariellajem]

I can't recall ever posting on the forum, just lurking mostly. I am, however, starting a novel next month and wanted to do a little world building so here I am. This tutorial was incredibly helpful and I thought I would share my WIP that resulted from messing around using this tutorial as a basic guide. Thanks so much for helping out storytellers who need something more visually stimulating than bad pencil sketches.

[arsheesh]

Good to see you again Tear, you are definitely missed.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[Alex]

I hope I am allowed to post in this thread.

I just wanted to say that the tutorial is easy to follow and absolutely lovely. I rarely ever touch my Photoshop so its just a giant mess of commands to me, but the tutorial led me to each step easily (with the exception of the locating for the first time of course xD), so that's really great for the novices of PS. I'm gonna head off and try at the tutorial now

Thank you for sharing with us! Also, your map is absolutely gorgeous!

[ScotlandTom]

This tutorial is simply incredible. I think my only critique would be that it suggests an initial canvas size of 1000x1000 pixels and then it suggests that you halve the size later on. 500x500 pixels is almost completely useless as far as printing is concerned, especially if you want a final product that will print at a good poster size.

That said, I would like to reiterate how completely and utterly fantastic this tutorial is. It is easy to follow and understand and for anyone familiar with Photoshop it's also incredibly easy to tweak to one's own liking. I love the style of map this tutorial provides and plan on making more maps using what I've learned here in the future.