[Award Winner] Saderan – a tutorial

[groovey]

Hello Tear (or anyone who can help).

I have a little problem and I can't figure out how to bypass it because I'm not really a pro with Photoshop, just got the basics that I've learned reading tutorials in the forum.

I love Tear's map style, thing is, I got my own sea idea (that I got from a map I love from one of the talented creators of this forum), what I need is just the part to add the land texture, mountains and vegetation, I think I can do rivers myself with a technique I tried before with good results. So really, instead of using the whole style for my map, it'll be a mix of techniques for different things, but in my head projecting how they'd look together they go well together, but that's not an issue.

The issue is I got my world's land masses ready, as an outline (as a stroke), that I can fill in another layer as I wish. Skipping the two first parts of the tutorial plus the coast effects and trying directly to do the elevation part and mountains doesn't work. I add the "base color" layer as it says and then the "elevation" one, but when I try to paint on the elevation layer mask nothing happens.

I suspect it might have to do with how the creation of land masses is done in the beginning of the tutorial, and the Threshold adjustment layer attacked to it? I tried adding one to the layer with my land masses in white and the sea as black (to try to reproduce the result from the first step of the tutorial), but still nothing.

Also, in the tutorial I see that when a Threshold layer adjustment is created it sticks in the same layer that you had selected to do that, but in my case, it creates the Threshold thing in a new layer above the one I had selected, I can't tell if that's how it's supposed to work or what.

I hope I could explain the issue with enough clarity. Does anyone know how to skip directly to steps 3 and 4 and how to set my land masses layer to start working those steps?

I'd really appreciate any help because I'm stuck there till I get the mountains and the terrain, this is in fact the part where I always fail and give up in all my map trials, and this time I'm really so excited about this project (for the first time, I love the land masses I got) I'd feel brokenhearted to abandon it.

Edit: never mind, I figured out what the silly issue was.

[-=Orion=-]

Help!!!
Great tutorial up until page 3, where you copy merged everything into the Alpha 1 channel. It works, but when I go back into the layers and delete the threshold layer, it just becomes clouds again!

I am using Photoshop CS6 and am new to it, so help would be much appreciated

EDIT: I didn't follow the next few steps. All good now!

[-=Orion=-]

This is my first map that I made with this tutorial!

It doesn't quite look like the one in the pdf probably because I'm using Photoshop CS6, but I think it still looks pretty cool.

[DigitalFable]

Going to give this a try today and see what I can come up with using the steps in the tutorial. Thank you for supplying it!

[TaylorH]

Hello. I'm almost finished producing a map using this lovely tutorial, but I have one problem, which is rather strange because everything else has been fine. I'm on the vegetation Grass layer. In CS6 there is no Filter > Texture > Grain, but apparently Grain can be found in Filter Gallery, however, with the Grass layer selected it says that I can't open the Gallery because there's nothing selected. Grass layer is above base colour and below elevation. Any help?

Edit: My apologies. I simply forgot to fill the layer first.

[AslanC]

So I tried doing this, but with a premade coastline/landscape, that is causing me no end of problems. How do those of us who aren't building whole new maps use this?

Also when I did the Paste Alpha 1 thing, the tutorial says "You screen will be black." mine is white. I get pretty lost after that point.

Help? Anyone?

[iceCaller]

Checking this out now. This was what I was hoping for when i joined this forum.
Many Thanks!

[pengwing]

Wow this tutorials seems so nice..
i have been looking for a good tutorial for a while now .
thank you for your hard work .

[3E208]

The style looks good! I like it

[Qoff]

OMG this tutorial is awesome, I was looking for it and I never hoped to find something so good in a PDF file, btw these maps are awesome:

Made this bad boy last nigh, took me a while but i think its beautiful. Thanks for the great tutorial.

Attachment 59438

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.

Attachment 39813

Ok, so this is what I have so far from this tutorial. I thought I'd post an image in this thread as another example of what us lesser non-Tears can expect to achieve through this.

Attachment 19302

When I started this it was supposed to be a quick test to see what I can do with it, hence using the original Vaniya base map. But I'm pretty sure I'm going to carry on with this and see what I can get out of it in the end so I'll probably have to add the extra rivers etc. that I added to the Aronbor map.

Anyway... loving this tut. Excellent stuff, Tear. Thanks.

But another thing, any tips of how to put great cities, roads, a volcano on a island, and city names in a good looking way in the map?


How can I improve my map? Seems so silly.