[WIP] Antique Style World Map

[arsheesh]

All I can say is WOW! Moutarde you have really taken on an ambitious project here, and I must say that I am impressed with the degree of precision and detail that your maps encompass. I really like the sort of "Renaissance/Enlightenment Steampunk" look and feel of your work (good choice on the font by the way). You're doing some terrific work here; thanks for sharing it with the rest of us.

Cheers,

-Arsheesh

[moutarde]

Thanks for the praise Arsheesh The fonts I'm using are Baskerville Old Face, and Mistral.

All the text placement is taking forever though If I use the warped text tool it puts a heavy distortion on the letters and makes them look different from the rest, so I've been placing each word individually (and breaking long words into small chunks and placing each chunk) than manually rotating them into the proper alignment. Very painstaking. If anyone reading this has any suggestions, I would dearly love to hear them. A quick google search suggested using a large size, warping it, then reducing the size, and it sort of worked. No distortion, but it left the text looking as though it were bold-type.

[Coyotemax]

You said in the first post you're using photoshop - have you tried drawing out a path, and using the text tool to place the text onto the path? Assuming you're using a version that allows text on a path - I know ps7 but I'm not sure when it was introduced (I'm using cs3 and it's there)

[Gamerprinter]

I'd save your final map then port it over to Inkscape/Illustrator/Xara Xtreme/Corel Draw or other drawing application - creating text on a curve is much easier and faster using a vector drawing app then from within Photoshop or other image editor. Even if you never used one, placing labels and curved text is a pretty easy process using those apps.

In most of those apps its a simple matter of typing out your text - resizing as you need after typing, then drawing a curve with the line/path tool, then selecting both text and line, use the Text to Curve feature and voilla, you've done it.

GP

[moutarde]

Good lord. I didn't have the slightest clue that you could place text onto a path. It looks like you've just saved me dozens of hours Coyote! Thank you!!

Thanks also for the Inkscape/Illustrator suggestion Gamerprinter, but I'm a little hesitant to start learning another graphics program while I'm still just starting to get the hang of Photoshop

[Coyotemax]

Gamerprinter's suggestion is a good one. And if you're not using it for anything other then text (at least for now) it's incredibly easy to learn, I'd recommend giving it some time once you're done your project.

Myself, I do a lot of my text through photoshop since I typically don't have too many labels, but if i'm doing dozens of labels (like my transylvania map, there must have been 300 or more towns on that thing) I'll do exactly what GP suggested

If you end up using Illustrator, you can even import the text layers and further adjust if you need to do more work afterwards.

[Jaxilon]

I can tell you from experience it's worth doing. I beat on Gimp for hours trying to do names on a pathway. I went over to Inkscape (which I barely know) and was dropping names down lickity split, it is WAY easier in Inkscape than it is in GIMP.

I think there was an explanation in one of the posts or maybe a tutorial here. It might have been in my wip for my first map, I'll go check and get back to you here if it is.

[Jaxilon]

HA! I found it on page 2 of my first map WIP:

Sorry I could have been more clear (I have explained my workflow a couple times in other threads and forget some people may not have read EVERY post here )

I make my entire map (or as much as I can) without labels, icons, etc in gimp.
I then do a save as to a jpg.
I import that jpg into inkscape, select the image, then size the canvas to fit the jpg. I lock the background layer (where the image is), and create new layers for things like city labels, rivers, titles, etc. I use layer visibility to reveal only the layer I want, and export it from inkscape as a png.
In gimp I use Open as Layer to bring in that png for final compositing (drop shadows/glows, etc.)

If I want to change text, I flip to my inkscape file and modify it there then delete the existing layer and again us Open as Layer.

When I know I'll do this a lot (like in my recent woodcut map) I used a linked layer set of scripts for gimp I reference here.

If there is interest, I can make a quick tut on it.

-Rob A>

Looks like Rob A might need to whip up a quick tutorial since this is at least the second time it's come up since I've been here.

[moutarde]

That actually doesn't sound too bad at all. I guess I'll have to give that a shot before I start going nuts on all the text. Thanks Jaxilon

[Gamerprinter]

Another thing, once I type the text for the label, but before I create the curved line or the text to curve function, I usually duplicate the text (once you've scaled it to the size you want for a town label - for example), and even make multiple duplicates. Its a very easy matter to place your cursor into a duplicated text line, then backspace and type the next label. This way all your town labels are the same size and same font.

Sometimes I go around the whole map placing the duplicated text of the first town on all points where labels need placed. Then apply text to curve as I need them, as sometimes a label can be placed without needing to curve it. Doing it this way, you just have to ensure that you don't leave a label unchanged - I've done this and had two or three labels with the same town name, because I forgot to change it.

Its really a matter of how much time you want to spend labeling. I could probably accomplish CM's 300 label map in less than an hour doing the labels this way within a vector drawing app. Trying to do the same thing in an image editor like GIMP takes forever and can be very frustrating.

Last point - you mention you're just starting to get comfortable with Photoshop and not wanting to try a different application, but know this, for many of my maps, I am using 2 or 3 different applications to get the job done. Xara Xtreme gives me more capability to do all of this in one application, but using several apps for a single map is a very normal production work-flow for most projects. I almost never rely on just one application to create graphics.

GP