First Map: Ascension(ish) Style!

[arsheesh]

Ah yes, that's because the "forests" in my map are actually the "hills" in the tutorial: see Steps 10 and 23-30 for details on how to do this. Also, as Ascension pointed out to me, my forests were not quite dark enough, so I added an extra "Hill Color" layer (with the "Hill Outline" layer mask attached). I chose a dark green color for this layer (274204), set the Opacity of the layer to 65%, and set the Layer Mode to "Soft Light." You may want to play with these settings a bit to see what works best for your map.

Cheers,

- Arsheesh

[arsheesh]

Well, I think the end is finally in sight. I still have to place villages and ruins within "Eriond" and perhaps do a bit of touch up work. I tried to differentiate natural vs. man made geographical features by using different colors. I wanted the city names to be more prominent than the names given to the terrain itself. That said,I think perhaps that some of the terrain names may have turned out a little too obscure. I'm not sure. Any thoughts?

[moutarde]

It's looking really great so far, I think your forests are some of the best I've seen. Some of the terrain labels are kind of hard to read, like the Kellanen Heights, and the northern Glendor Forest. You could try strengthening the outline of those labels, and leaving the fill fairly transparent. That should keep those labels from having the punch of the city labels, but still keep them from straining the eyes

[arsheesh]

Thanks for the advice Moutarde, I'll give it a try. As to the forests, I'm glad that you like them but the credit ought to go to Ascension and Gidde-they are the ones that developed the method that I have appropriated for my map.

Cheers,

-Arsheesh

[arsheesh]

Please Help! I am almost finished, but have run into a snag with what is seemingly an embarrassingly easy task; that is, creating a Scale. I would like to create a simple scale two rows high and four columns wide to represent distance (miles or leagues, something like that). I'd place it right underneath the compass rose. Yet I can't seem to figure out how to do this in GIMP. For those of you GIMP (or Photoshiop) users out there, is there any way to do this using Raster based software alone (e.g. without importing the image from another vector program)? Also, any other feedback on the current image is appreciated.

Cheers,

-Arsheesh

[Jaxilon]

Well, if you are lost you might download this little script someone created for making the scale legend. I used it on my challenge entry for January and it did alright. If nothing else you can create one that you can then modify.

Map Scale Legend

Hope that helps.

[moutarde]

Well, its not really much of a technique, but the last time I drew a scale, I first figured out how much distance a pixel represented, then zoomed waaaay in and drew a zig zag line with a 1px brush to count out the number of pixels I needed to represent one bar of distance, then used the rectangle tool to draw a box that long. Then I just duplicated the box and filled out the scale...

[Jaxilon]

Sheesh, I think I'd go blind if I started counting pixels.

There is a measurement tool for that. It's in the Tool Box or just "Shift+M", click starting pixel and drag to wherever and along the bottom it tells you how many pixels.

[moutarde]

Pixels aren't *that* small when you're zoomed in 1600% But I'm sure the measuring tool is much efficient

[Coyotemax]

There's another easy way to do this - which really shines when you're working on maps where 1 px does not equal a nicely rounded number

Imagine a map where 1 px equals 35 feet... that's where the Set Measurement Scale really shines!

I'm actually working up a mini tutorial right now for it, complete with examples and screenshots.. (of course, this is a photoshop thing - if not using that, then the other methods mentioned are the way to go, as far as I know)