First map: Unnamed WIP

[arsheesh]

Boy this map just keeps getting better! I like what you've done with the sea, there's a real feeling of depth there. One suggestion with the forests. If you created these using the method described in Gidde's tutorial, than you can add some depth and texture to the forests by adding a "hill bumps" (or "forests" bumps in this case) layer as mentioned in step 28 of the tut. I also found that adding multiple layers of different color (step 27) helped my forests to stand out. In your case the forest look a bit dark. You might try adding a couple lighter shades of green. Other than that the map is looking mighty fine.

Cheers,

-ARsheesh.

[Matrim]

Ah, the horror of coming up with all the names! I used to be so good at that, sigh.
On the bright side though, I discovered that I can group layers, and even subgroup! Made all this much easier, since now I don't have tons of text-layers flying about

Thanks for the comments, once again. Arsheesh, I'll give that a try tomorrow!

Right, so what I've been doing the last couple of hours is adding city locations, roads and names for pretty much anything. Here's the result


Sidenote:
Ulria, Falan and the city of Waterwatch are part of the Ginsion kingdom.
The Northern Bleak is home to countless of warrior tribes.
The Kingdom of Tir Jalla is a sophisticated culture, but remains mostly a mystery to the inhabitants of Ginsion. A strained alliance exists after Ginsion successfully defeated the Tir Jallesian army in order to get a foothold on the barren peninsula (followed by the founding of Waterwatch).
The Free Isles are home to the scum of the earth, since they have nowhere else to go, apart from the Deadman's Plains, but those are rumoured to be cursed.
The Harhashhi Desert is home to a people even more obscure and mysterious than the Tir Jallese.

[Ascension]

With different fonts I could say that I made it, but instead I'll say very good job.

[Matrim]

Oh sh... I lost ALL the layer styles when going back and forth from PS to GIMP. Rule #1: SAVE, SAVE, SAVE! yeah..

Well. Lots of work that now needs to be redone. Maybe I can salvage something from the jpegs..
Oh the bright side, the forests look a lot better :p

And Ascension, that's a very big compliment indeed! Thank you!

[Rongar]

Oh, what a bummer! Don't loose heart though and, yeah, always backup your file.

[Edit] You don't have the .xcf file from GIMP anymore?

[Matrim]

I opened the .pdf in GIMP and then saved it. Turns out not only the layer styles were gone, the masks were distorted on a few layers as well.
But, after forcing myself to get over it and just go ahead and see if it can be fixed, I got it back to the way it was, somewhat.
Now I'm finally back to naming roads, rivers, cities and towns..

Here's a snapshot of the new woods, all thanks to Arsheesh. You da man!

[Rongar]

Wow, that looks excellent. How did you do them (the forests)?

[arsheesh]

Tragic tale my friend. Good on ya for sticking it out though. And those forests, yeah, I think I like them better than the ones I did. Fantastic work so far.

Cheers,

-Arshessh

[Matrim]

Just about ready to move this to the finished maps. First I'll hold off to see if any more tips fly this way =)
I am dissatisfied with some areas on the map (The blurry edge on the Southern Green Hills, bottom left, for example), but I'm leaving for a quick little visit to my brother in London tomorrow, and when I get back college starts again, so I won't have too much time to work on it and I want to get this posted.

Ascension: I would have changed the font, since I realise some names are barely legible, but GIMP rasterised all my text, and I honestly couldn't be bothered to redo them all. I'll keep the advice in mind, however!

Rongar:
I'm not entirely sure, but I think this is how it went:
I followed Gidde's translation of Ascension's Atlas tutorial for GIMP (here), then redid step 28 (as Arsheesh mentioned before). I used the hills layers as forest layers. (Copied this from Arsheesh as well, apologies )
I'm not entirely sure how I did the rest, but I think I didn't apply the mask, as it says in the tutorial.
Then I switched to Photoshop.
For the scattered bits of forest I used a spatter brush, I think size 27, and set the scattering to 1000% and in shape dynamics set the size jitter to 50%.
Paint white in the mask. It's ok if you brush over the ocean/sea, but be careful not to brush over mountains too much, since you'll have to remove that afterwards.
Select->load selection->coastline->invert->fill with black. This removes the bits of scattered forest covering the ocean.
Paint black with a soft round brush on low opacity to carefully remove the forest from parts where you don't want it to be (like said mountains).
Set the mode to multiply and fiddle around with the opacity to see what you like best. You might need to soften up the background by painting white at 7% opacity in the Land-layer (NOT the mask, in the basic layer).
Give the second HillBumps (or Forestbumps..) layer a small drop shadow (I used distance 2px and size 1px)

For as far as I can remember, that is how I did it. Don't pin me down on it however, because I fiddled around a LOT to get these right, and my memory is terrible. My forest layer is above the snowcaps layer in my map, and I don't know how it climbed up there. I have hills layers where they should be (below the mountains layers), so.. hmm. Sorry if this didn't help


Now, back to the WIP, here it is. I went for a simple black border, and I don't think I have time for a legend or some majestic title in the map itself, so you'll have to do without, hehe

[Diamond]

I LOVE the way those forests turned out. I'm going to have to experiment with that myself...