The Amaranth Lands and Tsanomai - an old-fashioned political map

[Ascension]

Good stuff. I keep thinking that this was one of my more average tuts but I keep seeing you guys take it and run with it and create something much nicer and it makes me happy. The only thing I might add is some grunge and splotches to make it look old but otherwise, very nice.

[Aenigma]

I like it

[thedukeofnuke]

Thanks everyone! Here's a little update.
The colours have been toned down a bit, and I've added some grunge effects from a couple of stock images. (Not too much though - in-world, the map probably isn't more than 20 or 30 years old.) I also realised that the scale needed a bit of adjustment to look more traditional.

Mountains are still something of an issue. I'm leaning towards shaded relief, since it's something I know how to do; my only concern is that it might seem a bit anachronistic. Any thoughts on the matter?

[Coyotemax]

I think shaded relief could fit very well with the look you've got going on here, give a try for an area and see how it goes!

[rdanhenry]

The colors and paper texture are working together really well there. Mountain ranges might just be marked by text of the their names if you want to keep the appearance fairly sparse.

[jwbjerk]

The texture is prefect.

If you are going for something really authentic looking, some of your political colors seem too a little close to neon, and more importantly too precisely the same luminosity to have been created by non-modern presses. In other words the colors are far too precisely matched... I'd expect to find some of the colors darker and bolder than the others, especially magenta.

I expect the political colors are all done by layer(s) set to the "color" blending mode. I'd try switching one or two of the colors to "Multiply", "Hard Light", etc. (which also might require dialing back the opacity) to get a more haphazard effect.