[Award Winner] Making maps in Photoshop

**jezelf** · 07-22-2008, 01:08 PM

Hi there.

I discovered this forum a week or so ago. A great place! I've been doing some tutorials, originally inspired by fellow creative writers over at the Chronicles Network as we were talking about Map making there on a map creation thread and this map thread.

Since being here at CG it's pretty clear how little I know! Wilbur was a brilliant find and I'm looking forward to going through the other tutorials here and checking out various software.

So without further a-do, here are the tutorials...

Turning your hand drawn sketch into a detailed alpha map

[Award Winner] Making maps in Photoshop-jezelf_tut_map01.pdf

A Basic Alpha Map

[Award Winner] Making maps in Photoshop-jezelf_tut_map02.pdf

Aged, Parchment with a creation method for mountain ranges, trees and trails.

[Award Winner] Making maps in Photoshop-jezelf_tut_map03.pdf

One of many options to colour your map

[Award Winner] Making maps in Photoshop-jezelf_tut_map04.pdf

4 ways to give your map a relief using height maps - using Wilbur for one of them.

[Award Winner] Making maps in Photoshop-jezelf_tut_map05.pdf

EDIT - the above are downloadable PDF documents. You can get a reader here

EDIT - Until further notice, this thread is the place to download them from, they no longer on my web site ,as it was more to showcase my portfolio to get a job, I just havent had time to provide a space for them. You can always contact me should they break here or something. If I dont get back within a week, then send another - you're email's probably got lost in my junk mail, I'll always respond to fellow creators if I spot ya

please note: my website is now is now located @ jez-elf.com (NOT jezelf.co.uk as stated on the tutorials - you'll get a dead link)...I've gone global

Thanks for your interest in them!

Cheers

Jez

**ravells** · 07-22-2008, 02:54 PM

OMG! I love the 'blur sketchy colours' step ! What a great way of getting gradients without having to use them and getting a lot more control besides! That tip by itself is pure golddust not to mention the rest of the tutorials which are fantastic.

Have 5 stars! I wish I could give you more!

**jfrazierjr** · 07-22-2008, 03:13 PM

Originally Posted by ravells

OMG! I love the 'blur sketchy colours' step ! What a great way of getting gradients without having to use them and getting a lot more control besides! That tip by itself is pure golddust not to mention the rest of the tutorials which are fantastic.

Have 5 stars! I wish I could give you more!

You could give him one of those new fangled tut author icon things....

**ravells** · 07-22-2008, 03:33 PM

I could...but once there's 5 stars by the tutorial....get rating everybody! Once 5 people have rated the tutorial at 5 stars, jezelf gets an icon.

...it's to ensure that the icon grant is community driven rather than just on the whims of the CLs

**jfrazierjr** · 07-22-2008, 05:15 PM

Originally Posted by ravells

I could...but once there's 5 stars by the tutorial....get rating everybody! Once 5 people have rated the tutorial at 5 stars, jezelf gets an icon.

...it's to ensure that the icon grant is community driven rather than just on the whims of the CLs

Rated and Repped the post(er)!

**Tancread** · 07-22-2008, 06:01 PM

Very helpful and readable tutorial. You got some great results playing with settings I rarely poke at with photography. Really neat stuff. I was thinking about doing some maps straight in photoshop but was struggling with randomness, you have given me what I needed to get poking away here.

**Clercon** · 07-23-2008, 01:41 AM

Thanks for some great tips. This will come very usefull in the future.

cheers :-)

**jezelf** · 07-23-2008, 07:59 AM

woo-hoo! I got an award! Cool! - Thank you for that, and the stars! Nice surprise. Glad to hear the tutorials are helpful to you.

Also happy to hear it's readable - a few typos slipped through I noticed, so I'll go through and sort them out this weekend (sorry anout those). I feel it's probably too verbose but I like to try and write a tutorial as if my own feeble mind was going to follow it. Sometimes I can get stumped at the first step as I try to navigate around various programs UIs and termology.

The great thing about this place is that there are so many handy tutorials. I've always been a firm believer in sharing knowledge ( from personal experience of trying to work things out and wasting so much time on trial and error). It also good discovering new things - from that I didn't know were possible and within my current skill, to learning new stuff to raise it.

Tancread: I noticed that ViewDale - Instant Island (Thanks to Redrobes for that one ) could give similar results than going through all the Difference Clouds thing I mention. You can then import it into PS and use levels on it. The added advantage of using Instant Island is that it also generates a height map. ( BTW, II saves your created file to C:\Program Files\ViewingDale folder - It wasn't obvious to my feeble mind at first

)

cheers!
Jez

**Tancread** · 07-23-2008, 07:20 PM

Thanks for the tip, playing with the island generator now.

**RobA** · 07-23-2008, 10:40 PM

Just wanted to point out this tutorial for gimp (which should be transferable to photoshop) on creating not so random coastlines. It is a bit easier than the cut/paste/rotate/fit process you follow.

You could also probably apply a difference clouds several times at step 4 to make it a bit rougher, but you would want to make the initial blur smaller.

-Rob A>

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