Thread: A new mini-tut on sat-style mountains

Select-color range basically just selects the darker colors, from just under 128 medium gray and down to 0 black. I don't even use the starting painted lines as they get obliterated by merging with the difference clouds. The fuzziness lets you "almost" select higher colors...it sort of says to itself, "we were asked to pick this range but we'll leave room for error". So when you hit the delete once it does what it is told and by hitting delete a second time it says to itself "good thing we were leaving room for error so we'll delete a bit more this time".

But I think the main gist of what you're asking is if the original painted white lines retain their importance for later steps...the answer is no. Could they? Sure, but I didn't think that far ahead. I was just deleting the darker colors and not worrying about original placement. I could go back and give that a test drive...it will keep the blacks in place but delete everything outside of the painted lines and the darker colors might be interesting to see how they interact with the layer styles of color overlay.

Ok here are some quick variations...no pretty-ing it up just test-driving different techniques.

Screen1 is my tut style.

Screen2 uses the original painted white lines as a mask. It leaves the blacks and messes up the beveling and color overlay and inner glow layer styles but creates far bulkier mountains.

Screen3 uses the original painted white lines set to a blend mode of overlay before selecting the color range. It leaves a bit more of the blacks but still retains the folding I want.

Screen4 is the original painted white lines.

hmmmm.

The difference is how the select by colour works.

I think I have an idea....

Try this. Use this greyscale image:


Then do a select by colour with 200% fuziness, hit delete (once) and post the result.

Thanks,

-Rob A>

OK here's what I got. In the first I had black as the selected color, in the second I had white as the selected color. Clearly the Select - Color Range in PS doesn't go up 200 levels nor even 128 levels. It looks, to me, that it starts with the selected color and goes up and down 100 levels which would mean that it selects up 100, 100, 100 a dark gray, if starting with black and goes down to 155,155,155 if starting with white. The third and fourth images are hitting delete twice.

First post to this site

I'm a bit curious why you chose spotlight for the Lighting Effects instead of Directional?

I've been doing photorealistic mapmaking using data from the USGS Seamless Survey website. I've been looking to do this procedurally instead, and your technique gives a very convincing look and feel.

I'd also be interested in seeing how you setup your map (Screen 1) originally.

I checked the forums but didn't see this tutorial in PDF format. Is it possible you could work something up? I'm a slave to PDFs, unfortunately

It's been so long since I started using this lighting effects (5 years now) that I don't even really remember the reason now but I know there was a reason way back when To the best of my recollection here's why: I don't use directional because it's hard to get the light coverage to work right...it has this tendency to darken stuff at the opposite end of where the light is coming from and a tendency to brighten stuff closest to the light. Of course, I may just not have found the right settings there, shrug. Spotlight gives a more subdued "soft focus" photography feel with broader coverage.

Setting up the map is covered in my various tutorials like Continent and Atlas...those are in the tuts section.

Much obliged. I'll check them out this weekend.

I found that the directional lighting gave me more beneficial results. But that was under very specific circumstances. I went through this tutorial three or four times, and can kind of see what your lighting system does over the long haul. I still want a PDF tutorial, but have settled with this thread (will probably cobble my own together eventually hehe). I'm contemplating working out a CS3 action script to automate most of the process.

I have to admit ... out of all the cartography tutorials I've seen, yours has been so far the best I've found -- the results are astounding. I've been working with Photoshop for the last 10 years, but it never occurred to me the level of detail you can come up with using your techniques.

My way of creating similar topography was using USGS images (which are under a General Use licence) to "paint" the topography. But there are certain instances in which the topography just doesn't gel with with you desire. Congrats on coming up with such an interesting technique.

Originally Posted by cshawnsmith

I'm contemplating working out a CS3 action script to automate most of the process. .

I think you'll find that would be most welcomed...

lol. I'll cobble something together this afternoon