My first attempt in GIMP

[Straf]

It's the ever changing map! Are you sure you didn't move you're desk a little too close to that cabinet More importantly I'd like to know how those shopping carts got there, it seems there's quite a few in the water here as well.

Good job on the parchment, I'll be interested to see what world is here next time I check this thread.

Errr, yeah it's plate tectonics and that. It takes me that long to draw one map geology occurs and I have to start again. The shopping trolleys are always there. They weren't invented, they were discovered in a lake by an entrepreneur who thought it would be fun to go and watch zombified people pushing these things around large halls filled with shelves of food. It's one of those laws of the universe, you know the one that states that toast always lands butter side down and a cat always lands on its feet and therefore a buttered cat will never land.

I didn't feel comfortable in the last land, it didn't feel right. There are a few significant places that are part of the story and backstory. It might sound crazy and a little cabinet proximity induced but I like to try to put my imagination into the land and walk it through. The capital, for example, needs to be on a high point that is in a loop of a river. It just makes sense that when the current ruling elite first arrived they chose an easily defensible position within reach of a cabinet food sources and fresh water. Although I had the defensible position I struggled to convince myself that there were sufficient resources nearby to sustain a larger settlement. Or maybe I'm just OCD.

[Straf]

Things are going terribly awry with this forum and my browser for some reason

Anyway I have played about with various mountain methods and have sort of settled on this one for now. I just want to show where the hilly, or mountainy areas are located. Any comments? They're the ones in the north of the map. If they look OK I'll apply the same to the ones all over the map.

[Mouse]

The mountains are looking good, Straf. If I might make a suggestion - what about using thinner lines to describe the minor ridges down the flank of each major mountain.

I think the image is suffering a bit from being reduced? I can't tell what's wrong for sure (or it might be my monitor), but I'm getting a slight pale ghost around the blue lines.

[Straf]

Yes I have compressed this quite a lot to save on bandwidth and server space and it's not your eyes or your monitor, it is suffering at the hard edges.

I'd love to use thinner lines but I'm using the smallest pen setting - 1px. It's obviously not as it draws 3 pixels by 3 or 2 x 3 or sometimes 2 x 2. I'd love to be employed by GIMP - they'd multiply my stated salary by between 4 and 9 Obviously I'm missing something regarding the settings. I know what kacey will suggest but I'm going to need a good long evening to read through that whole graphics tablet thread. My first question is how much does size matter? From what I remember they are scaled to the screen so a 6" x 4" one would have me halfway across the screen with my shaky hand! So I guess what I really need to ask is are they scaled to the visible screen or to the canvas size? Or are these things variable in the settings? And are they compatible with Linux?

But thanks for liking my mountains I'm trying really hard to get them to look not totally wrong. I'm no artist but I seem to have this notion that if I can't make something perfect first time then I shouldn't bother even trying. I'm working really hard at changing that way of thinking though.

[Mouse]

I think the reduction/compression really isn't helping.

Let me show you what happens:

This is a 1000 x 500 pixel image I drew. The thick lines are 10 pi, and the thin lines are 5 pi.



if I reduce the image to 25% the size of the original without using any compression at all, it just looks like a smaller slightly fuzzier copy of the larger image. (In fact its such a tiny image the server hasn't bothered to save it as anything bigger than what you see right here)



But if I try to keep it the same physical size and reduce the file size by using compression this is what happens.



Before I go on about the virtues of non-compressed images, I need to ask - are you doing battle with a stingy metered broadband allowance that means you can't upload larger images?

[Mouse]

I'm having serious problems trying to edit my comments today! This was supposed to be an "Edit" note on the last post.

The top and bottom images in my previous post are being represented by the same thumbnail. You will have to click them to see the difference between non-compressed and compressed.

What I'm trying to explain is that it would be better to resample the image size, rather than compress it if you have bandwidth problems. That way your drawing doesn't have to do battle with the kind of ghost lines and funny blocky artefacts that are so painfully evident in the last image I posted above.

If you are able to change your broadband provider, I would seriously look around for a better deal. I get 20GB a month for £13, and even though I watch a lot of UTube stuff and upload a lot of maps, it has to be an exceptional month before I get anywhere near the limit.

[Straf]

Thanks Mouse. I really appreciate the time you have taken to show me this. I never considered scaling the image to reduce the file size. I can see how the compression deteriorates it - it looks like someone's thrown glitter at it from here!

I'm not constrained by bandwidth restrictions. I have quite a fast connection with unmetered data transfer. I was thinking more about this site as I know how much of a premium data transfer and webspace can cost on hired servers and I can see that it can get quite busy. Maybe I can crank my compression rates down a little bit. I am working on a 1600 x 1200 canvas on 400 ppi so I could maybe afford to rescale this to 800 x 600. What do you think?

[Mouse]

Our wonderful Webmaster owns this server, and out of the generosity of his heart he allows us to upload much bigger images than you have used, Straf. That's because a map needs to be clear to be appreciated by the people who view it.

I would avoid using any compression at all, so that the rest of us can see and enjoy what you have drawn without any of those ugly glitter effects.

Personally I produce images that are somewhere between 2000 x 2000 pi, and 5000 x 5000 pi, and then resample them to 50% for uploading. A lot of my images are nowhere near the larger size, but where the level of detail is very fine they really need to be big enough that people can see the details without having to squint to try and make out what all the strange looking blobs are about.

I never, ever use compression because it spoils the image altogether, no matter what the dimensions are.

Thank you for the rep, by the way. It wasn't that much trouble - the drawing only took me 5 minutes. It actually took me longer to figure out how to do the compression. I haven't used compression for such a long time that I'd quite forgotten how to do it! LOL!!!

[Straf]

I have tried an experiment based on what you have suggested and I can see that I can afford to make my outlines a lot thicker in my 'benchtop' works then scale them down. As a chemist I'm used to doing things the other way round - work on a smaller scale then process it up haha!

I'm going to go back to the drawing board as it were and see what I can do. Maybe tomorrow or the next day I'll have some images for you to critique. Thanks again for your enormousely (did you see what I did?) valuable advice

[Mouse]

Oh - groan! LOL!

You will find that reducing an original by about 50% will also reduce the impact of any minor blemishes or imperfections that exist in the original. Back in the days before digital art it was standard practice to reduce original hand-drawn artwork by 50% prior to printing to give it that 'perfect' finish

EDIT: In fact, if my memory serves me right, OS maps used to be drawn at twice the size they were intended to be printed at for that very reason, which is probably why I have carried on doing it that way ever since. I'm talking about the days when OS maps were still being drawn with rulers, pens and ink on paper