Viva Corel!

[Doubledutch]

I read "OldGuy's Tutorial on Creating Realistic Coastlines" and really liked it. It looked like that technique would be infinitely easier, for me at least, than drawing them freehand from scratch. I just had one problem. It was a Photoshop tutorial and I am one of the 4 or 5 people in the world that use Photo-Paint. I've been trying to convert it and this is where I'm at. I used texture fills (cow hide) with 100% contrast using black and white to get my pieces. I combined the pieces to get these three objects. Next I'm going to get paths from the edges. I'm hoping to smooth the edges as I apply brush strokes to the paths. Hopefully the attachment worked. This is my first post and truly a work in process. Any comments, criticisms or questions are welcome.

[Ascension]

All you need to do is clean up the edges first...lots of little 1 pixel dots around the coasts. I don't know how to guide you since I'm one of the PS guys but if you can do selections then make a selection of the ocean (but not all water) and simply increase that by 1 then refill with white...that should clean up the stray dots. Otherwise you have to zoom in real close and draw over them by hand. I know there's a couple other guys here who use Corel so maybe they'll be more specific. All in all, though, looks like a fine start but you might want a little more space at the top and bottom and right.

[Doubledutch]

I got stuck with the first map because I unknowingly changed my paintbrush properties. I fixed it and started over saving screenshots of each step. The fills are random just to make the objects easy to see. I'm working on the ground texture and actually kind of like the water. I'm going to see how smoothing helps it.

[Rythal]

Yay, another corel user! I have a tut in my sig for photopaint, though it is a few months old now, but it will help as a start. as to the pixely coasts... well, ya, play around with it, its a problem I have as well from time to time.

Say, what version of photo paint are ya using?

Keep updating, and I'll be more than glad to help!

[Doubledutch]

OK. I thought I attached this with the last post. Hopefully I did so this time. I started over because of some brushstroke problems I have corrected (Reset paintbrush properties to default). It also looked a little too North America-ishy.

I pieced together cowhide sections to get the landmass. I combined the pieces and took them from object to mask to path. I smoothed the edges by adding a brushstroke. Paths are awesome.

[LordJR]

Interesting method you have there with the cowhides. I use CorelDraw/PP 15.

When doing cleanup on images that are to have a transparent background, what I normally would do is select the magic-wand selector tool and raise the tolarance a bit like 20 - 30. Click in the white area, invert selection, and cut. Refill layer with white solid. Paste the copied image of your island and use a feather of 3 - 5. Less given sharper lines. Then use the magic-wand select tool again with a tolarance of 40 - 50. More if needed till it avoids selecting the small feathered dots. Then just repeat the cut, fill layer with solid white, and paste. Eventually you'll have a clear coastline. Also don't forget to invert selection to get the island.

[Doubledutch]

I've moved on to filling the landmass. The base is a texture fill. I used a preset leather texture to start. I started experimenting with the properties. The most visible change was dropping the texture density to 01. I didn't want a uniform color for the forest in case I ever decide to drop down a level or two to map the forest itself. I made it by filling individual circles with the same texture, but different colors and/or color intensities. I'm still working on the mountains. I made 4 or 5 individual lines (30 width) and then filled them with a stone texture. I created a mask from the mountain object and applied a bevel effect. I then feathered it. The black line is a placeholder for a river I'm going to add later.