Pirate Sea

[Korash]

This is what I have finally managed to do with the map that brought me to this Fine Establishment oh so many moons ago. This started as a PnP map of the land mas and some very poorly placed rivers. I was looking for ideas on how to continue using the pen, or at least the appearance of one, to put some terrain on it. Along the way I have picked up quite a few pointers and brushes. Some of which I plan on putting on this map.

Below you will find where I am at atm:
A gray scale map aprox. 6000x4400 (scaled to 5000x3300) with the a few rivers done using RobA's Fractalize Path script and his mini tut on Woodcut shores that can be found here. I plan on using Wag's brushes for the Mountains, hills and forests, but they will come in later. The scale of this map is 200px = 80 miles.

Things I would like to do for this is add the terrain features, rivers, roads, cities and also label it all. But right now I am curious about the woodcut. I know that at some places it makes the land look like it is floating, and I wonder if there really is a problem with this. I created it by selecting the land, expanded the selection by 25, filled selection with black then blurred it by 150. The rest is the Mini Tut mentioned above.

Comments/critiques?

[Ascension]

Love that woodcut you got goin there, very sweet.

[Coyotemax]

agreed, that looks darnfine!

[moutarde]

The woodcut looks great, but the sections where it fades into solid grey stand out a little to me. Personally, I think it might look better if you lowered the opacity just a little, so that the woodcut is still visible for all the coast, even if it's just barely

[Korash]

how is this?

I noticed that the wood cut as shown on the full image looked a lot better than when zoomed in, so I redid it with a few tweeks to the mini tut (added an X component to the displacement map and a slight angle to the newsprint distort.)

EDIT: the full attachment still has a different look from the zoomed in. :/

Thoughts?

Also, why with a gray scale map does this hit from 500 meg to 700meg for working memory?