Can't decide what to focus on... Help wanted.

[WhaleSalesman]

Hey,

So I'm in the process of finally putting my map from my head in Photoshop, but I've come to an impasse. I'm going to be using this map for a D&D campaign, so I want to be able to zoom in fairly far to see small towns and such. If I start at the world level, I'm afraid zooming in will make the map look all pixel-y, but if I start doing individual areas of the map, I'm afraid it will look inconsistent after I finish the larger area. Does anyone have any tips for this? I'm using the latest release of Photoshop, and I've already made a new image with size 8,000 px by 4,000 px with PPI 300. Is that too big? I'd like to be able to cast it onto a globe later so an equirectangular 2:1 sounded good to me.

Any help would be awesome!

Thanks,
WhaleSalesman

[Azélor]

8,000 px by 4,000 px with PPI 300. Is that too big?

That depend what you are mapping and what level of details you want.

For a world map, it might be ok. You can include the countries, largest cities and such but you will need to improvise to fill the gaps.
After that, if you need, you can create regional maps using the world map as a guideline.

[LordEntrails]

To look at it another way, if your 8000 x 4000 pixel map is a world map. Ignoring projection issues, and you have a planet the size of earth (~25k milecircumference) that means each pixel is about 3 miles across.

How many rivers in your world are 3 miles wide? And on your map does a one pixel wide river look good? (Probably answers are 'none' and 'no'.) So you are going to want to draw that river at least 3 (or 10) pixels wide. Even if you did 300 times as many pixels (so you approximate 1 pixel per mile) When you look at the map of your whole world, a river actually drawn 1 mile wide might not even be view able. (Say a printout or computer screen that is 20 inches wide, one map pixel would be... ~0.0008 inches wide.

See what I mean about scale? Only until you get to the very local level do you actual want to draw the size of features at real world scale.

[LordEntrails]

Using Photoshop, or any bitmap/pixel editor you are going to have to do multiple maps. One for the world, one for the region, one for the town, etc. You can use the world map and take a part of it and use it as a basis/background/reference for your detailed map.

The only way you're going to be able to zoom in like you want is if you use a vector based program (Like Campaign Cartographer). Even though the styles and what is important, and relative object scale, is different between map types (world/region/local) that you will still probably want different map files for each.

For instance, on a regional map (say 800 x 1000 miles) I may want my city to look so big, which if you actually scaled it might mean it's 10-20 miles wide. And my towns just a bit smaller (again, this might scale to 5-10 miles across) which is much bigger ( in most cases) that what I actually want the city or town size to be. So if I then used that same map to zoom in for the local map, the scale would not match. (My town should be a mile across, not 5-10).

Plus, trees, streams, rocks and other features that I want on a local map, I don't want on a regional or world map. If drawn at scale, they might only be a pixel big at a regional or world level map. And would just lead to clutter.

Different types of maps, have different levels of detail (which you can compensate for with layers), but most maps except for local/battle map type maps don't actually use symbols at real scale.

[Stolarczyk]

In my opinion, it is always better to have a file that is very large than one you realize hours or days into working on it that it's too small. You can always scale down, but you cannot usually scale up. The main thing though is how much can your computer handle. Because if it is miserable to work on the map because of delays in brush movement or ridiculous save times (Which you can to do regularly so you don't lose work), then it's not worth it. If a project is tedious to work on, the chances are you won't complete it.

All that to say, if your computer has no problem handling the file size you currently have, then I say go for it.