Known Lands - Continental Map

[SaintSinner]

This is the continental map for my homebrew D&D setting (Seattled20 Wiki). Designed following Ascenscion's Atlas Style, still in progress.

I'm trying to find the best design icons for cities, capitols, etc.

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!

Question to the more experienced designers: Is there a good way to copy all of the layers to a separate file? I'd like to take each country and break it out to a focused map for just that region (and then do the same as I break into each state / county / city).

[kerub]

In Photoshop you could use the crop tool (press C) to get your main part cut out and then erase (or better fade out/desaturate/darken) along the borders.

I will comment on the map as soon as I'm back on my PC. Seems like Tapatalk only loads super low quality images...

[SaintSinner]

Would that work on all layers if I wanted to copy everything to a new file? Or would it work on just the active layer?

[kerub]

Cropping only masks the selected visible part of the image away. It is completely reversible but can be made permanent to reduce file size (at least in the newer versions of Photoshop). All layers will be left intact. You simply crop your picture and then "Save as...". This way you basically get a copy of your original file with everything in it.

But be advised that when you really want to go deeper on every part of the map (from continental to city as you said) you will need a gigantic original image to maintain quality. Simply blowing things up looks bad. I would say at minimum 10000 pixels wide, even more depending on the scale of your original map and how deep you really want to go.

[SaintSinner]

Great advice, thank you!

I think I'll only go down to county level, rather than city. That way I can show the cities, but use a separate style for them when I do the individual maps.

Thanks again!