Mercator experiment

[Ascension]

Qbista had asked for ponters on 19th century style maps and I know that those alternate earth guys probably have much more skill at doing that style but I said I'd try to whip up a tut or something (in Photoshop since that is what he uses) and this is where I'm at so far. I downloaded the Africa map that he provided and set out to replicate it as best I could. The combination of a color and pattern overlay for the countries took by far the longest to get exact and of course putting in the text was time consuming as well. Let me know what you all think and I'll fix what needs to be fixed before writing up the tut. By the way, I know I haven't put the mountains in yet but that's a fairly easy part. The fonts used are basic Arial and Times New Roman with some minor adjustments to the height scale (80%) plus some bold and italics. The one font I couldn't replicate 100% exact was the word "equator" although I got it pretty close...it's some sort of typewriter font and I dumped all of those years ago. I'm attaching the Africa map from Qbista and my first attempt at replicating it in PS. A vector program might be the better option for doing the shapes and lines but I'm trying to do it only in PS.

[ravells]

That's a really great likeness in the reproduction, Ascension! Could you post the .psd file? I'd love to see it.

Cheers

Ravs

[Steel General]

Great job Ascension!

I dub thee newly repped *bonk*

[Ascension]

I zipped the psd and it's still 7 megs. My mail is AOL and I can only email a 5 meg file. Nevertheless, I'm ready to go with a tut unless anyone has some things that I need to fix with this. I'll give it a few days for replies and then up the tut.

[ravells]

You can post the psd on 'Mediafire' which is a very good free file hosting site!

Looking forward to the tut!

[Ascension]

Here's a lil preview of the map I did for the tut...now with mountains at no extra cost. All you pay is shipping and handling.

[Steel General]

Here's a lil preview of the map I did for the tut...now with mountains at no extra cost. All you pay is shipping and handling.

Lemme guess $9.95

and I'll say it again, great job!

[Ascension]

Ravs, yeah I know what you're referring to but I did this exactly as it looks on the maps Qbista had provided...they must not have invented tapering yet back then I can put that in as an option though.

[ravells]

Fantastic! Just a suggestion with the mountains though - the lines on that kind of mountain style (hatchure?) are usually tapered. Easy enough to adjust your brush settings on ps to accomodate for that.

[ravells]

I just took another look at the Africa map, and you're right. The artist doesn't use tapering lines!