[WIP] Untitled realistic map

[swiss]

Before I continued I wanted to pause and get some feedback on the style I'm using. Thoughts?

Process: I used textures from Google Earth as a source, then used clone stamp and spot healing to blend. I used layers and at least one layer mask

Software: Photoshop Elements

Will take feedback on anything, but if you're looking for specific things:

1) For coastlines, I used Inner Glow and Bevel from the Style Settings in Photoshop. Thoughts? Is there a better way to use PS tools to recreate realistic coastlines than what I did? I'm mostly talking about the beaches and color, not really the shape. I know you can use cloud rendering to make random coastlines but I think I want a high level of control over the shape.

2) Does the blending from grasslands, to mountains, to desert look realistic?

3) I don't think the icons really fit with the map style, but that's all I had. Any ideas on what would?

4) Are there any photoshop filters or tricks that will make this style look a LITTLE BIT less like a satellite photo without straying too far away from the aesthetic?

5) Anything else catch your eye?

Please ignore some of the hard edges and white spaces, I haven't made it that far yet. =)

Master_draft.jpg

[niekell]

Hello swiss,
I'm a photoshop CS user myself, not an expert, but enough to be a little bit dangerous.
1) I really like the seaward side of the coastlines with the gradient blend of light blue to deeper blue. The beaches as a glow effect look okay, but beaches don't form all along a coast like that very often. Usually it is broken up by rocks, cliffs, and other coastal features. Beaches tend to form where the currents slow to drop their sediment (sand) amongst other places. As for controlling your coastlines, you can use a preset coastline that is created by hand or computer rather than generating one with clouds. I prefer to control the shape of my coasts manually in maps, though I tend to use existing (rpg game) maps as a base for my add-on work.
2) I like the blending, it works. Hills and mountains could use a colour difference as well though, generally brown colours are used to good effect.
3) I think the icons might just need to be less water-colour like and maybe throw a stroke around them and/or some outer glow to give them more impact. Hard to say without experimenting.
4) I like the 'satellite photo' look you've got going there, with the addition of browns/tans for mountains/hills which would make it more like a satellite photo, I think it would look great.
5) The rivers and lakes. They appear to be raised rather than sunken due to the lighting effect. Is it a bright shadow or glow? It looks inverted to how my eyes expect to see rivers and lakes.
Best wishes, niekell.

[swiss]

Hello swiss,
I'm a photoshop CS user myself, not an expert, but enough to be a little bit dangerous.
1) I really like the seaward side of the coastlines with the gradient blend of light blue to deeper blue. The beaches as a glow effect look okay, but beaches don't form all along a coast like that very often. Usually it is broken up by rocks, cliffs, and other coastal features. Beaches tend to form where the currents slow to drop their sediment (sand) amongst other places. As for controlling your coastlines, you can use a preset coastline that is created by hand or computer rather than generating one with clouds. I prefer to control the shape of my coasts manually in maps, though I tend to use existing (rpg game) maps as a base for my add-on work.

Re: light/dark blue - thanks! I love that look on maps, whether realistic, handdrawn or whatever. Re: coastlines - True, I was drawn to the simplicity of the layer styles as a quick solution, but the closer my scale gets, the more I will need to consider rocks, cliffs, etc. This one is at 100 miles above the surface. I think I will start to experiment with more diverse coastlines in my next iteration. Can you tell me more about using RPG maps as a base? I made a post recently asking if anyone ever just fell in love with a certain game mapmaker and decided to use that instead of a mapmaking tool like PS, GIMP, etc. Sounds a little different than what you're doing, but curious what exactly you're doing there

2) I like the blending, it works. Hills and mountains could use a colour difference as well though, generally brown colours are used to good effect. .

I agree. It feels like it only has 3 basic colors right now

3) I think the icons might just need to be less water-colour like and maybe throw a stroke around them and/or some outer glow to give them more impact. Hard to say without experimenting.

Good idea. I tried to use some realistic castles but much smaller so the scaling made sense and it just did not look good. I think I'm going to have to move away from the realism when it comes to city marking, especially at 100 miles high, and just go with some different icons.

4) I like the 'satellite photo' look you've got going there, with the addition of browns/tans for mountains/hills which would make it more like a satellite photo, I think it would look great/
5) The rivers and lakes. They appear to be raised rather than sunken due to the lighting effect. Is it a bright shadow or glow? It looks inverted to how my eyes expect to see rivers and lakes.
Best wishes, niekell.

The rivers and lakes were created by subtracting land with a layer mask, and when you do that, it follows the same layer style as the land layer it is tied to, which means it also has Inner Glow and Bevel. Personally I thought that gave it a sunken look, so this is interesting that you saw it as the opposite. When I'm experimenting with this, do you know any settings in particular I should play with to change this look?

Thank you for all the feedback!

[Harrg]

Hello swiss. Nice start.
First of all what is your map scale and size? I guess it 100-200 km?
1. For coastline I make layer with white coasts and fill all land white color. Sea - black. Than I copy it and make layer with basic land texture and make layer mask with my coastline. That another layers not forced borders use ALT + LMB between to layers or use mask.
2. blending different biomes very difficult. I don`t know how it explain, but u can watch real satellite maps and see how it work. For example forests and stepps. In the border of it forest will be come to small groups and try found water like lowlands and valleys.
3. ---
4. ---
5. I think u should change river settings. White colors make it strange. I off white colors or make transp. of it to 5-15%. Also not forget about thickness of river. And in different maps scale it can be invisible. For show that here was a river I use simple texture of grass, that darkest or lighter than background texture and draw it like I was draw river.

[swiss]

Hello swiss. Nice start.
First of all what is your map scale and size? I guess it 100-200 km?

Hi Harrg! Correct, 160 km (100 miles)

1. For coastline I make layer with white coasts and fill all land white color. Sea - black. Than I copy it and make layer with basic land texture and make layer mask with my coastline. That another layers not forced borders use ALT + LMB between to layers or use mask.

What is ALT + LMB? Is that a Mac command? I'm on PC.

2. blending different biomes very difficult. I don`t know how it explain, but u can watch real satellite maps and see how it work. For example forests and stepps. In the border of it forest will be come to small groups and try found water like lowlands and valleys.
3. ---
4. ---
5. I think u should change river settings. White colors make it strange. I off white colors or make transp. of it to 5-15%. Also not forget about thickness of river. And in different maps scale it can be invisible. For show that here was a river I use simple texture of grass, that darkest or lighter than background texture and draw it like I was draw river.

It's funny you say that because I had it as white and I changed it to tan, but I guess it still looks white. I will have to make it darker.

Yes, the thickness of the rivers is a problem in my case. In real life, if I am doing 100 miles above the surface, only really big rivers are visible. So I have two choices: (1) Adhere to realism, only have a river or two visible, and it would STILL look very, very thin. PROS: it stays with my realism theme, CONS: I don't get to make rivers as visible as I want (2) Say screw it, and stray away from realism when it comes to rivers, and make them much bigger. PROS: It looks cooler, CONS: Possible theme clash

[Harrg]

What is ALT + LMB? Is that a Mac command? I'm on PC.

This is keyboard. Press alt(near space) and use left mouse bottom. on layers panel between 2 layers. It make top layer dependent on the lower layer.

Yes, the thickness of the rivers is a problem in my case. In real life, if I am doing 100 miles above the surface, only really big rivers are visible. So I have two choices: (1) Adhere to realism, only have a river or two visible, and it would STILL look very, very thin. PROS: it stays with my realism theme, CONS: I don't get to make rivers as visible as I want (2) Say screw it, and stray away from realism when it comes to rivers, and make them much bigger. PROS: It looks cooler, CONS: Possible theme clash

You should choose what best suits your map. You can combine two styles. Make the important rivers visible and the secondary rivers hidden

[niekell]

Hello swiss,

[ Using RPG Maps as a Base for Landforms ]
I'm an active Birthright DM (using PathFinder rules), the maps for it are done in a stylized way which I quite like but which sometimes conflict with details I want to add for my campaign version of the setting. So I take the coastline shapes from the original map and scale it to something useful for the level of detail I want to show and then create the black/white mask layer which is the basis for continents/land from that. Tracing the original map is tedious, but with a tablet/pen it isn't overly time-consuming.

Here is the original campaign map : http://www.birthright.net/forums/att...achmentid=1583
And in my gallery here on CG there is a Saderan style version of Kvigmar (top right area of above map).
My rivers are jagged because I forgot to set my pen tool's "curve fit" to as low as possible (0.5) in Photoshop.

[ Rivers and Lakes ]
> When I'm experimenting with this, do you know any
> settings in particular I should play with to change
> this look?
Saderan uses paths on a mask layer, then stoke with a brush that has a fade-off setting so they get narrower as they go inland.
This isn't always what real rivers do of course, but as a generalization it's okay in my book.
The way it cuts out the rivers and lakes for Saderan seems to work as sunken. You could compare those settings to what you're using to see if anything jumps out at you.

> Yes, the thickness of the rivers is a problem in my
> case. In real life, if I am doing 100 miles above the
> surface, only really big rivers are visible. So I have
> two choices: (1) Adhere to realism, only have a river
> or two visible, and it would STILL look very, very thin.
> PROS: it stays with my realism theme, CONS: I don't
> get to make rivers as visible as I want
There are other ways to highlight rivers even if the width of the river itself is narrow the affect on the surrounding terrain is often enough to highlight the river's presence. The presence of more trees, and greener grasses along water courses often draws the eye when a sliver of blue would not on it's own. An extreme example of this is the Nile in Egypt.

> (2) Say screw it, and stray away from realism when
> it comes to rivers, and make them much bigger.
> PROS: It looks cooler, CONS: Possible theme clash
It would mix the style and possibly confuse a reader unless pains were made to make it blatantly obvious that it was not realistic but representational.
I'd suggest loading up google earth, setting your eye height to the equivalent km to 100mi (or as close as you can get) and fly around looking at some rivers and how they either do or don't pop out of the terrain. There are some nice classic wider-at-mouth rivers along the north of the Black Sea for instance which you can follow the river valleys even when you can no longer make out the water of the river.

Best wishes, niekell.

[rdanhenry]

The problem with the city icons is that they are explicitly side-view icons while the rest of the map is very clearly top-view. You need something that with work as a city as-seen-from-above. This may be best done as an abstract circle or square icon if you do not want to sketch individual city shapes.

[swiss]

The problem with the city icons is that they are explicitly side-view icons while the rest of the map is very clearly top-view. You need something that with work as a city as-seen-from-above. This may be best done as an abstract circle or square icon if you do not want to sketch individual city shapes.

Good catch! I can't believe I didn't notice that.

I'd love to do individual city shapes, but at 100 miles high I think anything that I make would not be realistic. This is one of the things I'm currently struggling with....I want to do a lower altitude because the scenery is cooler, but too low and the overall size of the map is going to be too small of an area for what I want.

[Theseus]

Very Neat!