Quote Originally Posted by Feralspirit View Post
Quick reply to Korash- Way too long! Days, certainly, but I'm not sure how many. I agonize over very small details.

jfrazierjr- I'm not sure I followed your instructions very well. I did manage to select the area between the paper and the image limits, but could not find 'delete' option anywhere. I tried cutting, to no avail. So I just started looking through the options I did have. At one point I could see the checkerboard behind the paper (though I'm not sure how I did it), but I could still see the parts of the map that ran past the paper's edge under the checkers, so I figured that wasn't it. In the end I filled the selection with white. I then saved it as a .png file. I'm not sure how big it was before this save, but the current image is 6.94 MB. I reduced the image by 50% so that I could post the result.

This is the flat white jpg I'm coloring, also reduced

Stern's Bridge coloredit2 reduced 50%.JPG

Here is the result of jfrazierjr's instructions, as well as I could follow them

Stern's Bridge coloredit3.PNG

Final note, I am again filled with uncertainty. Is this the direction I wish to be going? It seems... I don't know, wrong, but I don't know why. Should the coloring stop? Should the hues change? I will continue coloring for now, because I don't have any better ideas, and I know that on completion they are easily restored to white or altered to another hue.

Your very close. I simply meant the Delete key on your keyboard which removes everything on a layer or whatever is selected and turns it transparent. Note how you have a white border? png allows transparency while jpg does not. If you select the outside edges and delete, the white border will delete out to transparent and when you save to png, that transparency will still be there and make it look muc more like a piece of torn paper.

One other thought if you want to try it is to take a look at my WIP I linked to previously. Notice how the edges of the page have the color fade away so that the very edges are just the parchment? You can replicate this by using layer masks on upper layers to hide what's below using a high blured selection. Check out http://www.cartographersguild.com/sh...archment+paper for some of the details, and if you want help, let us know here.