Smooth coasts & Style?

[Alex]

Alright then, tell me if this is good. If not, I'll try and upload the PSD file instead.

DELETED LINK.

[Sular]

Alex, I took your image, set it to the pixel size you gave of 1990x4212 at a resolution of 300. The image I downloaded was smaller and I wanted to use the dimensions you had. I then selected all of the black areas of the map with the wand tool, inverted the selection, smoothed it by 3 pixels, and painted a the selection green on yet another layer. I used a large round brush (just the basic photoshop round brush) set to 771 pixels to paint this region of the map. This size probably does not matter all that much, I just wanted a large brush.

I've attached the full-sized file. As you can see, at 100% magnification the coasts are smoothish but as you zoom in it gets a bit more jagged as one would expect.

[Alex]

That is strange...tinypic must have shrunk the image.

And that is much, much better! Would this technique work in any color? I would need the land white and the "ocean" black to continue off the tutorial where I left off. I retried it and it looks very blurry in white and black...

[Sular]

Alex, I colored the image black and white in the manner of the source file. If this will work for you feel free to use it.

[Lukc]

Hey Alex - just a little note on resolutions. The DPI (72, 150, 300, what have you) doesn't have anything to do with the image size - it's just a measure of dot density, basically that goes along with the image saying how many dots fit on an inch (i.e. how many pixels are packed into a linear inch), which then specifies to what size the image should be output.

I.e. - a 6000 x 6000 pixel image is a 6000 x 6000 pixel image, regardless of DPI. However, the DPI tells you what size the final output will be. On a computer display it will measure approximately 140 x 140 inches at 100% zoom (where 1 pixel in the image corresponds to 1 pixel on the screen). That same image will measure 20 x 20 inches when printed at 300 DPI, or 40 x 40 inches at 150 DPI. All without any resizing whatsoever.

Oh yeah, for large scale printing, 150 DPI is usually enough.

[Alex]

@Sular:

Sorry this is late, I was on my PC, but the storms knocked my internet down. And yes, black and white! That works perfectly, thank you so much! Way better looking than the pixelized look I had.

The technique you explained works for me now, I just have to repeat the steps and fill in about four times with the bucket to get it rounder.
@Lukc:

Oh, thanks for explaining Lukc.

So the DPI is set when the image's size is set?
*I thought DPI was something you could edit along side the image's size.

[Sular]

I'm glad it's working better for you, and good luck with the map itself.

[letsgoheat]

I may be late to the party but what works for me is to use the smooth feature on selections as mentioned above + I import the outline into Adobe Illustrator. Then I use the Live trace feature and choose black and white and not only does it turn it into a vector (you can resize infinitely without loss of quality) but it gets rid off all the pixelness and attains an almost smooth, flowly pen like outlining.