I love the style... of all the map making styles I've seen on this forum it looks the most like an actual satellite picture. But what I love the most about it is the good looking ocean floor elevation. I think it really adds character to the map. Or satellite image.
As for what I've done to make it look like this, I've lost track. I tweaked all the layers with different colors, effects, filters and got rid of some layers and added and rearranged some until I liked how it looked. Copied the texture 2 times with different properties. I got rid of the generated elevation above sealevel and designed the elevation for the land myself (partly because FT sucks at that and I wanted to design the land myself) and put in the rivers. I also got rid of most of the lakes that FT put in because they are unrealistic, a bad side effect of random generation, which also happens when generating islands with clouds in PS and created some new ones.
The resolution is 15000x12000, my computer dies if i take it any higher. But really it's already huge. The size corresponds to a poster of over 5 by 4 meters, larger than a decent sized bedroom wall. You must have a monster of a computer to be able to handle 30000x15000 of such a detailed map. A 6 GB psb file while my computer only has 4 GB of physical memory.
Anyway, I wouldn't have been able to make this without you, so thanks a lot.
I'm still trying to find ways of improving in any way it so if you have any suggestions they are welcome. Tell me what you think. I'm thinking of adding smaller veins for the rivers, but I think the map would become a little too crowded with rivers if I did that.
Smaeyough v2:
First one is without region and city names and the next one includes them. The archipelago is located in the pacific, fictional of course. From the outer edge of the left most to the right edge of Sirodcer is ~1750 km, horizontally. Land area is about 1.1 million km2, as large as France and Spain combined. In 2012 it is inhabited by a modern powerful technocratic society that thrives on trade, production and exporting it and offshore oil deposits. It is close to the equator. Syanall, the capital, is an ancient huge city hewn out of the surrounding mountain walls. Cities used to be part of individual autonomous competing states and cities gained prestige for their beautiful architecture, which was continually improved. But only citizens get to enjoy said beauty because only citizens may wander the islands freely and those with a hard to get visum are allowed controlled access to the islands. They do this to prevent what they see as pollution of their lands by foreigners. They despise ugly concrete cities and superficial societies. To become a citizen and be worthy of living amongst them in the eyes of the society, one needs to prove him or herself, and in their late teens, young adults are sent into the world where they must prove themselves in order to be allowed to return. The Smaeyough enjoy the highest standard of education and living in the world.
edit: I just realized that you can't read the city names on the low res version of the map. Here is a higher res one: http://www.mediafire.com/?ddftufbmqd2ocz2
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