WIP Unnamed Region 2

[Sojai]

Hello!

This is based loosely off of Saderan's tut, and I am encountering a few problems:

I used an outer glow layer style on my land layer to create the blue shelf, but for some reason this glow is leaving off some areas of the landmass such as the small island at the tip.

I was also wondering if you all had any thoughts or suggestions as to my placement of forests and grasslands, (this is assuming a weather pattern where the rainfall comes predominantly from the east, if that makes meteorological sense)

I will eventually put in rivers, I just wanted to address these issues first.

Thanks ahead of time for any feedback, I will post more as it develops!

Fantasy Map 5 WIP.jpg

[Lezales]

If rainy clouds comes from the east when they will meet the hotter air of the landmass they will start dropping their moisture and rain will happen. Bigger mountains will stop the clouds from reach the other side and very often that side will have very much less rain. So it's pretty straightforward. In your case I would check where your rivers are, which generally creates greener lands. I would also check the altitude. There will be moisture anyway on the western side (if you have rivers that's a proof) and normally highlands won't be as green as low lands because the water go down.

Anyway, the glow is cool but I think there's a big duality for eye attention between the water and the landmass.

[nolgroth]

It looks like you already have a pretty good idea where it is supposed to be green and not. I love the landform, greenery and mountains. What is distracting is the deep water that looks like a rendered Difference Clouds layer set to Overlay over deep blue. It sort of pulls the eye away due to both the pattern and the deep blue color. The land is made somewhat drab and uninteresting next to the water. You might try going for a more subtle effect to see if you like that as well. You can always switch back if you prefer the Blue Velvet look.

One thing that I've recently found that works is to have a light blue water texture that you fill the water layer with. Then select the landmass (I'm presuming that the landmass is on its own layer, so selecting by Alpha should get your landmass selected). Grow (Expand in PS) the selection by around 40-50 pixels. Invert the Selection and fill with a solid darker blue color (on it's own layer). Then set the Layer Mode to Multiply and drop the Opacity down to about 70-75. You get both your shelf surrounding all the landmass and a fairly subtle, but still interesting deep water appearance. That's just a suggestion though.

Good luck and keep on with the map. I think the results are going to be pretty awesome when you are done.