Help with antique map coast line

[kitano]

Hi, I've been looking like crazy for a tutorial for making those small horizontal lines that feather out of the coastline in antique maps,

Can somebody please give me hand or point me to the right tutorial? Thanks a lot.

[- Max -]

I moved it in the proper section. And you should take a look at this

[kitano]

Thanks Max, sorry I posted in the wrong section, I realized when it was too late.

I'm looking for the straight horizontal lines, something like what you've done in your maps of Vardenia & Urenia (such an amazing job, btw). I've checked the tutorials and I've been looking online but can't find it and I'm not even sure how to call that effect.

Thanks again.

[- Max -]

No problem Kitano Ok I see what you mean. Here again there's several ways to do it. One could be this: make or use a pattern with horizontal distressed lines, paint it all over your coasts. Once it's done, erase the parts on your lands. Assuming you have a layer for your land, select it, expand it as your will and feather it as your will again, then invert selection and erase. You're done

[kitano]

Thanks for your help, I will try that.

[Gamerprinter]

Using a vector application, I would create a B/W JPG image of several of the horizontal lines with some breaks in the line consistency and other disturbance to give the lines a slightly wavy or more natural look that I would use as a repeating image fill. I would create an outline shape extending beyond the coast outward into the near ocean, as far as I want the lines to be displayed. I would also create a duplicate of the landmass shape and subtract that from the shape containing the horizontal lines, then apply a slight feathered edge so that the horizontal lines don't actually touch the coastline, but is slightly offset from it. In Xara Designer Pro 9, I would apply a 'stain-glass' transparency filter onto the shape containing the horizontal lines which makes black 100% solid, and white 100% transparent, to show the ocean color/texture clearly behind the coastal wave shape. I haven't found the need to include that graphic detail to my maps, but if I did, this is the process that I'd do to accomplish it.

[Tiana]

Make yourself a custom brush in Photoshop. A brush that's just a line. Or you can squish a circle down to a line, whatever, depends on if you want just a straight line or a feathered tip. Now, set it up like this.

Spacing: as far apart as you want your lines.

Under shape dynamics:
Size jitter: Skip this if you want your lines to be the same size. If not, make it so that HALF of it when you test your stroke looks right. Personal choice, as much as you want the lines to differ in size.
Angle control: set it to "direction".

Now I'm assuming you have your coastline drawn. Make a new layer. Trace over it with your new brush. If you set up a size jitter, trace it so the coastline lines up about halfway through the stroke (and clean that up later by selecting your water layer and going back to the layer with the stroke and deleting it). This way your lines neatly overlap the coast.

Do you want the edges of the brush to fade away into little dots? When you make your custom brush, make the tip of it more opaque than the rest of the brush... say, fade it to 50%. Then, when you do it, you can set the layer style to dissolve and the more transparent parts will turn into little dots.

If you're super lazy and don't feel like manually tracing the outline of your continent, OR you don't happen to have a tablet, you can draw a vector path (just a path, not the one that fills itself in with color) too, select it with the path selection tool, right click and hit 'stroke path' (make sure the brush you just made is selected with the brush tool) and it'll automatically follow the path for you, following the "direction" rule. Then you can delete the path and your stroke will stay. You'll probably have to fix a couple of points by hand but it should work out pretty neatly.

Any questions, shoot me a PM and I can make a visual version of this. I'm not exactly a dedicated forumgoer.

[kitano]

Thanks so much for all the advice, I haven´t had the time yet to put them in practice but I think with all this info I´ll get what I was aiming for.

[kazik126p]

Are there any tutorials on this process?

[- Max -]

You have some advices in some posts up on how to make it.