How to make concentric coastal ripple effects with outer glow in Photoshop

[morikahn]

Thanks for making the tutorial, but just so you know, this particular technique has been around for a long time here. It's in at least one other tutorial I know of, and it was discussed also in the thread that I posted, where I showed the simpler way to do this in a different tutorial.

More tutorials would be great, but you might want to check around and see what others have already been written on a subject before spending a lot of time on a topic

I looked around on the tutorials first and didn't see anything on it, nor have I ever seen it used anywhere else; I only came across the idea accidentally while messing with contours and embossing effects - then realized contours could be used to create coastal rings easily.

If there is a simpler way to do it than loading a contour file to a glow effect, I'd love to see it. Could you provide a link?

[Chick]

Well, you have to define "simpler" first. The expand and stroke technique is much simpler for someone fairly new to photoshop. Your technique, which was described here http://www.cartographersguild.com/sh...ad.php?t=30388 in the post by Waldronate is "simpler" in that it requires fewer keystrokes, but gives you no direct control over modifications unless you understand how to create that contour file yourself. And frankly, modifying the contour file is a real pain.

I've used both methods many times, and I keep returning to the expand and stroke method because it gives me far better control on the spacing, size, smoothness, opacity, and number of lines for each situation. I just got tired of constantly modifying the contour file to get the effect I wanted for each different image.

I congratulate you on writing a nice tutorial, just wanted to hint that if you are planning to do more, a little research will help keep you from duplicating stuff that's already been described. As Diamond says, it's hard to keep up with all the good techniques posted around here, and the forum search function is still a little funky at times, too. It would be awesome if someone were to spend the hours needed to organize and catalog all the tutorials in some systematic way.

[Diamond]

As Diamond says, it's hard to keep up with all the good techniques posted around here, and the forum search function is still a little funky at times, too.

Hrmm. I meant it more as in "no one is going to do an exhaustive site search to see if this idea has had a tutorial written for it before and the way the search function is set up makes it impractical to try" and good on morikahn for taking the time to write a nice and clear tut for a technique that I and I suspect others hadn't seen before, and he should be thanked for it, not reprimanded. But yeah, it IS difficult to keep up with everything around here; I do my best, but there's only so many hours in the day.