[Award Winner] Making maps in Photoshop

[jezelf]

Thanks folks- glad this stuff is helping out. I wrote them because they were things I wanted to do as well -enjoy being creative!

wreed58: Sooo sorry - 2yrs later. I've been away, life , work , changing jobs and stuff like that, also migrated to world machine.

... Apologies for any unclear or confusing instructions. I'm sure the maps been long done by now, Jalyha thank you for stepping in! I'll answer this 'for the record' in case anyone else has the same problem.

Yes, clone a layer if you don't want to screw it up - Im always doing that for a fail safe ( or have your history brush on )

In general, I was winging and eyeballing it. The (Gaussian) blur radius and the colour you pick has a lot to do with it. Looks like your blur radius was not large enough. You can do these different areas on different layers so you have more control if you like the way you did one, but not the other. You can also merge them together and do a smaller blur with all of them, there's no real hard fast rule.

Concerning colours : a personal preference of course, but if you're not sure what's happening looking at reference is always the step I take. Check out real world maps and colour pick from there if you have to. Or print screen my tutorial into a new document in PS and colour pick from that. I sometimes have to step back and start again , break down a process and then do my own take on it on the second , (or 5th) try once I get my head around everything.


I've updated my first post on this thread with my new website address ( or here : jez-elf.com ) where you'll find a contact form at the bottom. I'll certainly help out where I can. Response should be less than a week or so. Advanced apologies if I take ages!

[jezelf]

Hello, I am having a lot of trouble when doing steps 1.6 - 1.8 on the map coloring part of the tutorials. Before the bluring part of those steps my map looks like: 3jabyVt.png
after i apply a guasion blur (i use this because it does not specify which blue to use) it looks like this: KLaVeeF.png

Please help ! the tutorial looks great but i can't make my map look that good

Hi

Just going to provide some potential solutions to this as I've had other people have a problem with this step. My humble apologies to you all! - it bugs me that it's not working out for you.

I would say there's a couple of things this could be. Top of the list is that my Blur value of 0.3 just worked for me at that time - try a much higher value like 40.

Q1: Have you sketched in your colours like I did or do blobs in different areas like Wreed58 did?
A: Similar to me: Go to Q2
A: Similar to Wreed58 -> could be that...
a: you're not overlapping your sketchy colours? Not essential, but it will help to draw them all on the same layer try not to isolate them in such a high contrasting way . It makes no difference in how you draw them really, but if they are too far apart then they wont overlap unless you have a large blur value. I like to add some colour variance to make it look more interesting - BTW there's a brush setting for that called colour dynamics. . Also for the green strokes (in my tutorial PDF) I used a sketchy brush and drew them on, but with the circles I switched to the round brush and used spacing and scattering in the brush tools.


With Wreed58's I would whack up that blur radius. BTW in Photoshop (Win) Ctrl+F repeats the last used filter, so you can keep pressing that and watch it blur until it get where you want.

these may help provide clarity - appologies for the typos! DOH!

jezelf_tut_map04_bluring.png

brushtool.png

Q2: Are you working to a specific document size?

A: I think I was working to 72ppi/dpi - if you have a big image for print ( usually 300dpi) then the blur radius could be too small. The blur size is on a pixel radius, so 0.3 may be fine for 72dpi, but for a 300 dpi you may need 30 (I'm guessing - you'll need to try it out ) - but that dpi thing will effect your results.

Q3: Have you tried the Layer properties options?

A: Layer properties. I see in my document I have it set to 'Linear Burn' for the coastline edge, I can't remember if I changed it for the blurred colours but could need setting to 'overlay'. I usually just go down through them and see if any 'pop' into looking cool :-) . I would have mentioned this step if it was important though so don't worry if that's not the solution.

Also, I didn't put specific colour values in the tutorial because it's all just done on the fly and wanted you to have creative freedom etc. but if you want the same colours I picked, then you could simply..
1: open the PDF page step image on your computer ,
2: hit 'print screen' button ( usually at the top right of your keyboard)
3: then in PS, create a new document (File > New> OK the dimensions it provides)
4: Ctrl+V (Paste) your new screen grab into you new file
5: Use your colour picker tool to pick any colours you like and use them in your work.

Hope that helps.
Thanks
Have fun!


Jeremy

[Southern Crane]

Hi

Just going to provide some potential solutions to this as I've had other people have a problem with this step. My humble apologies to you all! - it bugs me that it's not working out for you.

I would say there's a couple of things this could be. Top of the list is that my Blur value of 0.3 just worked for me at that time - try a much higher value like 40.

Q1: Have you sketched in your colours like I did or do blobs in different areas like Wreed58 did?
A: Similar to me: Go to Q2
A: Similar to Wreed58 -> could be that...
a: you're not overlapping your sketchy colours? Not essential, but it will help to draw them all on the same layer try not to isolate them in such a high contrasting way . It makes no difference in how you draw them really, but if they are too far apart then they wont overlap unless you have a large blur value. I like to add some colour variance to make it look more interesting - BTW there's a brush setting for that called colour dynamics. . Also for the green strokes (in my tutorial PDF) I used a sketchy brush and drew them on, but with the circles I switched to the round brush and used spacing and scattering in the brush tools.


With Wreed58's I would whack up that blur radius. BTW in Photoshop (Win) Ctrl+F repeats the last used filter, so you can keep pressing that and watch it blur until it get where you want.

these may help provide clarity - appologies for the typos! DOH!

jezelf_tut_map04_bluring.png

brushtool.png

Q2: Are you working to a specific document size?

A: I think I was working to 72ppi/dpi - if you have a big image for print ( usually 300dpi) then the blur radius could be too small. The blur size is on a pixel radius, so 0.3 may be fine for 72dpi, but for a 300 dpi you may need 30 (I'm guessing - you'll need to try it out ) - but that dpi thing will effect your results.

Q3: Have you tried the Layer properties options?

A: Layer properties. I see in my document I have it set to 'Linear Burn' for the coastline edge, I can't remember if I changed it for the blurred colours but could need setting to 'overlay'. I usually just go down through them and see if any 'pop' into looking cool :-) . I would have mentioned this step if it was important though so don't worry if that's not the solution.

Also, I didn't put specific colour values in the tutorial because it's all just done on the fly and wanted you to have creative freedom etc. but if you want the same colours I picked, then you could simply..
1: open the PDF page step image on your computer ,
2: hit 'print screen' button ( usually at the top right of your keyboard)
3: then in PS, create a new document (File > New> OK the dimensions it provides)
4: Ctrl+V (Paste) your new screen grab into you new file
5: Use your colour picker tool to pick any colours you like and use them in your work.

Hope that helps.
Thanks
Have fun!


Jeremy

Just wanted to thank you for updating this post with this more in depth information. As a writer/worldbuilder who is a rookie hobbyist at cartography this really helped a lot and gave a lot of neat tricks. Cheers

[nobodi12]

Just wanted to tell you thank you.

I used your tutorial to make a map, so thank you for making it. It was extremely helpful.