Are my Tiles showing?

[jizerai]

Hey. I have a question regarding a new project. It's going to be a fantasy city map of moderate size, with an ancient tower structure as the focal point. Now, I've been experimenting with how to do the tiles, and I would like some feedback/advice regarding just that. I'm a bit worried that it will just come off as cluttered. So .. any comment on it would be great, so I know if I'm just wasting my time and should go in another direction.

Pylara - Testing.jpg

[jizerai]

I haven't had that much time - but it's coming along at least.

Pylara - Test.jpg

[Mouse]

Looking good so far

May I suggest making the grass a bit lighter? It doesn't need to be very much - just so the shadows from your buildings show up a bit more. Also longer shadows on taller buildings will help - the tower is presumably the tallest building in the map, so maybe it should have a relatively long shadow

[jizerai]

May I suggest making the grass a bit lighter? It doesn't need to be very much - just so the shadows from your buildings show up a bit more. Also longer shadows on taller buildings will help - the tower is presumably the tallest building in the map, so maybe it should have a relatively long shadow

Thanks, I'll try that. For whatever reason, though, it appears that when I upload a picture it darkens somewhat and becomes "granier" than when I look at it in PS. Not really sure why?
Either way, I'll experiment more with it as I get further along.

[Wired]

Hey. I have a question regarding a new project. It's going to be a fantasy city map of moderate size, with an ancient tower structure as the focal point. Now, I've been experimenting with how to do the tiles, and I would like some feedback/advice regarding just that. I'm a bit worried that it will just come off as cluttered. So .. any comment on it would be great, so I know if I'm just wasting my time and should go in another direction.

Pylara - Testing.jpg

Those tiles look great. Do you draw them individually or do you use a pattern/brush?

[jizerai]

Those tiles look great. Do you draw them individually or do you use a pattern/brush?

I draw them individually, with a mouse, which is starting to become a real pain I can tell you.

[Mouse]

Wow! That's a bit like when Straf drew about a million scales on a plaice for one of the challenges!

Going back to the colour change problem when you export to upload here - if you are exporting a compressed jpg image the overall colour can change if you are using a rather large compression factor. I never use more than 10, and that's only if I have a really large image to export. I most often use 5, or none if I can get away with it.

EDIT: if its nothing to do with compression, then alternately you might be working in CYMK colour in PS and exporting them as RGB jpeg files? The two colour systems just don't match up in conversion, so things will seem a lot darker, and more vividly saturated in RGB colour than they were in CYMK.

[jizerai]

I've tried some different compression ratios and it doesn't really make any difference in that respect. From what I can tell, I'm working in RGB color (unless PS is lying to me ), and then saving it as a .jpg image. What I find weird is that opening the .jpg in PS, Gimp, or for that matter Paint, doesn't reproduce it. However, opening it in Windows Photo Viewer does, the same way as when I upload the image here. Could there be a compatibility issue of some sort?

[jizerai]

Ugh.. computer crashed during a save, resulting in a corrupt file, and for some reason no auto-recovery file either. So, I'm gonna have to either redo it from a much older file - or - I take the .jpg as a base and just rebuild the layers on top of it. :C

[Mouse]

I've tried some different compression ratios and it doesn't really make any difference in that respect. From what I can tell, I'm working in RGB color (unless PS is lying to me ), and then saving it as a .jpg image. What I find weird is that opening the .jpg in PS, Gimp, or for that matter Paint, doesn't reproduce it. However, opening it in Windows Photo Viewer does, the same way as when I upload the image here. Could there be a compatibility issue of some sort?

Different colour profiles being used in different pieces of software?

This is an area I really don't know very much about - only that it exists. Maybe someone with more knowhow in this area can help? (I'm thinking of Redrobes here?, or Waldronate perhaps)

I'm ever so sorry to hear about the crash disaster. Don't give up! The map looks wonderful already. It would be a terrible shame to abandon it now. Maybe you need to save a new version every hour or so, so that you don't ever lose too much work if it happens again.