how to draw in a mountain range in photoshop

[Jaekaido]

Hello Cartographers,
Once again I find my self in need of advice. While I have been using Acsension's atlas style tutorial, I find that the mountains don't look right to me, regarding placement, they look right but are in the wrong places. The map that I am currently making, which starts as a super continent, then breaks apart and collides with another super continent. The problem I am having is while I know where they should be, there is no way for me to make them look like the ones in Acsension's style which I like very much.

Any advice as to how I can make them look realistic when drawing them in, in photoshop?

[Azélor]

Acsension mountains are neither realistic or drawn. They are generated randomly.

[Falconius]

You can use layer masks and just mask out the areas you don't want to have mountains and still keep the cloud generated look. But since the look is also a problem you bring up, you might consider instead to make a basic greyscale height map in some painting software and then processing it through Wilbur to add fine detailing.

[Jaekaido]

What is Wilbur and where do i find it

[Mouse]

In a very simple nutshell, Wilbur allows you to apply erosion to a height map. A height map is a representation of the area drawn in black and white, where black is the lowest point, and white is the highest.

This is Wilbur's page:

http://www.fracterra.com/wilbur.html

You can download the software there, and if you scroll to the bottom of the page you will find all the tutorials.

There are pdf versions available here at the Guild, though I can never find the thread! Hopefully Waldronate will see this and give you the link

EDIT: I think the pdf versions are actually available on the Wilbur page, just above the html versions

[Jaekaido]

okay thank you would that help with rivers and lakes as well?

[Mouse]

Rivers - yes

Lakes? I think you would be better off adding them after processing the erosion in Wilbur.

Be patient! Wilbur is a very powerful program, but it can take a bit of application to learn all its tools and how to use them to the best effect

[waldronate]

http://fracterra.com/FunWithWilburVol5/index.html might offer some assistance with lakes (rivers, too) when using Wilbur.

[Jaekaido]

Wilbur and i are having issues i cant understand the tutorials and for that matter i don't know how to import a picture in to it so at this point i am going to try and find another way to do it as this makes no sense to me. sorry for wasting your time. i just wish there was an easy way to make the maps that i want that are not going to cost me 200 dollars a pop.

[Azélor]

Gimp and Krita are free software.