Complete Novice

[Gan02]

I have been an off and on lurker to this site for years and finally managed to justify the purchase of a wacom tablet. I really love doing maps for my D&D campaigns but have always worked with pencil and paper and my attempts fall apart whenever I need to "zoom in" to fill in details for a specific nation or region. I just cannot redraw an area faithfully enough to satisfy my needs with pencil, I really want to work with Gimp or Medibang because of the ability to select an area and zoom in on the image and keep borders and rivers and roads honest. However I just have so little experience and all of the tutorials on here assume a level of familiarity and skill with the programs and tools that I just don't have, especially when you take into account the minor changes in menus and layouts that occur over the course of version changed from the time a tutorial was created to when I'm reading it. Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated. I have uploaded a world level image of what I currently have on my attempt to organize and compile my campaign world into one fully fleshed setting.

[PaperGriffin]

While I can't help you with Gimp or Medibang, one piece of advice I can offer is; if you are new to using a wacom tablet it can be a little disorientating at first. Drawing on the desk while looking at the monitor can feel a little odd, but stick with it and you'll quickly get the hang of it. Other than that, find some tutorials online (even general, non-map related ones) and just keep practicing. If you run into a specific problem I'm sure the kind folks on these forums will be able to help you out

[Gan02]

Thanks for the reply!
Yeah I've already noticed that bit of disconnect, but I'm sure that I can overcome that. One of the things I keep running into with tutorials though is that a unexpectedly large number of times I watch the bit of tutorial and attempt to follow along and get a result that is absolutely nothing like what happened in the tutorial, and I don't know if it'll be because they are using a different version, or a custom script, or if I just did something WRONG (probably this one). Honestly, I had literally downloaded and installed the most recent versions of both programs the same day I posted the original, and looking at several tutorials on youtube that had been posted as recently as 1 and 2 months ago, there were significant differences in the layout and where certain commands were found.

An example being following the instructions for how to select and cut out a selection to move to a new document and enlarge the selection (actually enlarge, aka increasing the number of pixils in it, not just zooming in) and after 3 different tutorials, following step-by-step, every single time when I got to the part of enlarging the image; instead of enlarging the image itself I got what looked like, I guess, a water mark of the original image in a size larger than the original but not as large as the settings I had attempted to enter. Three different tutorials and the same result, and I've no idea what is going wrong.

[Kellerica]

I'm a PS user so I can't really help with GIMP, but right now I suspect that even a fellow GIMP user might have trouble helping you.

If you could attach some examples of a) what it is you're trying to accomplish (i.e. link to the tutorial you're trying to follow) and b) what happens when you try (screencap of what the result is). Also a description of how you are going about it, what keys you press and what values you are inserting when you have to insert something.

It's a little hard to figure out what is happening from just a description, or at least it is for me. Hopefully you'll get the help you need, I know how frustrating it is when you have a problem and can't figure out if it is you or the software that is causing the issue.

[Abu Lafia]

Hey Gan02,
i know it was just an example you gave above but i couldn't resist and made a micro tutorial about copying/pasting a selection into a new image and resizing it afterwards. I used Gimp 2.10 (the newest version) for it, although the theme is an older one and the icons and sidebars might look different than yours.

CopyPastaImagescale1.jpg
If you've opened your image of choice, use the rectangle select tool (or in fact any of the select tools) too define the area you want to select and copy/cut/paste/etc. afterwards.

CopyPastaImagescale2.jpg
If you have the right piece of your image selected you can go Edit>Copy in the menu as shown or use the hotkey "ctrl+c". Make sure you're working on the right layer (the chosen layer contains the information you want to copy/cut/etc.). In the screenshot i work with only one layer, but with more layers in the game i mess this up regularly, even after years of using gimp...

CopyPastaImagescale3.jpg
Now you go to Edit>Paste as>New Image, or use the hotkey "ctrl+shift+v"

CopyPastaImagescale4.jpg
Choose the new Image and go to Image>Scale Image in the menu.

CopyPastaImagescale5.jpg
In the settings window, choose the preferred size and hit "Scale"

CopyPastaImagescale6.jpg

Hope it helps a bit If you have any further questions about gimp you can also shoot me a pm

Cheers,
AL

[Kellerica]

Excuse me for going off-topic here, but daaaamn that's a fine looking piece of cartography you've got there, Abu :O