Düsterbruch – Regional psuedo-realistic Map.

[Robulous]

I love the effect that looks like an oil paint texture, how did you achieve that? It's a unique and very effective style, I love it.

My only criticism is the text is quite hard to read.

[Legrandblond]

Thanks again for all the feedback and questions and criticism.

To answer some of the questions that popped up:

1. The maps purpose is solely out of the joy of world building and further advancing my skills with photoshop, as well as creating a home-brew world for my private game of D&D.
2. The technique I use could best be described as photo-bashing. Because I used probably around 150 real world satellite images and around 20 to 35 different textures and concept art brushes to create the look and feel of this map.
I spend around 15 hours scavenging the web for the best fitting satellite recources and images. Then I spend around 25+ hours in photoshop alone to Frankenstein all these bits and pieces together (where most of the time each individual layer has around 3 to 4 additional color blending, speed paint and concept art brushes applied to it).

The Iconography is clearly a homage to the Elders Scrolls Series and medieval Europe. But done with a more personal twist.
The readability of the fonts is quite good in the original size (40x60 cm), but due to file size and resolution limitations here I had to resize the whole map down to around 25% and reduce the dpi to 74.
The final look is a combination of some Highpass Filters, the actual "oil painting filter" from CC2020 and some tweaks within the layer visibility and blending settings.

I hope I have answered all questions so far
And thanks again for all the kind words, they are highly appreciated.