Yeah, that's a very common problem. If you have a good printer then keep adjusting the monitor (gamma if the colors are wrong, brightness if it's too dark/bright) until it looks just like the print...takes a while. If you have a poor printer, well...buy a good one?Don't ask me what defines a good printer because anything that prints like it looks on my monitor is a good printer to me, but I'm guessing things like max dpi and color gamut. GamerPrinter will be able to answer that one.
If the radiance of a thousand suns was to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One...I am become Death, the Shatterer of worlds.
-J. Robert Oppenheimer (father of the atom bomb) alluding to The Bhagavad Gita (Chapter 11, Verse 32)
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I added some Bevel to the forests and I like the results.
But now I stand before a problem. I wanted to add some rivers to the map but I think it might be a bit too late. I just can't get them to look right but take a look yourself:
Kirachtest3.png
Well maybe I have to make them just normal 1-2 pixel lines or something like that. Or I have to live without rivers.
Assuming you have everything as layers, this should be easier for you than it was for me
Move the river below the trees layer
Add a slight dark stroke to the inside of the rivers.
Mask out portions of the trees to allow the river to through through. (I clone stamped pieces of forest texture over to demonstrate roughtly).
Add a blurred emboss overlay of the rivers and lake above all the layers, including the forest.
Add a faint dark outer stroke where the rivers cross through the forests.
[edit] Hmmm. I somehow added a blue overtone to everything. Not sure what happened there as I didn't keep the file.
-Rob A>
Last edited by RobA; 03-18-2009 at 03:56 PM.
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Are you looking for a volcanic crater or an impact crater?
If volcanic, I would suggest cutting out the "corners" of the map - IE flattening the mountains there in order to get a steep ridge around the lake.
If I were feeling silly, I'd turn the rivers red and name this "bloodshot valley." Couldn't resist
The forests look a lot better now. What Ascension has done with the rivers looks really good (but as he said it's rough, there's still trees in the rivers).
Last edited by Gandwarf; 04-04-2009 at 08:51 AM. Reason: typo
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Gandwarf has fallen into shadow...
Well after a nice vacation I took my time to look over the things and here is what I got.
Kirach.png
I know that I still have to blur the transitions between the rivers and the lake a little bit but I'm quite unsure how I do that.
It's an impact crater.
Hrm Bloodshot Valley. I'll keep that in mind for the time when I stray of a bit of the campaign and want to just put a fun evening in between.
On the latest image, I would replace the black bumping on the forests with a very dark green, to soften it up a little, without losing too much definition. Right now it's a little jarring to me.
I haven't played much with these techniques much, myself, yet, but perhaps try moving the river layer below the forest layer, and dropping a small shadow from the forest. (I primarily use Photoshop, but I do occasionally use GIMP, as well, so I can play with it some later tonight.)
As for the mountains, I'm not really sure what to make of them. At the moment, they look to lack a little bit of definition, but on closer inspection the definition is almost there. I think what catches my eye is the shape of them - it looks weird (at least to my eye) to see the rim completely unbroken and of apparently equal heights (even at the rivers, where some erosion would likely take place) and the continuation of them indefinitely outside the map.
You mentioned that outside the rim wasn't well explored. Perhaps a layer of black shadow with a blurred/smudged border (One of the palette knife or similar filters in PS comes to mind, but I wouldn't be able to give you a GIMP analog until later tonight). Adding in this shadow would (to me) indicate unknown areas, as well as alleviate (at least temporarily) the mountain problem.
I'll do some playing in GIMP and PS later tonight if I have some time and see what I come up with.
-asp
I tried out the things you said and here is what I got:
Kirach.png
I also added some texture to the rivers due to a suggestion of one of my players.
Nice improvement, Malygon!
Those rivers certainly don't look painted on anymore!
-Rob A>
My GIMP Scripts: Rotating Brush ~ Gradient from Image ~ Mosaic Tile Helper ~ Random Density Map ~ Subterranean Map Prettier ~ Tapered Stroke Path ~ Random Rotate Floating Layer ~ Batch Image to Pattern ~ Better Seamless Tiles ~ Tile Shuffle ~ Scale Pattern ~ Grid of Guides ~ Fractalize path ~ Label Points
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