WIP: Velesh

[Steel General]

I usually use a bevel (which it appears you have done), try fiddling with the settings a bit or maybe put a low-opacity inner-shadow on it. I always seem to struggle with rivers on maps of this 'scale'.

[sarandosil]

Problem is that the river width is like five pixels in that image, which doesn't accommodate much of the layer styles (I tried an inner glow and outer-glow but couldn't swing either into something nice). I could make the rivers wider for it to take effect, but I'm somewhat worried that a river wide enough would kind of break the scale (not that it matters too much though, I guess).

I think part of the problem is that the forest texture doesn't show the bumpiness of the land beneath it, which I can't figure out how to do either. The only bits on the map that have any feel of height to them then are the mountains, and everything else ends up looking flat.

Here's the full map if anyone cares (slightly outdated by now); http://www.routinedelirium.com/forsa...eshupdate3.jpg . I'd just finished rendering two cloud layers, one for random forest placement and another for random mountain placement. It's very rought at the moment because I haven't touched up any of it yet.

[sarandosil]

Ok I made it two pixels wider and the shadow does look good at this width. Probably need to adjust the color of the river though.

Funny stuff, I was just looking around in Google Maps and I found this : http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&t=k&...1,2.469177&z=9 now that is a bright blue river, but I probably couldn't get away with using that color.

[Ascension]

While not in technical violation it does violate logic. If you were to think about the actual height of the land then that valley would close up on the right side forcing the river to the west-northwest. To prevent that the land in that area would have to be higher than the end of the valley but since it is near a coast that isn't very likely. If there were some big hills there or maybe put some more space at the end of the valley on the right. At any rate, looks pretty good otherwise.

[sarandosil]

Doesn't seem worth starting a new thread over, but this the wip for a different setting (my own this time) that I'm working on. New water effect for it.

[Steel General]

Looks pretty good, I would probably reduce the bevel on the land mass a bit.

[Ascension]

The colors are rich and vibrant = I like it. The only quibble I have is that the borders seem kind of wimpy thin.

[sarandosil]

Steel: It's not supposed to have a bevel on it at all, hah. I think I did end up pasting a layer style on it that it wasn't supposed to have, so that I fixed

Ascension: Not too happy with the borders either, but couldn't figure out a way to make them look nice either. They're one pixel wide, and two pixel wide borders looked too thick. I also tried adding a glow to them like you had in your Atlas Style tutorial, but on my Photoshop an inner glow just modifies the one pixel length, and with an outer glow the colors from two different countries bleed into each other. Not sure what's up with that.

[Ascension]

Well here's what ya do; first make sure that your borders wrap all the way around the continent edges and that there are no gaps, then follow these steps:

1. Use the magic wand tool on the borders layer.
2. Click on an open area to select that country.
3. Create a new layer.
4. Fill that area with a color.
5. Repeat as often as necessary for each country.
6. Now you can add an inner glow to each country separately.

OR

7. Marge all the countries together onto one layer.
8. Ctrl+click on this layer in the layer stack.
9. Select - modify - contract = 20 or so.
10. Select - feather = 20 or so.
11. Hit the delete key and you get a faded edge border where the middle is clear and the edge has a color.
12. Adjust opacity to suit.

[landorl]

About the river -

I would look at making it widen up a bit before it joins the sea, and it could also do with a bit more "winding" in the lower stretches of the river. It is a perfectly realistic river though. Even though the NW coast is closer, it doesn't mean that it is easier to reach.