Sounds strange. If worse comes to worse and you run in to an error like that it might be worth it to just screen shot it and save it that way for rebuilding. The Bailywiki maps which are the most complex I've seen uses map levels and tiles in addition to the background and foreground maps, plus the lighting makes a huge difference.
Bailywiki builds his stuff in Foundry using tiles. He may have a base map made in Photoshop or something, but all the complex stuff is done in Foundry AFAIK. I'm only working in Photoshop right now. There is no fancy stuff like levels or lighting. I will add special effects in Foundry.Originally Posted by Falconius
I'm starting over. The map size is still fairly big dimensions wise, but I'm doing it at only 70 ppi so hopefully that helps.
Thanks for responding.
If you have 10K square sized maps then I think I would do sections of the map in bits. 10K is big but not terrifically big. But it could be very big for a VTT app as opposed to Photoshop and other paint programs. 16Gb is quite a bit of ram and an i7 should be fine. Not familiar with foundry myself to comment how well it might handle large images.
Also, my advice is to save the map in the apps own file format and then export versions for use with the VTT such as JPG etc. Not sure that using webp would preserve all of the special photoshop info in it. Such as layers and colour gamut encoding etc. Only flatten layers when you are sure you want to bake them into one set. But it will lower the ram used to produce the image.
Also, I have said many times, when making any bit of work, name your file as project_01.jpg or whatever file extension it is, then next time save it as project_02.jpg and so on. After a while you have about 10 files you can delete a couple of earlier ones but keep a running set of at least 5 to 10 of them and keep the number incrementing all the time. Then if you have to go back you have the files. Or if something corrupts then in some rare occasions the corruption occurred a few saves ago and you didnt see the problem till later. Better yet, use git or some other source control app but images will eat the drive space with them since they will keep every version.
And then finally, use a USB drive to backup data after a period when it feels icky not to have to do the work again. Better to use an external USB drive than a second directory on the same drive or a second drive on the same machine (as I had a PSU go bang once and took the whole PC with both my drives out so I don't make that mistake again.)
On my VTT you had stamps of variable pixel dimensions and then you stamp them down and it redraws the whole map of all stamps so there was no limit to the resolution or size of map - which was the whole point of it. But most people like to map using a paint package and import the bitmap.
For VTTs best not to put a grid on it because the VTT will do it for you and they wont align. And best not to put on items on the base image which will move about such as doors which you open on the VTT. But you probably know that bit.
Not sure about the others but in Foundry you can align the grid. The biggest problem I've had is the original grid being a photocopy so nothing's quite straight or its so low resolution that you have to blow it up and try to align it and the grid lines on the original are just a huge mess. The key issue is being clear what the grid alignment is (70 px 100 px 58px etc) rather than not having a grid at all.This is so true, and if you forget and put an item on the map that is precisely the item the players will inevitably try to do the most with.And best not to put on items on the base image which will move about such as doors which you open on the VTT. But you probably know that bit.
Can you post a screenshot of your Photoshop workspace with the image loaded? That might give us ideas to improve what you're working with.
Ok, so I've tried swtiching to a smaller document and I'm making the rooms in groups (EX: Rooms 1-5 on one page), but as soon as I made the actual floors and walls (patterns) it freezes up and lags when trying to do ANYTHING. I'm getting ****ed at this point. Nothing happened. Nothing changed. I was just in the middle of working and BAM, everything ****s up. I've uninstalled and reinstalled twice. I tried rolling back to a previous version. Nothing is fixing this issue. And it's not the size of the document that is causing it. The sectional map I started making is TINY (file size). It is on a 8.5 x 11 in page. It was working fine until I got up to 7 layers (which is nothing compared to how many layers I've worked with previously). I'm working with Adobe customer service now.
Anyway, you wanted screen shots...
This is how far I made it with the Large document before Photoshop broke:
Attachment 134603
Here is an image of where I started the sectional maps and I'm still having issues:
Attachment 134604
Here's the file sizes of that smaller file that is still messing up:
Attachment 134605
Ok, so Adobe says it's my graphics card. That's weird to me. I've had this computer for 6 years and I've made maps as large as 15,000 x 15,000 px with no problem. Also, Ive bee working on this map and others the past few weeks and not one problem. So, in the middle of working on a project my graphics card is suddenly no good? That doesn't make sense to me.
Anyway, I'm saving for a new computer, but I probably can't afford it until next year. Oh well. This sucks. I use Photoshop almost every day.
Thanks for trying to help, folks.
I don't recall you mentioning what model of card you're using, but hardware can indeed fail unexpectedly with no obvious reason.
Does Task Manager's GPU pane give any hint that the card is being used heavily?
Tech Power Up's utility GPU-Z provides lots more details about the GPU's usage.
Selden
Nah. I guess with the 2023 update somethings got more resource intensive. I've rolled back to the 2021 version and everything is working fine. My PC meets all the recommended specs EXCEPT for 4GB of video memory. I went out and bought a new graphics card, but it needs a power connection that I don't have. So the building of a new machine has begun.
If anyone is interested, I finally finished this map. It was slow and arduous, but I finished. I had to keep merging layers, which I hate, but there was no other choice. I got the final map down from 373 MB to 6.91 MB. Thank you all for responding.
I was going to post the map here, but the site won't let me upload a webp file and my jpg is above the allowed limit. Oh well.
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