Greetings

[NeonKnight]

Anyong-haeseyo!

And that is the extent of my Korean Much to my wife and here family's chagrin

If you are worried about 'straight rivers' use the the straight to smooth feature of CC3 and that SHARP, STRAIGHT river will become all curvy. Don't use the method detailed in the help file (that is kinda wacked!), but instead do the following:

[Fabrice]

Kamsa Hamnida!

Thank you for the good advice... Much more simple than I thought (I actually re-drew portions of the rivers). I guess from now on I will right-click on everything on sight anytime I am stuck in CC3!

[Midgardsormr]

Very good idea. It did wonders for me!

[Feralspirit]

Fabrice, welcome! I have been looking around for inspiration and you have provided it! I do not have CC3, and while my artistic ability is, well, not exceptional, I believe I can actually manage to reproduce something like your deciduous trees. My current work has only an outline for my forest, and it definately needs help.

Being new to the guild and digital cartography I have little to say about your current work except that it looks great to me. Well, let me add this... being completely new to digital cartography it took me days to figure out some really basic functions. I had a torn parchment layer, and the layer that had my map, but my map either sat above or below the parchment, never on it, until I found the Color to Alpha function. This function essentially erased white on my top layer and allowed the parchment to show through. I am using The GIMP, and I don't know if there is a similar or corresponding function in CC3, but someone else here does. Gandwarf is proficient in CC3, and you might care to look through some of the tutorials for CC3 to see if someone has already answered your question.

I'd like to ask a small favor, is there something similar to your trees (having a simple, hand-drawn look) that denotes swamp/bog in your symbol set, and if so could you post it, or a few if available?

Thanks and Welcome again!

[Fabrice]

Thank you for the advice. I downloaded the GIMP last week (but have not tried it yet) and will try to add the calligraphy on the map from there, using the function that you suggested.

As for the tree symbols, thank you for your comments but I do not deserve them, since they are part of the "SS1 Overland" symbol set from ProFantasy. I can not post the symbols here as this would be unfair for the folks who are feeding their families by creating and selling them (and would probably violate basic IP laws) but I will see if I can post a section of a map featuring swamp symbols that could serve as a source of inspiration for you.

[Feralspirit]

Ah, yes. You are, of course, quite right and have spoken wisely. I continue to look through maps in the guild for something that works for me.

Yes, if you have GIMP already, the Color to Alpha function is conveniently found under the Colors tab. Good Luck!

[Fabrice]

Feral Spirit,


The "Color to Alpha" trick worked perfectly. I can now post a map with hand-calligraphed titles blending with the rest of the map. As promised in my original post, a royal amount of gratitude will be your just reward for this deed(rep coming your way).

I am posting as well a small sample of a map where you can see some grassland and swamp for your inspiration. If you like this symbol set, you can find more examples on the ProFantasy site: click on "Fantasy Overland", then "Gallery" and the 6th picture will be samples of structures from this set.

Thanks again for the help!

[Feralspirit]

NP, glad it worked for you. Though it does look better than before, without a closer look at the thumbnail your capital letters are getting lost in the mountains. Maybe apply a small glow?

Thank you for your other map, I will be certain to incoorperate it into my own campaign.

[NeonKnight]

Looking at your map, your TEXT (the CC3 TEXT), is experiencing an issue I know of. For some reason, the BLACK of the TEXT changes to WHITE when it is placed overtop BLACK symbols and has a glow applied to it.

The Fix is very simple. Simply change the color of your test from BLACK (COLOR 0) to the darkest Grey (COLOR 240), or the Darkest Brown (COLOR 32). These two colors are fairly indistinguishable from Black, but doesn't fall prey to this little bug.

[Ascension]

This looks nice and I had no idea that CC could actually do a nice hand-drawn style.