New to Digital Cartography? Software General Information

[SandmanNet]

Hello everyone. These are the tools I use for map-making.

Photoshop and Illustrator (CS5) are obviously my two main weapons of choice. Illustrator is perfect for creating coastlines, walkways and paths and even house outlining. And for tapered rivers and other items that are mathematical objects even when drawing them freely.

Painter is an awesome tool with a pretty high threshold to create natural looking paintings and sketches. Photoshop has gotten increasingly better by the years, so I'm not using Painter as much as I used to.

I try not to "cheat" too much. I.e. not using drop shadow on layers, not using layer effects on a too obvious way. I can use pattern overlay to add a gritty looking feel, but the opacity is usually set very low and I'm rarely satisfied with the result. I'm the kind of guy that draws pretty much everything by hand. You can see examples in my threads and in the Myst Book Project in my signature. I do just as much drawing with pen and paper as I do with a Wacom as well, so I am pretty experienced with doing things manually

I live and die by my Wacom tablets. I have the A4 Intuos3 (looking to buy a Intuos 4 wireless now) and two Cintiq 21UX, one at home and one at work. These are amazing tools and I couldn't do anything without them.

So, that's that

[Vile]

Hmm, I guess I could have ticked "Vector (bought) as well as "Raster (bought) and "Scanned hand-drawn maps", because I do use AutoCAD as well as Photoshop (and a bit of SketchUp). Oh, that's "3D modelling" as well, then. I use all three for my work (landscape architect), otherwise this would be a bit of an expensive hobby. I like AutoCAD for outlines - coasts, contours, roads, etc. - which I can then port into Photoshop or SketchUp. If you can get hold of AutoCAD survey bases, especially if they include topography, you cant tweak and edit them into something pretty believable.

[inellgilsta]

I am using adobe photoshop because I'm more comfortable using it.

[dpmcalister]

These are the tools I'll be using for my maps:

Paint Shop Pro 7: I bought this about 8 years ago when I started designing websites and, even though it is a bit old (), it still does the job for me. I'd love to try PhotoShop but the price is too much for my small wallet

Dundjinni: Received a copy of the Platinum Edition when it was first released to review and have kept using it ever since. Mainly small scale maps, but I did reproduce a keep from a Hellfrost scenario I ran (as part of the Triple Ace Games Demo Team) at UK Games Expo last year. Printed it out battlemap size, laminated it, taped it all together, and then cut out each room so I could place them down as the players entered them. I still have the laminated version and I think (hope?) that the original is still of the hard drive of my old laptop (the only bit I could salvage from it )

Fractal Mapper 8: I was able to pick up Fractal Mapper 7 on eBay for a couple of pounds and liked what I saw so bought the upgrade to v8. Not had a chance to create any proper maps with it yet, but I'm looking forward to learning

Wacom Bamboo One: I've treated myself to this tablet and pen to help in creating maps because I find it very difficult to drawn landmasses with a mouse. I don't actually get to use it until my birthday in 3 weeks (as it's, officially, a present) but I did get a quick play with it when it first arrived (to make sure it worked, of course ). I can see that it'll take a little getting used to, but I'm hopeful that it will be better than the mouse.

[Hungry Donner]

For the last several years I've done a lot of map work with Google Earth - I created a blank image overlay to cover up the Earth itself and then use the line tools to 'draw' my maps. There are a lot of advantages to using GE this way: it lets you easily work on a global scale, you can toggle layers on an off (political boundaries, locations, biomes, terrain, etc.), and it's very open to tweaking. Unfortunately no matter how sophisticated the work ends up it looks pretty awful.

I started a new project a few weeks ago and it involves a lot of global scale work that GE is well-suited for. However I'm also hoping to dust off GIMP and start incorporating some better looking material as I progress so my maps look good too (especially with the smaller and more detailed locations that GE doesn't handle as well).

[Mark Oliva]

Fractal Mapper 8: I was able to pick up Fractal Mapper 7 on eBay for a couple of pounds and liked what I saw so bought the upgrade to v8. Not had a chance to create any proper maps with it yet, but I'm looking forward to learning

You might want to check out our free, 222-page PDF tutorial Raster Mapping With FM8. It covers a lot of material that isn't in the official NBOS tutorial. You can get it at:

http://www.vintyri.org/vintyri/vccindex.htm

[Seraphine_Harmonium]

I make maps by hand, and I have GIMP for editing.

[Paul Swateridge]

I have been using Corel Draw and Corel Photo Paint for several years now. Is there any advice others can give concerning these pieces of software?

[Ascension]

We have many members using Corel but they haven't made any tutorials (that I can remember). The Corel programs seem to be fine (as good as anything else on the market) but many things from Gimp and Photoshop just don't have similar equivalents in Corel. So in a way, you're on your own but in an other way that is kind of cool since you can be the mad scientist experimenting with and creating things that we mainstream program users can't.

[Paul Swateridge]

Thanks Ascension. I'm trying to upload an old vector drawing I did some yeras ago but it just will not upload. Any advice on this?