My first (real) map

[elemental_elf]

A thousand DPI? Wow, that's huuuuge.

Most of my work is in the 300 to 600 range.

The map looks great! I like the forests.

[Baxder]

Here's the labeled version. I haven't named the cloud filter generated islands yet. Naming the seas was enough for now!

[rdanhenry]

You don't seem to be having any troubles with the look except the coastlines are overly smooth. The Middle River is not going to happen in nature, but it could be the Middle Canal if you really need it there. You have some very circular mountains and the one in the middle of the Black Sea is very obvious in its perfect circularity of coast. On the other hand, if a god/wizard did it, and the material of the island is hard enough not to erode over the time since creation, no problem there.

[Baxder]

Thanks for the feedback, RD. I've seen elsewhere that rivers don't split like the North River does, and am aware of the unnatural nature of the spire in the Black Sea. It is a fantasy world, so I'm not overly concerned with complete realism. However, I was thinking of explaining the splitting river with the northern point of the Southern Hills, though it's not as obvious as it was before I painted the Emerald Forest over the point in question. I assume the circular mountains in question are in the Krüdasian region, which are actually not mountains but solitary monumental spires. And they all, including the spire in the Black Sea, exists by a combination of your listed possibilities.

The coasts are overly smooth, I agree. Any ideas for a simple way to break them up? I really don't want to spend more countless hours hand-painting in bays and what not. Same with the overly straight rivers, but I don't think there's an easy solution for those...

EDIT: I should clarify that the land is it's own layer, so some sort of edge-modifying method is what I suppose is needed. All I can find via google, though, is photo/paper-style effects. Not quite what I think is needed.

[Baxder]

It took a while, but I got all the cities and roads on the map. I plan on putting a few cities on some islands and mapping out sea trade routes, and that'll be it! I don't think I'll end up naming all the islands, just those that are inhabited or well known for whatever reason.

Feedback is still welcome, as are thoughts on roughing up the coastlines or making the rivers windey.

[letsgoheat]

I think the textures look pretty darn good but the coastlines I think are much too smooth (unless of course you intended it to be that way!)

[Baxder]

Yeah, I agree and have been asking for methods to roughen them up for some time now. Same with the rivers. Any ideas?

[Gidde]

There are a ton of tutorials in the tutorial section for making rough/realistic coastlines; unfortunately the only way I know of to "roughen them up" at this point in the map is either by hand or to start over. That's probably why you're not getting many suggestions; you already said you weren't interested in the by-hand method, and no one wants to tell you to back that far up in the process I guess what I'm trying to say is that perhaps the coastline stuff is meant for lessons brought to the next map, since creating coastlines is generally the first step.

[Baxder]

I've suspected that myself, but the land layer is still manipulable; I made the rivers by stroking a path. I would think that'd open up some possibilities.

[Baxder]

Fin. I added trade routes and a few island settlements. Still no ideas for roughing up the coasts?