[Award Winner] Antique-style maps in Photoshop

[Bohunk]

Bohunk -- I haven't tried this yet, but I will later today, and I am thinking that since the rings are created via selection then you could feather the selection by 1 pixel or maybe 2 to round off the jaggies in the initial step and then each succeeding ring would just be an expansion of the roundness so no further feathering would be necessary but optional on the other rings. I'll check it later today.

I have tried that and it does work...to a point. I guess it depends on the style map it is done on. The map I tried it with had too much of a jagged coastline and the rings closest to the coastline would actually smooth over and actually cross the coastline and islands of its coast. It is certainly worth a try and I hope you find something that works because it's a wonderfull effect.

[Ascension]

I think I've got a fix, what do you think? The "feather the selection" just produces a fat line due to blurring/feathering so I went even simpler and created a striped stroke of solid black with varying opacities (see screenshot).

JFJ -- Creating paths from selections then stroking that path is unreliable a lot of the time; it never seems to stay true, it rounds off way too much. Of course it could be something that I'm missing but the path never has the same detail as the selection (see screenshot). So I try to avoid paths.

[jfrazierjr]

Have you thought about doing a test with a woodcut effect instead of the rings? It might be a nice option for this style of map also.

[Ascension]

That's one of those myriad options that are out there for people to experiment with. I've never tried the effect and I wouldn't want to appear to be hogging all of the cool tutorial ideas

[jfrazierjr]

That's one of those myriad options that are out there for people to experiment with. I've never tried the effect and I wouldn't want to appear to be hogging all of the cool tutorial ideas

Hog! Hog! you can always post up a link to the other tutorial and offer it as a separate "or you could do this instead" type supplement.

[Ascension]

Ok, so I did up a lil woodcut effect. It's not perfect, but it looks okay.

How I did it:
1. Copy the "land" layer, remove all layer styles, set the layer's fill to 0% (on the layers palette) and rename it to "wood effect".
2. Add a layer style of stroke, set the size to 50, outside, and where it says "Fill Type" choose "pattern". Use a black and white stripe pattern (mine is a 6x1 pixel pattern; 3b & 3w).
3. Create a new layer and link it to this layer, move the new layer under the "wood effect" layer. Click on the "wood effect" layer and merge down (ctrl-e). This removes the layer style and rasterizes the layer.
4. Filter > Distort > Ripple = size is 50 and the type is small. Now our stripes have a little wave.
5. Ctrl-click on the "land" layer (in the layers palette). Select > Modify > Expand = 25. Select > Feather = 25. Select > Inverse. Hit the Delete key 2 or 3 times then deselect.
6. Add a layer style color overlay of something brown (I chose 402010, rgb 64, 32, 16). Set the mode to overlay.
7. On the layers palette, change the fill to 67% to make the black less prevalent in favor of the brown.

[jfrazierjr]

ooooo... dats purdy!

[Steel General]

Yeah I think I actually like the wood cut better than the lines.

[Sagenlicht]

I just stumbled across this tutorial

Nice work Ascension

Here's a quick convert of SG'S doc to pdf for easier handling

SG - if you cant create pdf's yourself take a look at this.

PDFCreator is free (its open source), easy to use and fast. I use it myself when I am on my windows box. Once installed you can create pdf's out of any application. Just go to print and select the pdf creator printer.

[jfrazierjr]

I just stumbled across this tutorial

Nice work Ascension

Here's a quick convert of SG'S doc to pdf for easier handling

SG - if you cant create pdf's yourself take a look at this.

PDFCreator is free (its open source), easy to use and fast. I use it myself when I am on my windows box. Once installed you can create pdf's out of any application. Just go to print and select the pdf creator printer.

Sagenlicht, does it have the ability to append to an existing file? I have had need to do that and only one of the three I have tried actually does that. I THINK, its PrimoPDF, but not 100% sure...