Fractal Terrains Error when using Incise Flow

[waldronate]

From here I think I need to hand paint or try changing the seed?

It depends on what you want. If you have specific placement in mind for mountains, the "CSU Johnsondale" and "Muna Workshop" discussions here at the guild offer good information on using masks for coastlines and masks for mountains as with the CSU Johnsondale one or starting from multiple contour levels as mbartelsm did for his Muna map.

If you don't have particular mountain or river placements in mind, random is as good an anything.

[Khaalis]

So this is what I've gotten from randomly applied cloud filters so far.
Heightmap.jpg

I am looking for a few tips:
1) How to reduce the overall amount of height. Currently too much of the land is still very high elevation (light greys).
2) How to smooth out the effect of the filters. Right now its very choppy and swirly. Would layering on more cloud filters help smooth this out or should I rely just on Wilbut to help smooth out the terrain?

Thanks!

[waldronate]

This is being done in Photoshop, right? In PS, use Image>>Adjust>>Levels (Ctrl+L) and then adjust the Output Levels slider to get your desired output max level. You can also do this in Wilbur by using Filter>>Mathematical>>Scale and a Single Value between 0 and 1 to scale the surface (0.25 gets you 1/4 the height, 0.5 gets you half the height, and so on).

Relying on Wilbur to process down the height field might be close to the simplest thing that you can do.

[Khaalis]

Thanks for the reply. Yes it is being done in PS so I'll try the 'Adjust > Levels' to see if I can't get t a bit more smooth and more 'earth-like' before moving it into Wilbur to smooth out and reduce height even more. I just want to make sure that if I reduce the height though scale that it doesn't create massive sea-level wholes. Though granted I guess I could always just paint them back in with Raise.

Again, thanks for all the help in this learning process. Huge help.

[Khaalis]

Current state after redoing some of the layers and some manual smoothing and painting. Thoughts/Opinions? Right direction?

Painted Heightmap 3.jpg

[waldronate]

You have some pretty hard edges around your continental shorelines that will translate to towering cliffs if viewed in 3D:
Untitled-1.jpg

Other than that, the important question is: are you happy with it?

[Khaalis]

What do you recommend for lowering the coastline? Manually paint them darker?

[waldronate]

You can manually paint them darker or select the border in Photoshop, feather it, and then use output levels to drop them down.