It's quite an original style you're developing here.
I like 'Tall Tree!'
Here, I'm working on mountains. I plan to keep expanding and detailing the shading, maybe eventually hide the ridgeline layer.
Colony3.png
Latest complete maps: East Wickham | Oghura | The Cathedral Galaxy | Jezero
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I like this style so far! I was a bit iffy about the perfectly-straight treelines, but since this is a science-fiction map I think the "digital" style makes sense. Plus they look much, much better with the shading.
Thanks! I am going to be working on this shading for a while, I think. The perfectly straight ridge lines may just turn out to be guides for the shading. Or I might keep them, as you said, they contribute a little to the sci-fi feel. We'll see how it looks!
Last edited by jshoer; 12-22-2017 at 01:49 AM.
Latest complete maps: East Wickham | Oghura | The Cathedral Galaxy | Jezero
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I'm cooking along...here's the current state:
Colony4.png
My current plan is to finish this shading layer, then add some broad-brush shading to enhance the overall topography and some darker detail shading for more texture.
Just to see, here's what it looks like when I turn the ridgeline layer off:
Colony4a.png
Latest complete maps: East Wickham | Oghura | The Cathedral Galaxy | Jezero
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My current vote is for ridgelines being turned off, but I suppose that also depends on which color scheme, if any, you have planned for the land... they make make the mountains easier to see if there's more color added.
For me, it's the opposite.
I think its better turned on because all your elements have clear/sharp contrast but the shadows are not. Alone, they don't fit that well with the rest that you have for the moment.
My Deviantart: https://vincent--l.deviantart.com/
Yeah, I kinda like them off too, but agree it really depends on how the rest of the map is going to be. Perhaps most of it is done, you'll get a better idea. It might even work best with a 50% opacity or something similar for their layer, so they're still providing the structure whilst also letting the shadows do their stuff.
I spent the holidays adding a lot to the shading! There is still some touching up to do with smudging and adding deep shadows, I think, but I may go on to other things for a little bit.
With ridgelines:
Colony5.png
Without:
Colony5a.png
Latest complete maps: East Wickham | Oghura | The Cathedral Galaxy | Jezero
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Okay, I need some serious help...
I did a lot of work on this today, hitting Ctrl+S as I went. At some point, my entire computer locked up and I had to do a hard reboot. Now, when I try to open the .psd, I get a message that says
I tried making a copy of the file, and opening the copy generates the same message.Adobe Photoshop CC 2018
Could not complete your request because it is not a valid Photoshop document.
Does anybody here know how to recover the file?
EDIT: Based on Googling, I've also tried (1) renaming the .psd to a .tiff and opening in Photoshop, which gave me a similar error, and (2) this utility, which supposedly extracts raster layers into .pngs but did not find any data to extract. So far I am just having a huge bummer of a time...
Last edited by jshoer; 12-30-2017 at 05:28 PM.
Latest complete maps: East Wickham | Oghura | The Cathedral Galaxy | Jezero
hand-drawn maps album | digital maps album | web site | blog