Torentine Empire: my li'l corner of a fictional world

[cereth]

Absolutely beautiful.

[a2area]

the final map is posted here:
http://www.cartographersguild.com/sh...2221#post92221

[Jaxilon]

Personally I like the satellite view with the clouds - very cool looking imo.

[Jinatsu]

To see that all your images have been viewed so sparsely is preposterous! In light of that I hope my small bit of appreciation for your effort helps get across how truly remarkable your work it.

[a2area]

Here (light map) is the color scheme.. subject to change of course.. for the physical map page of my Torentine atlas.. the darker one is just for kicks. I tested out some small text on the lighter map and it's pretty good except for the high contrast areas in the mountains .. i may have to tone that down or use some outer glow effects.. i didn't want to lose too much texture. I toyed around with the seafloor until i got something i like.. merging a fractal terrains file with my own 3d version created via "Making maps in Photoshop" tutorial by jezelf.

Please comment on the colors as i have a little trouble gauging hues sometimes.. i am mainly wondering about the deciduous forests.. are they too brownish or not at all.. are my eyes are playing tricks? I think it looks best at 50% size because it gives the illusion of minute detail... when i look at it full size i start to obsess about adding sharpness or tiny details that would probably just make it too busy for the purpose of an atlas page.

[Jaxilon]

Well I'm just a noob so take that into consideration if you listen to anything I say.

First, you do have a beautiful map here.

To me I think the lighter one might be a bit too light. I'm thinking if the water is that clear you probably need to show reefs and rocks beneath it. Like what I saw when I was on Moorea in Tahiti years ago and you could look down for 50 feet and it seemed right below the surface. (double click the map here and drill down along the shoreline to see what I mean.) Your underwater textures seem as clear as the land areas. Perhaps if you selected the water and did a Gaussian blur so the water wasn't quiet so perfectly clear it would help. Then again maybe you want the underwater detail? Maybe just darkening it a bit more would do the trick as well.

I'm sure you will get better thoughts from some of the legends around here but that's the only thing I can come up with.

Definately a nice looking map.

[a2area]

Just from a color scheme perspective.. not the details or color transitions.. which one of these "feels" more realistic to you? LEFT or RIGHT or the darker (left) one in my previous post?

Just the land colors, the ocean will be the next part of the project.

[LonewandererD]

I know people are going to disagree with me but I think the one on the right is the more realistic one. Although this may be partly because i prefer greener maps.

Nice work.

-D-

[Ascension]

As they stand right now the right one. The one on the left has some funky green around the mountains and if that was tweaked then I'd go left one.

[Jaxilon]

I think the one on the right as well because it has more even dispersal of the colors. I like the coloring on the left one more but it has patches of different color that don't seem as realistic.