[Award Winner] Assorted tips and tricks

[torstan]

This is a non-traditional tutorial thread. I'll be posting little snippets that I originally posted to G+. I'll try to keep an index of the posts at the top for easy and quick reference. We'll see how that goes... These are intended to be entrance level tips that anyone might find useful. Feel free to ask questions about specific topics.

• How to use your phone to "scan" a map
• Drawing top down hills
• City design - start with the roads
• Dungeon design and adventure flow
• Simple hatched city district styles
• Using the Shape Tool to create quick simple icons in Photoshop
• Hand drawn mountains
• Turning a map into an aged paper handout
• A classic gatehouse design for guarding your front door
• Creating isometric dungeon maps
• Quick and Easy Dungeons using Grids
• Using layer styles for attractive dungeons.
• Using paths to create pretty dungeon maps
• Old School Mapping in Photoshop and Maptool
• How to colour a dungeon map.
• Different Tree Styles for Different Battlemaps
• More City Design
• How to make a dynamic grungy brush in photoshop
• How to quickly colour trees in photoshop
• How to make a grungy brush in Gimp
• How to draw isometric mountains
• Three different cliff styles
• Isometric Cliffs
• Explaining Blend Modes
• How to Draw Grassland
• A Note on Background Textures
• How to Draw Forests
• Using your phone to 'scan' a hand drawn map
• How to Draw Realistic Coastlines
• How to create a ripple texture using the clouds filter
• How to turn a map into an underwater landscape
• Drawing Water
• Using Photoshop Grids
• How to create icons
• Iso Rivers
• How to design a town
• How to draw swamps
• How to use the pen tool to draw buildings
• Drawing old fashioned coastal waters
• How to highlight featured buildings - shape, detail and contrast
• Three Dungeon Wall Styles
• Labeling Locations in Gimp or Photoshop
• Placing icons on a map in Gimp
• How to illustrate mountains
• How to draw forested hills on a top down map
• How to draw, shade, and colour an isometric mountain range
• How to draw an isometric house
• How to draw simple trees
Here's a compiled pdf of the tips (thanks to NZLemming for all the work!)
Torstan - Tips & Tricks for Mapmaking.pdf