New to map making, photoshop and basically everything - my first map attempt

[mats]

Hi all,

I started working on this map few days ago and I thought it would be best to ask for guidelines, feedback and tips from professionals before I continue This is my attempt to learn about cartography and photoshop at the same time. I'm still completely new with both and willing to hear suggestions on all fronts.

What I'm mainly concerned with is:

- is the scale acceptable for this kind of map? The bigger circle (what can be seen of it) should represent the equator so this would be, I don't know, the size of USA perhaps? Smaller circle represents the everlasting snow/ice in the north.
- is the map geographically viable? Would mountains, rivers and forests form in this manner? Especially considering the cold north?
- how do I go about drawing a wasteland in the bottom right corner? How would land transform from pastures/mountains/forests into desert? Can you recommend some good examples that could give me an idea how to draw it?

I have a ton of other questions but I'll leave those for later. Seriously though, any help would be great, I hardly know what I'm doing

Thanks upfront for any comments you might have!

M2.jpg

[ThomasR]

I like the coastlines but you could draw some less jagged areas to break the monotony. That's a nice start.

[Hai-Etlik]

Based on the shapes of your parallels, this appears to be a conic projection, but this does not seem to match up with your description of the size of the extent and the curvatures and spacing of the parallels. The only way it might, maybe make any sense is if the planet is VERY small, quite cold, and with very low axial tilt. I'm pretty sure those two solutions would conflict with each other though.

Think about it this way, the contiguous US doesn't come anywhere near EITHER the equator or the arctic circle so a map that contains both needs to be much bigger than the contiguous US on a planet that is even remotely Earthlike. Also the arctic circle should be closer to the edge of the map than to the equator unless you are doing something VERY strange with the projection. You could have a permafrost line south of the equator if your planet is very cold with a narrow band of habitable temperatures at the equator, but you would not use this conic projection centred up in the frozen wastes like this if that were the case.

Just looking at the features of the map, it feels like an even smaller area than the contiguous US, which would make all the problems worse.

If you're getting started, I'd suggest you stick with something close to Earth in terms of size, axial tilt, and climate. Then pick a region on Earth as a template in terms of size, latitude, and general climate. Then decide what your map is for. Once you have extent and purpose, you can pick an appropriate projection. For starting out, smaller is better. The smaller the area you are working with, the less you have to worry about projecting a sphere onto a flat map and the problems it causes. An island can be a good start.

[Tiluchi]

Hi Mats,

First of all, this is a great start, especially for someone new to Photoshop! I'm impressed. Not sure if I'm nearly expert enough to answer your questions, but I'll give a stab at some of them.

- is the scale acceptable for this kind of map? The bigger circle (what can be seen of it) should represent the equator so this would be, I don't know, the size of USA perhaps? Smaller circle represents the everlasting snow/ice in the north.

Those circles are awfully close together! I'm guessing your planet it somewhat colder than Earth. It's a little hard to get a good sense of scale here, as I'm used to seeing equators as straight lines in most map projections. As Hai-Etlik said, it looks like you're using some sort of equidistant conic projection, such as what we use for the US. It may be helpful for you to try sketching some sort of version of your world map (even if it's just this continent for now!) and putting it in an app like GProjector to see how this would compare to the US in size. Anyway, if that upper semicircle really is the Arctic Circle, then is it realistic to have forested areas above it? On Earth, the treeline ends well south of the Arctic Circle.

If this really is a US-size continent, then I'd recommend making your mountains somewhat more complex- if you look at a map of the US, you'll see that big mountainous areas like the Rocky Mountains are actually broken up into dozens of smaller mountain ranges rather than a single cordillera like you have here. So in an area this big, you'd almost certainly have valleys and even plains in between mountain ranges. That said, I rather like the style of mountains you have so far, though I'd recommend making them smaller and more frequent.

As for style, I like the pine trees you have (though some of them are a little fat and/or irregular), but I'd recommend drawing them smaller and having more of them (I guess that's a trend here!). It's a little more time consuming, but when they're this size they look a little awkward when I view the map at full size. I'm not really convinced by your style for deciduous forests- but that's also one of the hardest landforms to get right (in my opinion), so I don't know if I have any tips for how to improve them.

[kacey]

Great start! I really like the coastline. Keep up the good work.

[Mouse]

How would land transform from pastures/mountains/forests into desert?

Hi Mats

That's a very nice map for a first attempt.

And its also a lot of questions, so I've trimmed the quote down to the only one I think I might be able to help with.

I have no formal qualification to back up my understanding, but it would seem natural that woodland would thin out to small patches and then single isolated and rather stunted trees with increasing altitude, or as it becomes pasture or scrubland. The same I would imagine would apply to pasture becoming less healthy and more patchy as it turns into scrubland/desert. To go from forest to desert you would have to transform the forest to patchy trees on pasture, then pasture thinning out to scrub, then scrubland to desert. The distance involved would depend on the scale of the map.

A map can start to look a bit scruffy if everything is so vague, however, so a happy medium may be required?

Like I said, I have no formal qualification in climatology or ecology or anything. It just seems more natural than having a sharp line along the edge of natural growth. The only hard lines I've ever seen are where there's a dirty great big mountain range and different climates on either side of it, or made by man - particularly where forestry and farming are concerned. If your land is inhabited, it may have a few of those sharp lines, even if the mountain ranges don't affect the gradation of one ecology to the next.

Man made sharp lines tend to show more clearly with altitude, than they do with region (unless you have half an untouched desert, while the other half has been irrigated for arable farming)

Hope that helps a bit

[mats]

After my session timed out and I lost the first response here is the second, shorter one...

I like the coastlines but you could draw some less jagged areas to break the monotony. That's a nice start.

Now that you mentioned it I can also see the predictable repetitiveness in it. It's the same wherever you look.

Based on the shapes of your parallels, this appears to be a conic projection, but this does not seem to match up with your description of the size of the extent and the curvatures and spacing of the parallels. The only way it might, maybe make any sense is if the planet is VERY small, quite cold, and with very low axial tilt. I'm pretty sure those two solutions would conflict with each other though.

Think about it this way, the contiguous US doesn't come anywhere near EITHER the equator or the arctic circle so a map that contains both needs to be much bigger than the contiguous US on a planet that is even remotely Earthlike. Also the arctic circle should be closer to the edge of the map than to the equator unless you are doing something VERY strange with the projection. You could have a permafrost line south of the equator if your planet is very cold with a narrow band of habitable temperatures at the equator, but you would not use this conic projection centred up in the frozen wastes like this if that were the case.

Just looking at the features of the map, it feels like an even smaller area than the contiguous US, which would make all the problems worse.

If you're getting started, I'd suggest you stick with something close to Earth in terms of size, axial tilt, and climate. Then pick a region on Earth as a template in terms of size, latitude, and general climate. Then decide what your map is for. Once you have extent and purpose, you can pick an appropriate projection. For starting out, smaller is better. The smaller the area you are working with, the less you have to worry about projecting a sphere onto a flat map and the problems it causes. An island can be a good start.

I forgot to mention that it's supposed to be a smaller ice-age earth-like planet. The inner circle is the habitable zone, not an arctic circle. I suppose there would be "snow-line" on the southern hemisphere as well but there is (almost) no land there so I didn't bother to draw it. That's also the reason why I went with the conic projection - I figured that it would look nice if it was ring-shaped. The image below might clear things a bit...

M2full.jpg

But you are right, the features on the map and the size of the continent (considering it should cover a good part of the northern hemisphere) would suggest much smaller planet. Which is fine with me but I don't know if its viable?

I started with the whole world because I wanted to get a feeling for it before I dig into smaller, more detailed areas. This is a throw away project for me, kind of a test case to see what looks good and what makes sense.

Thanks for the feedback, that's exactly what I needed!

[mats]

Hi Mats,

First of all, this is a great start, especially for someone new to Photoshop! I'm impressed. Not sure if I'm nearly expert enough to answer your questions, but I'll give a stab at some of them.

Those circles are awfully close together! I'm guessing your planet it somewhat colder than Earth. It's a little hard to get a good sense of scale here, as I'm used to seeing equators as straight lines in most map projections. As Hai-Etlik said, it looks like you're using some sort of equidistant conic projection, such as what we use for the US. It may be helpful for you to try sketching some sort of version of your world map (even if it's just this continent for now!) and putting it in an app like GProjector to see how this would compare to the US in size. Anyway, if that upper semicircle really is the Arctic Circle, then is it realistic to have forested areas above it? On Earth, the treeline ends well south of the Arctic Circle.

If this really is a US-size continent, then I'd recommend making your mountains somewhat more complex- if you look at a map of the US, you'll see that big mountainous areas like the Rocky Mountains are actually broken up into dozens of smaller mountain ranges rather than a single cordillera like you have here. So in an area this big, you'd almost certainly have valleys and even plains in between mountain ranges. That said, I rather like the style of mountains you have so far, though I'd recommend making them smaller and more frequent.

As for style, I like the pine trees you have (though some of them are a little fat and/or irregular), but I'd recommend drawing them smaller and having more of them (I guess that's a trend here!). It's a little more time consuming, but when they're this size they look a little awkward when I view the map at full size. I'm not really convinced by your style for deciduous forests- but that's also one of the hardest landforms to get right (in my opinion), so I don't know if I have any tips for how to improve them.

Thanks for kind words I've posted a full map in the reply above to give a better perspective. You're right that it's supposed to be colder than earth. I missed the scale with mountains and forests, I see that clearly now Are there any good examples for this style maps representing real world features - that would really help me with the perspective... I know it's a basic question and I tried googling it but I don't know what are maps with this style called so I didn't have much success...

As for style - my hand really needs to get used to tablet and photoshop. The first tries were terrible and these are just barely acceptable for me. I think I'll try to make forests more circular, to give the map a more geometric feel but who knows how it'll turn out. I'm researching maps here on the forum and still searching for a good mix of what I like and what I can reproduce

Thanks for really insightful feedback!

Great start! I really like the coastline. Keep up the good work.

Thanks!

[Mouse]

I find my sessions time-out inconveniently that way if I forget to tick the "remember me" box when I log in.

[mats]

Hi Mats

That's a very nice map for a first attempt.

And its also a lot of questions, so I've trimmed the quote down to the only one I think I might be able to help with.

I have no formal qualification to back up my understanding, but it would seem natural that woodland would thin out to small patches and then single isolated and rather stunted trees with increasing altitude, or as it becomes pasture or scrubland. The same I would imagine would apply to pasture becoming less healthy and more patchy as it turns into scrubland/desert. To go from forest to desert you would have to transform the forest to patchy trees on pasture, then pasture thinning out to scrub, then scrubland to desert. The distance involved would depend on the scale of the map.

A map can start to look a bit scruffy if everything is so vague, however, so a happy medium may be required?

Like I said, I have no formal qualification in climatology or ecology or anything. It just seems more natural than having a sharp line along the edge of natural growth. The only hard lines I've ever seen are where there's a dirty great big mountain range and different climates on either side of it, or made by man - particularly where forestry and farming are concerned. If your land is inhabited, it may have a few of those sharp lines, even if the mountain ranges don't affect the gradation of one ecology to the next.

Man made sharp lines tend to show more clearly with altitude, than they do with region (unless you have half an untouched desert, while the other half has been irrigated for arable farming)

Hope that helps a bit

Thanks! I was hoping someone would touch this subject because I'm completely lost. This makes perfect sense and really helps a lot! Any good examples where this was done nicely on a black and white map like this? I don't even have an idea how to draw a desert? Putting dots down seems kind of vague. I definitely need to research more maps

Thanks again to all, you're really helpful and I appreciate it a lot!