I'm getting better at making maps, any helpful tips for further improvement?

[HomebrewDM]

Hello, I have been building my homebrew world and created a quick map for a campaign I am running. I decided to revamp it and make it better which I believe I succeeded. I'm wondering if anyone has any helpful tips from more experienced map makers on making maps even better. Thank you.


Pyriel - Updated.jpgPyriel - OLD.jpg

[epson]

It looks good, you can definitely see that you've gotten better!
In the real world, it's rather rare for a river to split. Because in such situations one path carries more water, the erosion there is also stronger and the branch becomes larger and larger while the other branch eventually dries up.
But if you want your world to have something like that more often, that's absolutely ok, too.

[XCali]

I like the landmasses and I really enjoy your texture usage. The part that still stands out is the reuse of trees. (And don't get me wrong, it is a difficult one to figure out at times, I know personally) Anyway, if the lineart trees are going to look the same, I'd suggest start learning the dodge burn tool.

Make a LAYER above the tree color layer, FILL it with a desaturated grey color that is smack dap in the middle of spectrum, color code: 808080. Put the layer on overlay.

Why make this layer? Then you can practice dodging and burning on that later to your heart's content without messing up your color layer. If you make a mistake that you later want to fix, on the overlay later just again pick the 808080 color and paint over the part you want to change. It is as easy as that.


Tips on Dodging and burning.
Use low opacity dodging - since it is easy to overexpose on higher opacity.
Use higher opacity burning - since the dodge/burn tool's burn takes a bit more to throw shadows.

And they sometimes call this tool the noob slayer, so practice practice practice to get the blend of highlights and shadows better.

Hope this helps.

Without basic highs and lows,
Tree_Example1.jpeg

With basic highs and lows,
Tree_Example2.jpeg
ignore the texture on the ground, that is something else entirely. But on the trees, I literally did something in the lines of what I explained up above. Just used a cloudy brush and dodged and burned the Overlay layer.

Some other trees to play with. Free Asset
btw, what program do you use? If it is gimp, I can give you the brush for the trees in the .png