How to create satellite style mountains in photoshop?

[Koroliov8]

Hello,
I am new here, but I spent a decent amount of time looking through tutorials but still couldn't find a satisfying solution yet, so decided to ask.

I want to create a map of Europe or any other place for that matter, but with real world terrain, not random, but real, lets say real Alps or Carpathian mountains. How do I do that? Lets say I have black and white heightmap? whats next? maybe there is a tutorial for that but I have not found it yet?

Best regards,
Curious one

[Kellerica]

Hi there, and welcome to the Guild!

There are a few ways to create elevation with Photoshop. I don't know if there are any tutorials specifically teaching how to use real-world elevation data with Photoshop, but I can point you towards a couple that deal in techniques that could be adapted for such a thing.

How well do you know your way around PS in general? I can try and go into a bit more detail if you're not too familiar with the software, but here is a short version of my initial thoughts.

The first is the classic Saderan tutorial. The part you'll want to focus on are the Step 3: Land, and Step 4: Mountains. They will go a bit more into detail on how to use the Bewel and Emboss layer style to create a nice 3D effect for your terrain.
What you'd basically want to do here, is use the real world height map as the layer mask, instead of creating one from scratch.

Here is another great little tutorial buried in the Guild archieves. Again, you'll basically want to skip the height map creation part of this one and use the real world data instead, and move straight onto rendering the terrain.

I don't know how well these would serve in terms of making the map as realistic as possible, as I don't really know what your goals are. If you are wanting to represent reality as accurately as possible, it might be that Photoshop isn't really your best option here. Realistic maps are really not my wheelhouse so I could be talking right out of my arse here, but I think GIS or maybe Gaea are more what you're looking for? There also Wilbur that I know a lot of people use for elevation maps.

Hopefully someone a bit more knowledgeable sees this too! I'm strigtly a fantasy mapper, I do know my way around Photoshop pretty well at this point, but I don't know how well these would serve in terms of making maps truly realistic. If you are wanting to represent reality as accurately as possible, it might be that Photoshop isn't really your best option here. Realistic maps are really not my wheelhouse so I could be talking right out of my arse here, but I think GIS or maybe Gaea are more what you're looking for? There also Wilbur that I know a lot of people use for elevation maps.

[Koroliov8]

Hello and thank you for response!

Basically this is what I want to achieve in the end (see pictures attached).

I don't know if there are two different methods applied to achieve these results in different scale maps or the same. I want to learn how to do both.

[Turambar]

There are many approaches, but the starting point for any of them, based on what it sounds like you want to achieve, would be some real world heightmap data. Here ae a few sources off the top of my head (there are many more):


https://tangrams.github.io/heightmapper/
https://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/
https://maps-for-free.com/

[Koroliov8]

Yes, I am using tangram heightmapper. So as I mentioned before, I have heightmaps. Now I need to know those approaches

[Naima]

Yes, I am using tangram heightmapper. So as I mentioned before, I have heightmaps. Now I need to know those approaches

Download Wilbur, load the map you have in it and then use a Wilbur shader setup to set the color codes you like to have a geographic looking map , the point is to use the right color scheme ...

[Turambar]

Yes, I am using tangram heightmapper. So as I mentioned before, I have heightmaps. Now I need to know those approaches

Sorry I missed that. As Naima mentioned, one good approach would be to use Wilbur. You can do the same in other heightmap programs like Gaia (and I think in World Creator), especially if you want more of a satellite style texturing. Another approach is using custom gradients in Photoshop or Gimp, which I believe is addressed in the tutorials Kell posted. Finally, another Guild tutorial from awhile back covers the Gimp/Photoshop approach and I think includes some nice premade satellite style gradients you can use. https://www.cartographersguild.com/s...light=arsheesh

[waldronate]

It sounds like you're trying to make a collage of terrains to form a heightmap and then use that heightmap to create a shaded image. Coloring can be applied to the image by manually painting a color layer or by an additional collage of real-world imagery.

For any collage project, you'll need things to collage together, tools to do the collage, and an idea of what you want the result to look like (that last one is the hard part).

First (and by far the most important), start with a sketch that shows the basic shapes of the landforms for what you're trying to achieve (ocean, plains, mountains, etc.) This sketch is what you'll be working toward. Try to draw in any major rivers if you can because those will help to line up the terrains you pick. I say do this step first because you can do the collage with any number of materials, tools, and techniques. Here, you're interested in a digital image, so that decision will necessarily limit your choice of materials and tools.

Tooling is the second most important part of this activity because the tools will suggest what you can do. It's way easier to use Photoshop (or The GIMP or Krita or any image editor that supports multiple layers and at least 16-bit color depth) than it is to try to use Microsoft paint.

For the heightmap part, go to your favorite terrain browser (Turambar mentions several) and find areas that look roughly like what you want for individual parts. Sharp and young mountains might be something like the Alps, Sierra Nevada in California, or the Andes in South America; Old mountains might look like the Appalachians or the Urals; plains might be the Russian steppes, Southern Africa, the Pampas in South America, or the Nullarbor in Australia; forests might include any amount of green areas (lots of terrains are covered in forests). I recommend getting everything at the same zoom scale to ensure consistency of features.
When you find an area that will work for part of your map, export that area from your terrain browser as an image. Import that image into your image editing tool as a new layer. You can rotate imports to get things to line up with your sketch. Setting layer opacity to something like 60% while you are aligning things will make it easier to see where things are going (set it back to 100% after it's in place). Your goal is to roughly cover your map with overlapping images.

After the images are in place, use a soft eraser around the edges of each image to erase the hard edges and get the layers to blend together. If necessary, go find some terrain elements that will merge the idea of two chunks on your map (for example, a hard mountain range and a flat plain might benefit from some transitional hills; similarly, pasting some meandering river terrain might work for the lower reaches of a river valley). There are tools that can enforce river flow on a heightmap (Naima mentions Wilbur as an example) and may increase your plausibility of your terrain at some significant cost in processing time/

At this point, you should have a stack of grayscale images that work as a heightmap (or bump map as it's commonly called in graphics circles - yes, I know that a bump map only affects surface geometry while a heightmap is surface geometry, but close enough). I recommend exporting it as a single image and looking at it in 3D with lighting in your favorite 3D tools. Save the lighted flat grayscale image to a new file.

In your image editing tool, take the lighted image that you formed above and import it as a layer; set the blending mode to multiply. On a layer below that, paint the colors that you want on your map. On layers above that, add labels and borders and all of the frills that turn your picture into a map.

If I was unclear about any of the above (and I likely was), please feel free to ask questions.

[Koroliov8]

Thank you all for the answers, I will try it out during the weekend.
Thank you!

[PhotoUp]

Hello,
I am new here, but I spent a decent amount of time looking through tutorials but still couldn't find a satisfying solution yet, so decided to ask.

I want to create a map of Europe or any other place for that matter, but with real world terrain, not random, but real, lets say real Alps or Carpathian mountains. How do I do that? Lets say I have black and white heightmap? whats next? maybe there is a tutorial for that but I have not found it yet?

Best regards,
Curious one

Creating satellite style mountains in Photoshop can be done using a combination of several tools and techniques. Here's a step-by-step guide to help you get started:

Step 1: Create a new document
Open Photoshop and create a new document with a white background. You can set the size and resolution based on your preference.

Step 2: Draw the basic shapes
Select the Polygonal Lasso Tool from the toolbar and draw the basic shapes of the mountains. You can use a reference image to get an idea of the shape and size of the mountains.

Step 3: Add color to the mountains
Fill the mountains with a base color. You can use a light brown or gray color for this. Use the Paint Bucket Tool to fill the selected area.

Step 4: Add highlights and shadows
To add depth to the mountains, create a new layer above the base color layer and use the Brush Tool to paint highlights and shadows. Use a lighter color for the highlights and a darker color for the shadows.

Step 5: Add texture
Create a new layer and use the Clouds filter to add texture to the mountains. Go to Filter > Render > Clouds. Then, change the blending mode of the layer to Overlay.

Step 6: Add details
Add more details to the mountains by creating a new layer and using the Brush Tool to add rocks, trees, and other elements. You can also use textures from other images or photos to add more realism.

Step 7: Add a background
Finally, add a background to your image. You can use a simple gradient or add a photo of a landscape as the background.

That's it! With these steps, you can create a satellite style mountain image in Photoshop.

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Real Estate Photo Editing