Making a map from scratch

[Sharpes]

Okay, so what began as a question about water textures has turned into a bit of a learning exercise about starting a map from scratch. Any help or suggestions (or helpful critiques!) along the way would be most appreciative.

I had all these mapmaking tips from here and elsewhere but can't seem to find them anymore so I'm re-learning a lot of what's involved in making a map from scratch. I'm using Photoshop CS5 though my understanding of it is pretty sketchy to say the least. Perhaps by working on this little map (see below) I might pick up some good tips from others which will give me some confidence in experimenting with more complex processes in other projects.


Original question was:
I want to create a simple map with some basic colours. I see a few maps here have this lovely blue texture for the water. This is probably really simple to do but the steps involved seem to have been lost on me. :S There's probably a tutorial for this somewhere so apologies if I'm asking something that's been covered before.

So, I was wondering...how do I create this effect if I'm making a map from scratch using Photoshop? (I'm using CS5) Is it just a parchment texture with various adjustment layers?

Thanks!


Latest wip:
example 5 with land mass.jpg

[Chick]

Hi Sharpes,

Start with one or more texture layers that you like, and use blend modes to mush them together until you get the texture look you want.

You can find all kinds of textures on the web to use, or make your own using things like Filter/Render/Clouds or some of the available patterns.

Put a color layer above those and blend it in with either hue or color blend mode and then adjust the color on that layer until you get the color look you want.

[Sharpes]

Thanks, Chick. This is what I managed to come up with from your suggestion.

example 3.jpg

I guess the next stage is to figure out how to manipulate the texture layer I used for the water so as to show various depths of water (or other things like reefs, waves etc)?

[Chick]

Wow, that's a really nice water texture! Great job!

If you want to show the shallows near the land, one good trick is to put a Blending Option>Inner Glow on the edge of the water (or Outer Glow on the edge of the land), with a lighter shade of the same blue.

[Sharpes]

Thanks! Though I think it's the texture I got from the net that deserves credit. I just picked a random blue to go on top of it.

So, I tried your suggestion of the outer glow (which turned out nicely!). I also discovered I could alter the texture with a combination of dodge and burn with the colour blend still active to guide me along. Not sure if this is the proper way of going about it but it was fun experimenting with nonetheless. Added some additional islands to my random blob to see if I could get some variation in depth between larger isles. So this is what I've come up with so far:

example 4.jpg

There's also a little bit of experimenting with the blur tool in the bottom left corner, though I might have trouble getting a desired ocean movement if I kept at it over a larger area since the tool tends to be a little erratic...

[Chick]

Now you're cooking Do the same thing with the land ... get a grassland texture made and put a light brown or dark green inner glow on the land edge.

[Midgardsormr]

That dodge and burn approach was actually what I was about to suggest. Looks nice!

Try this: Put a layer filled with 50% gray over your water, then set its blend mode to Overlay. Then use a large, very soft brush on that layer to do some burning to push some areas down deeper. By doing it on the overlay layer, you preserve the nice details you created in your main water layer, but the new depth painting is non-destructive. If you want more detail, gradually step down your brush size, and possibly vary the hardness. You could also blend in a Clouds layer (filter > render > clouds) to get some additional random break-up in there.

[Sharpes]

Hmm, maybe I should change the title to "Help me make your own map" This is actually quite fun though and I'm (re)learning some good mapmaking processes.

(Actually, I just realised that my thread is in the wrong area. Oops! Might have to get a mod to move it to the region map area...)

Chick & Midgardsormr - I will have a go at both of your suggestions and see what I can come up with over the weekend.

[Sharpes]

Okay, this is what I've managed to come up with. Included the inner glow, redid the landmass texture from scratch and added some grassland. Not sure I did a good enough job with what you suggested Midgardsormr.

example 5 with land mass.jpg

What should I do next? Fix up some more of the coast? Mountains? Rivers?

[Chick]

That's starting to look much better. The land looks like grassland and the water looks like ocean The coastlines even look like coastlines, although you could roughen them up a lot by adding small bays and peninsulas.