Greyhaven

[forgecraft]

I have been working on a new map, Grayhaven, for a fantasy game world and my first posting to the site.

I am looking for a good compass rose that I could use on the map, if anyone has some good options they could point out. I was also thinking about putting a nautical bearing line overlay over the sea areas or a map grid overlay over the entire map with latitude/longitude lines but was getting concerned that the map was getting rather busy, again suggestions would be most welcome.

I have also tried hard to think about how the weather patterns that impact Grayhaven. The storms come in from the west and dump their water as they rise over the Dragon Spine and Blackrock mountains ranges. This accounts for the fertile soils and plentiful river beds in the west all dumping their water into the Bay of Fortune and the arid and desert like climates in the east and the drier lands in the southeast.

The narrows is an interesting area, with low land areas and a very shallow sea floor. During extreme tidal conditions Grayhaven becomes connected with the mainland allowing the dangerous creatures from the mainland wildernesses to easily cross the narrows land bridge. Forcing the inhabitants of Grayhaven to build a series of walls to protect their homeland. I would have prefered a waterway, such as a river, to dump water into the fens, but that does not fit with my ideas for the area. I am thinking that the fens are fed from underground aquifirs and from the high tides that wash over the lands making the water in the fens brackish. Does this seem reasonable?

Also if anyone has some good tips for converting color maps into gray scale images that are easy to read, but still retain most of the detail,for printable handouts please let me know.

I welcome your feedback, comments, and critiques.

Thanks,
Brad

GreyhavenSmaller.png

Created in Photoshop and Illustrator.

[Bogie]

Nice map! Larger version available?

[Jalyha]

I don't know the answers, but I wanted to say your map is really gorgeous!!

[forgecraft]

Nice map! Larger version available?

Ok, played with the documents size and resolution to get it under the forums limit on image sizes.

Greyhaven.jpg

The original was created at 300 dpi for an 11" x 17" document so the clarity of the image is much higher than this one, I hope this helps.

[Salama]

Great map! Professional way to convert to B&W involves using LAB color space, lightness channel and some other stuff, but I'd go with Image -> adjustments -> Black & White in Photoshop. You can adjust the brightness of colors in that dialog separately. For example I'd bump up the blue and cyan in that map, so the land areas pop up in B&W -version. I'd tone the greens down to separate the woods, and then try to find good brightness for the brown areas so they won't mix up with mountains. Hope that helps!

[afters]

I love your village/city icons. For this style of map I'm not usually fond of rhumb lines or latitude/longitude. I feel like they work better on parchment-style or modern-style maps, but that's just a personal preference. The only slight criticism I would have is that your lakes and rivers are different colors. Your lakes are styled like the sea in color and border but the rivers are different.

[forgecraft]

Great map! Professional way to convert to B&W involves using LAB color space, lightness channel and some other stuff, but I'd go with Image -> adjustments -> Black & White in Photoshop. You can adjust the brightness of colors in that dialog separately. For example I'd bump up the blue and cyan in that map, so the land areas pop up in B&W -version. I'd tone the greens down to separate the woods, and then try to find good brightness for the brown areas so they won't mix up with mountains. Hope that helps!

Thanks will play with that to see what I can do to keep the detail while losing the color.

[forgecraft]

I love your village/city icons. For this style of map I'm not usually fond of rhumb lines or latitude/longitude. I feel like they work better on parchment-style or modern-style maps, but that's just a personal preference. The only slight criticism I would have is that your lakes and rivers are different colors. Your lakes are styled like the sea in color and border but the rivers are different.

Thanks.

Thanks for the critique. Yes the rivers were done differently and were done on a separate layer using a mid-tone color of the sea/oceans. If I gather what you are suggesting, you feel that the rivers should also use the sea/oceans shading and blended colors perhaps by erasing, or knocking out, the land colors to display the sea/ocean blended colors rather than a single color tint. My concern there would be that as the tonal qualities for rivers, using the same shading as the sea/oceans, might at times disappear against the land, but it is something I will have to check out. Can you provide an example for this so I can see what you are driving at?

[forgecraft]

Here is the final micro edit for the map.

Added a border element and a distance scale.

GreyhavenNew.jpg

[swifty]

Looks awesome, nice work!