Photoshop tutorials

[Eternalknight]

G'day,

Can anyone help me by pointing me in the direction of a good tutorial for making maps in Photoshop?

[Arravis]

I do all my maps in photoshop... its hard to really do a tutorial with it. There are ALOT of options in photoshop, any person creating a map making tutorial would simply be explaining their method of making maps. There isn't any "one" way of doing it, just like there are millions of ways of creating maps with a pencil.

Anyway, I guess my point is that it would be very difficult to do a comprehensive tutorial on it without simply teaching someone how to use photoshop (and that would be several books worth of info). I, and others here, would gladly answer specific questions on it though, thats ussually a little easier .

[Eternalknight]

G'day arravis,

I have beenn playing around, and can do an effective land, water, and forests (all from within Photoshop, not using any external source). What I am now trying to do is 'raise' land to look like hills and mountains. Any ideas?

[Arravis]

Well, I can tell you how *I* would do it, probably not the best way though:

I'd likely use the brush tool to draw the mountain, run whatever texture filter looked best (probably one matching the land), blur it slightly so it doesn't look so stark, use the burn tool to add some ridges, etc, then on a separate layer I'd use the brush tool again to make the shadow and set to layer to multiply on whatever transparency looked best.

Also, if you wanted to do mesa-style mountains (like the ones used in miniature terrain), it would be pretty simple to do with the layer options (ie: bevel & emboss).

Anyway, hopes this helps somewhat .

[crabclaw]

Eternalknight,

I spent a little over a year trying to force PhotoShop to make the quality of maps I wanted, to no avail. If you want to strictly use PhotoShop alone then try “Filter à Render à Lighting Effect” this can give a raise terrain-looking relief BUT there is no control or little control in regards to getting where I wanted mountains, valleys, how high, or how low.

My conclusion was mixed media. Sculpt the terrain by hand using physical materials THEN capture, modify, and color in PhotoShop. After 4 years now I’m still perfecting the process as I want the process for me to be – however I am moving towards a product that I am pleased with. What I have achieved distinctively is high resolution and large format scaling – all I’m doing now is prefect my style. It’s ‘extremely’ laborious but it is an obsession for me that I enjoy.

Of course, the step one is master PhotoShop inside and out – then…

Here is an example of what I’m talking about --- also on my thread “Custom made Worlds”

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/cmccann01/006.jpg

Best of Luck!

crabclaw