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<blockquote data-quote="JVisgaitis" data-source="post: 3337747" data-attributes="member: 4177"><p>OK so I'll do FunkBGR's map in the Photoshop style and terrainmonkey's map in the Lord of the Rings style. I just landed a huge freelance job, so we'll take this a bit at a time (hopefully one step every day or two). I'm going to start with FunkBGR's map first, since that one will be the quickest to do.</p><p></p><p>I'll start with a list of what I use and my first step. Currently I'm using Adobe Photoshop CS3 (I'm beta testing it) and Painter X (I downloaded the trial version). One thing you definitely need when doing this is a graphics tablet. I'm currently using a wireless Wacom Graphire tablet. As far as graphic programs, I'm sure you can replace Photoshop with something like GIMP or Corel Draw. I've never used either, but I hear good things.</p><p></p><p>Once I have everything together, I take the original map that the author drew and scale that up to 150 DPI and I make the file 8 inches tall and let the Photoshop tell me how wide it should be by keeping the proportions. Over top of this, I create a new layer and start drawing the land in all black.</p><p></p><p>Now there are a hundred different ways you can do this. You can do this with a bezier pen as a vector shape, a pencil brush, the lasso selection tool, or another of other ways. However, I would steer away from using the magic wand as you'll only get really pixelated looking edges and you need a solid foundation to work on.</p><p></p><p>For this example, I used a small pencil to draw the outline of the land masses and filled them in with the paint bucket. Once you have that finished, you need to create an inverse of that on a new layer for the water. This is easy. I create a new layer in Photoshop. I put my mouse over the thumbnail of the land mass and hold down the Command Key (I'm on a Mac, so sorry if these short cut keys don't translate well) and click the layer. That creates a selection of everything on that layer. I then go to Select > Inverse and it selects all the water. I choose the layer I've made for the water and fill in white with the paint bucket. When your done, you end up with this:</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center"><img src="http://www.icirclegames.com/external_images/map1.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p><p></p><p>This step took me about 5 minutes. Next time we'll start adding in some details.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Well, I'm going to do this a step at a time. As I go through the steps if you do something differently, chime in and let us know how you do it. There are hundreds of ways to do a map, and the more breadth we show the better.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="JVisgaitis, post: 3337747, member: 4177"] OK so I'll do FunkBGR's map in the Photoshop style and terrainmonkey's map in the Lord of the Rings style. I just landed a huge freelance job, so we'll take this a bit at a time (hopefully one step every day or two). I'm going to start with FunkBGR's map first, since that one will be the quickest to do. I'll start with a list of what I use and my first step. Currently I'm using Adobe Photoshop CS3 (I'm beta testing it) and Painter X (I downloaded the trial version). One thing you definitely need when doing this is a graphics tablet. I'm currently using a wireless Wacom Graphire tablet. As far as graphic programs, I'm sure you can replace Photoshop with something like GIMP or Corel Draw. I've never used either, but I hear good things. Once I have everything together, I take the original map that the author drew and scale that up to 150 DPI and I make the file 8 inches tall and let the Photoshop tell me how wide it should be by keeping the proportions. Over top of this, I create a new layer and start drawing the land in all black. Now there are a hundred different ways you can do this. You can do this with a bezier pen as a vector shape, a pencil brush, the lasso selection tool, or another of other ways. However, I would steer away from using the magic wand as you'll only get really pixelated looking edges and you need a solid foundation to work on. For this example, I used a small pencil to draw the outline of the land masses and filled them in with the paint bucket. Once you have that finished, you need to create an inverse of that on a new layer for the water. This is easy. I create a new layer in Photoshop. I put my mouse over the thumbnail of the land mass and hold down the Command Key (I'm on a Mac, so sorry if these short cut keys don't translate well) and click the layer. That creates a selection of everything on that layer. I then go to Select > Inverse and it selects all the water. I choose the layer I've made for the water and fill in white with the paint bucket. When your done, you end up with this: [center][IMG]http://www.icirclegames.com/external_images/map1.jpg[/IMG][/CENTER] This step took me about 5 minutes. Next time we'll start adding in some details. Well, I'm going to do this a step at a time. As I go through the steps if you do something differently, chime in and let us know how you do it. There are hundreds of ways to do a map, and the more breadth we show the better. [/QUOTE]
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