Drawing a Map in Photoshop Essay Example For Students

Drawing a Map in Photoshop Essay Get the proportions Of landmass to ocean roughly in your mind (our earth is water, think) and take some measurements if you want to by using a piece of string then holding he string up to a ruler. For this tutorial Im going to do a small continent (2000 X 2000). 1. To get maximum detail set my resolution way up there at 300-600. The size of the image will give us 1 pixel 1 mile thus 2000 miles high and wide and the resolution is only for print purposes. Could do this at 100 dip but if I printed the map it would be larger and then most printers cannot handle much beyond 300 dip so if you intend to print your map then go with 300 dip. If your system cannot handle these dimensions without chugging its guts out then cut the size in half, this will give you 1 pixel = 2 miles, still not too shabby, eh? Four system can handle this then try a higher image size, this will give you 1 pixel = h mile, or mile or whatever. Or try doing a full earth (the earth is roughly 25,000 miles in circumference around the equator and slightly less from pole to pole so it wouldnt roll very well due to this beer-belly hut for simplicitys sake I use 12,500 so use 25,XX 12,500). This image size really makes my PC chug so I just make a bunch of continents and at the end make one big composition, 2. Background information: look at some topography maps or Google earth maps of mountain ranges, swamps, beaches, deserts, rivers, lakes, forests, canyons, arctic poles, or any other geologic phenomena you want in your map so that you have an idea of what to shoot for (take a look at those volcanoes in Hawaii). Personally, use Flasher. Mom because the Google maps are too distorted, splotchy, and incomplete and it takes up a huge amount Of memory on my computer. 3. Initial thoughts: cold near the poles, hot around the equator so I plan to eventually have a gradient from White at top to gray to brownish (tundra) to ochre-green (plains) to green to dark green (tropics) to pale yellow-orange (deserts). You could put your poles around the equator if your planet is tilted ever on its side but deviations too far from earth-like are too hard to wrap your brain around, even fo r fantasy His is true for sunrise as well and what most people dont realize is that by putting in more than one moon the tides get totally messed up as well as how long a day is and a year (without our single moon our days would he much shorter and our year so the life forms on our planet would be totally different). 4 So lets get to work then Foreground black, background white, Filter > render > clouds. 5. [pick 6. Duplicate this layer. 7. Create a new layer and Edit > fill = gray. Set the layers mode to hard mix ND change the name to base. 8. The hard mix will change the look of things to straight black and white with no grays. Click back on the background copy layer and grab a large brush (not pencil) with an opacity of 10%. I use the various big airbrushes. With white I brush in extra land and with black I brush in extra water. What you van to keep in mind is that we do not want any land near any edge Of the screen by at least 50-100 pixels. Land that goes Off the side Will never get completed since the clouds layer doesnt extend beyond the edge so if we were to make a new image With new clouds they would never line up (unless you eve certain third party plug-ins that make tile-able clouds). If you want icecaps across the top or bottom then that is fine but make sure to leave 50-100 pixels between the icecap and major landmasses. If you have some islands somewhere you dont want them use the black, if you want to put some in then use the white. Another thing to keep in mind is to not have the islands and such create a square of landmasses so be sure to try to make things random and irregular. Lastly, cover up some lakes since at this scale not too many would really be visible But that is pure preference. When happy, copy the background copy are, click on the base layer and merge down. . 10. Select > Color range black. Set the dizziness slider up to 200. Create a new layer, Select > Modify > Expand = l, use the paint bucket tool to fill in the selection of the ocean. Deselect then merge down. What this step does is to remove a whole boatload of extraneous white pixels around our landmasses that can be very tedious and time consuming to paint over. However, it also puts s ome regularity and blockings into our coasts so lets fix that. I l. Filter> Pixel > Crystallize = 6. Filter > Pixel > Crystallize = 3. Images Adjustments Brightness/Contrast = set the contrast up to OIC. Now our coasts are all irregular again. 12. Next zoom in to at least 200% and start checking our coastlines and islands to make sure that there are not any lakes too close to the ocean because natural erosion would have taken care of this and moved the ocean in to fill this area creating a bay. Use a S pixel hard round pencil and blot out the lakes and Evoke the coast but avoid over-tweaking the coast or else you will lose bays and harbors and hooks (like Massachusetts) and boot-heels (like Italy). Else White to add land and black to add water. What do is zoom to 200 or 300% and start in the top left corner and scan across, making tweaks as I go, and when get to the other side move down and scan back across until have reached the bottom. Also look for long straight lines or large right angles and round these off. Be careful to make sure you leave a few large lakes and dont cover over all of the little lakes, especially if you want some place like Minnesota land of 10,000 lakes. Where you know there Will be desert or plains then go ahead and cover these areas pretty well but not completely since lakes in the desert will act as oases ND all lakes visible at this resolution are at least I mile so there will likely be a village to some sort nearby (it youre using some other resolution then use your judgment), This process can take a while but if youre going to do it, you might as well do it right This is also the time to add any unique features like a skull island or an island in a lake for which to place a magnificent castle. Dont do any major terra forming but instead tweak what is already there. 13. Copy this layer (base copy) then go back and fill in all of the lakes. 14 Select > color range (use black tit fuzziness 200), hit delete, then deselect and hide the layer. Click on the base layer and repeat then hide the base layer as well. IS. Click on the Background copy layer and rename it to ocean. 16. Copy this layer then rename the new layer to reef. 17. Filter> render > difference clouds. Repeat. 18. Copy the layer and rename it wills. 19. Copy the hills layer and rename it to mountains. 20 21. You may think that now is the time to add any canyons, escarpments, meteor craters, volcanoes, or Other such phenomena but do not. Do these things on other layers so Ill cover this in a separate mini tutorial or outlet as all it. If youve run through this tutorial numerous times and are comfortable with then go ahead and feel free to experiment. Use small pencils for cracks and canyons and small brushes for adding erosion in the mountains. 22. Filter render lighting effects, What we have is one large spotlight covering the whole image coming in from the lower right (in the northern hemisphere the sun passes somewhat to the south His is important to my main job as a stained glass artist so we need to know where the sun is in relation to a window). Settings are: intensity 25, focus 100, gloss -100, material 100, exposure O, ambiance 8, texture channel is red, white is high is checked, and height is set to 100. 23. Epic] 24. Life set the intensity, exposure, or ambiance too high everyth ing becomes brighter and therefore higher and looks more like a plateau and if we set them too low our mountains become more like hills. Here is what we have. 25. 26. Lets do the hills now so hide the mountains layer and click on the hills layer. Filter > noise > add noise = 5%, Gaussian, monochromatic. We are going to run a lighting effects filter in the next step and this added noise will give us lots and tots of little hills (in French little hills translates to petite cotes or something like that ? Im a ill rusty on my French but this is where we get the word petticoat). 27. Next we are going to do another lighting effects but for some reason Photos randomly breaks during lighting effects so save your document now Just in case. 8. Filter > renders lighting effects. What we have here are 5 Omni lights, one in the center and one in each corner, the settings are the same for all: intensity 6, gloss -100, material 100, exposure O, ambiance 8, texture channel is red, white is high is checked and height is 100. This gives our land a little bumpiness and looks like any other realistic stone tutorial out there. 29. [pick 30. Hide the hills layer and c lick on the ocean layer. Copy it and then rename the new layer to land. Move the land layer up to just below the hills layer and then hit CTR-f. This runs the same lighting effects filter as in step 27. 31. Hide the land layer and click on the reef layer, Hit CTR-foot run the same lighting effects then click on the land layer. 32. Control-click on the base layer (in the layer palette) then Select > Inverse then hit delete then deselect. We now have our main landmasses all textured up and ready to live. NOTE: using Photos CSS and later versions youll have to CTR-click on the thumbnail image in the layer palette rather than just the layer itself so remember this for later on. B 33. So lets bring this world to life. Add a layer style, this consists of a gradient overlay reversed, mode is hard light, opacity is 100%, style is linear aligned with layer, angle is 90, scale is 100% The colors in the gradient are as follows: Color I at is pure white PAYOFF (rug 255, 255, 255), color 2 at is a green ochre AAA (art 85, 90, 65), color 3 at is a darker green ochre 293415 (art 41, 52, 21), lour 4 at 55% is a dark green 242810 (rug 36, 40, 16), color 5 at 65% is a darker green COCCYX (rug 18, 28, 3), color 6 at 70% is a very dark green ? IDIOTIC (rug 13, 21, 1), color 7 at is a sage green 383817 (rug 56, 59, 23), color 8 at is a light taupe Dacron (rug 218, 192, 148) and color 9 at Did% is a creamy FOE (rug 240, 230, 190). There is also an outer glow: mode is screen, opacity is 25%, noise is C, color is light blue chug (rug 64, 200, 255), technique is softer, spread is O, size is 35, contour is normal (linear), range is 50%, jitter is O. Much better now, eh? 34. 7. Here is what have so far. 38. 39. If you want your desert at the top (when doing a southern hemisphere continent), then nucleic the reverse on the gradient on the land layer. Pay no attention to that blue ring it will be useful later but for now lets give our whales a place to swim. 40. Click on the ocean layer and hide the ret layer. Image > adjustments > gradient map. Color I at is a dark bluish-teal ? COCOAS (rug O, 10, 50), color 2 at is a grayish blue-teal 32528C (rug 50, 82, 140), color 3 at is a grayish teal IF-OFF (rug 79, 128, 159), and color 4 at is an aqua CODED (rug 128, 188, 205). Depending on your monitors gamma, white point or color setup these colors might seem awkward 50 change them to suit yourself, What we see here is pretty cool. Thats why we paid no attention to that blue ring in the previous step, it gives us a hint of shallow sea around the land. 41. 42. Control-click on the base layer. Selects modify > expand = 40. Selects feather = 40. Select > inverse. Create a new layer and change the foreground color to a dark blue, use IOWA (rug O, 10, 50). Fill, deselect, and rename the layer to cover. Demonstration Lesson Plan in Drawing EssayThis step combines with our mountains hard light mode and color overlay to really put more into Mirror or gives USA place to put the Draw. This step also tends to mess up the desert mountains so I erase there. Set the layer at 33% opacity. Lastly, add a layer style of bevel/emboss: emboss, chisel soft, up, size of 3, highlight mode is color dodge at opacity, and shadow mode is color burn at opacity. 61. It youre happy so tar, its now time to erase on the hills layer. Usually just follow the same process as in the previous step but this time do the expansion 3 times. This results in small hills graduating into big hills, which then grow into mountains. Our land layer did get a lighting effects filter so it should have some suture as well. Now this looks much more natural with crunch than without. You might want to play around with the layer blending mode, opacity, or layer styles on the crunch layer. 62. [pick 63, Now were going to add in a continental shelf to tweak our green reefs. Click on the reef layer and copy it. Rename it to shelf, set the blend mode back to normal and change the opacity to 100%. Image > adjustments > desperate. Change the mode to color dodge and the opacity to 80%. Control-click on the base copy layer and select > modify > expand = 10 then select > feather = 10. Select inverse then delete and deselect. This lightens up the heavy greenish feel Of the reef but for those Who feel the need to micromanage you can go and erase on the reef layer with small brushes. If you like you can add a layer style of bevel/emboss With either an emboss or outer bevel that is set to chisel soft This will give you that sloping edge that you commonly see in some topographical maps but in order to get that then make sure to not feather before deleting. I dont use the bevel but I have experimented with and got some fairly decent results but nothing that knocked my socks off. 64. 65. My skull lake in the desert looks kind of dark so lets fix that. Click on the lakes layer and create a new layer and rename it to Oh lake adjust. Control- click on the base layer, then use the eyedropper tool to pick up some color from around our reefs and airbrush some lighter color that makes the desert lake look more suitable. This should also be done in permafrost areas. 66, Next we need to rough up our ocean a bit so copy the background layer and rename it to waves, Move it to the very top of the stack and reset the colors to black and white. Filter > sketch bas-relief as before. Select > color range = black with a fuzziness of 1 75 then delete and deselect. Control-click on the base copy layer then select > modify > expand = 20, select > feather = 20, delete and deselect. Set the fill to 0% and add a layer style of color overlay off dark teal color code 001420 (rug O, 20, 32). This gives us a hint of waves and a bit of greenish tint to the oceans. Lastly, move this layer directly under the land layer _ 67. 68. We can call this done for now if we want and start putting in other things like borders and cities. If youre going to forego the rivers then skip ahead to Step 80. The reason we leave the base layer is so that when we start drawing borders, e dont want to draw them into the sea or cover up lakes so we can always CTR- click on the base layer to load its selection. 69. Layoffs going on with rivers let me warn hay. They are a huge, major, colossal pain in the buttock region. 70. Try to avoid the urge to start putting in every river as will often put in way too many and this will take hours upon hours. Keep in mind our image size/scale here of 1 pixel = 1 mile. Most rivers would not even be visible (like 99% of them), Only a handful of our rivers would be seen (Amazon, Nile, Mississippi, Yanking). Notice anything about these? One per continent roughly. You may think that meeting like the Danube or the Missouri would be seen but I live in SST. Louis and the Missouri is only about mile wide thus not visible at this resolution. As tort most to the European rivers, cant really tell trot the pictures Eve seen but accounting for the scale of buildings most seem about as wide as the Missouri. Of course the Amazon is about 3 miles wide near the delta but the rest of it isnt nearly as wide, Then again, floods happen and its your world so do what you like but remember if you have a 5 mile wide river (5 pixels) then its branches are going to be big as well, like 3 miles, and further branches are going to be I mile o you will end up laying in rivers for days and days (trust me Ive been there). 71 If you absolutely want some rivers, heres how we do it. First, click on the mountains layer then control-click the base layer (this will keep us from drawing out into the ocean), make a new layer and rename it Use a fat pencil (that you can see when zoomed out) to layout some basic shapes while trying to follow the lay Of the land. Else our same dark teal OIC 920 (rug O, 25, 32). Gore this tutorial am just going to do one river system as I dont want to sit here for the next few hours drawing squiggly lines. 72. 73. Create a new layer and rename it to rivers, then use a tiny pencil of 1 pixel (since I pixel = I mile you only need major rivers and make sure the brush tip spacing is set as low as possible Its on the brushes tab in the first subsume there) and zoom in to 200 or 300%. When you start drawing, hide the layout layer so it doesnt block your view and unhidden it if you get lost (erase the layout river as you go along), try to follow the darker areas since these are lower and more lush. If you want to make your job here easier then mark out some continental divides that will force rivers on the east to all empty into an eastern sea (for example). Start with the longest river first since other rivers will feed into it and use some logic to figure out which rivers belong tied to the main river and which rivers belong on their own with their own tributaries, start with the delta and work upstream a ways then switch to the mountains and work downstream a ways eventually tying them together, dont add too many tributaries up near the mountains, since were working with 1 pixel = 1 mile most tributaries wouldnt be visible as theyre usually just streams and creeks and such feeding down to the plains where they merge to form larger and larger branches. Also try to tie in some of the lakes, especially the large ones. 4_ Try to follow the lay of the land because all of those awesome hills will have rivers flow between them and not over them, try to think of the path of least resistance cue thats What water does from high to low. Try to make the rivers meander a lot (think snake-like as straight rivers dont look real, the closer you zoom in the better it Will kick but the longer it will take), put at least a fork or 2 in the river, if you want something like the Amazon use a 2 or 3 pixel pencil from the delta up to the first fork, veers generally flow toward the equator due to the earths spin but there are exceptions, just dont arena too many exceptions unless the coast is close, add deltas and swamp waters. 5. [pick 76. Hey, well headway know, it sorts looks like my home town right there where all those rivers meet (he he) with a big river that flows into a swampy delta just waiting for a hurricane. When finally done, delete the layout layer. 77. To make the rivers pop and blend in with the ocean along the continental shelf and lakes, zoom in and use the eyedropper to pick up a color along the shelf, use large airbrush with a flow of 100%, then control-click on the rivers layer. Make a new layer named deltas then single click to spray the area around where the river and ocean meet and do this around lakes and such too. Deselect when done. If you dont like the color of your rivers then apply a layer style of color overlay, gradient overlay, or change the blending options, 78, [pick 79. If you want some additional lakes then grab one of your favorite cloud brushes but make sure you are in pencil mode and use the dark teal and make a new layer and rename it more lakes. Make a click and you have a lake but now o have to change to a new clouds brush for a new lake or else they all look the same. If you dont have any clouds brushes then use the 1 pixel pencil and sketch some in by hand. 80 As much as burned you about avoiding rivers this next warning is ten times more important. DO NOT try to put in some lush river valleys! Hue yet to find a way to do this that isnt absolutely hideous or absolutely invisible. You can try playing with an outer glow, a drop shadow, a gradient stroke, bevel and emboss, an airbrush, stroking a path, Gaussian blurring, blending modes, or anything else. The bottom line is this: what looks DOD at 100% zoom looks like a giant gash when zoomed out and What looks good zoomed out is invisible at 100% zoom. This why I told you to follow the lay of the land and go through dark areas. The problem with layer styles is that they go out into the ocean as well. 81. If you forgot to add volcanoes or canyons or the like you can always delete everything between the land layer and the base layer and start over by copying the background and putting it above the land layer and repeating the necessary steps. Yes, you do have to redo the rivers and lakes and deltas because when we render the difference clouds the mountains ill be in new places (remember what I said about not putting in rivers? ). The other option is to create a new document of any size but with the same resolution, make your fancy geology (clouds, noise, difference clouds, difference clouds, airbrush tweaks, delete the black colors), render the lighting effects, cut it out and then paste above the mountains layer, erase or smudge any sharp edges, then merge it down onto the mountains layer. This is also handy if your mountain ranges look kind of skinny and wimpy, we make more mountains and paste me in and therefore bulk up our ranges. 82. As far as beaches are unconcerned, dont try to put me in, it just outlines everything and since 1 pixel = I mile any beach would be at least I mile wide which is freaking huge, seriously, if you have never been to a beach the largest I have seen are a few hundred yards at most at low tide, this is Why we have the continental shelf (to hint at beaches); if you are doing something where the scale of 1 pixel = 10 feet then it might be Okay but at a scale Of I pixel = 100 feet you get back to that outlined kick again, not to mention that you have to either erase the beaches up in the cold areas or apply a gradient overlay of brown or gray. 3. For those of a mind to do some last minute terra forming by putting islands into the lakes, use the 1 pixel pencil on the land layer. 84.