Reply With Quotelooks "good" but guess you can improve using more little mountains to not let it so isolated.
A good thing that always burn my mind and you got, is the sweet connection btw each mountain
General opinion on mountain brushes
I just wanted to get some critique on these mountains:
Untitled-2 copy.jpg
Just in general, good/bad/nice/ugly/awesome - and what could I improve? Anything at all really.
These are my first mountain brushes that have created, drawn by hand, scanned and fixed in PS.
The map is just a test.
looks "good" but guess you can improve using more little mountains to not let it so isolated.
A good thing that always burn my mind and you got, is the sweet connection btw each mountain
The style is nice. Very true to old maps, with the rounded summits and the shade lines.
The top line is noticeably pixelated... the rest of the lines are too but there it just makes it seem like roughed and fading pen strokes. If you can I would suggest re-scanning at a higher resolution, use greyscale instead of black&white/bitmap/threshold or whatever you did, and saving the brushes as large as you can.
There is also a large difference in line thickness between your mountains and the rest of the map (for that particular background texture, I'd change the coastlines to match the mountains). If you're going for a hand-drawn look, well, line weight is a consideration... I often use one pen for an entire map, though such consistency is more a matter of taste than necessity. To each, his own.
This map is only a quick test to see what the mountains will look like on a landscape - it took me 20 min to make it. And the names are all a lame joke. Just so you know.
Yes! I find it hard to draw smaller (and much larger) mountains, but I will definitely do that.Originally Posted by aquarits
A re-scan is on it's way, and I will draw more mountains too. And I am having trouble with how I am supposed to work with them pre-brush state. I got the size I want but as you said, I did use the threshold function. Problem is I just want the black lines, not the grey paper background - care to give me some advice on how to do it? Would greatly appreciate it.The style is nice. Very true to old maps, with the rounded summits and the shade lines.
The top line is noticeably pixelated... the rest of the lines are too but there it just makes it seem like roughed and fading pen strokes. If you can I would suggest re-scanning at a higher resolution, use greyscale instead of black&white/bitmap/threshold or whatever you did, and saving the brushes as large as you can.
There is also a large difference in line thickness between your mountains and the rest of the map (for that particular background texture, I'd change the coastlines to match the mountains). If you're going for a hand-drawn look, well, line weight is a consideration... I often use one pen for an entire map, though such consistency is more a matter of taste than necessity. To each, his own.
How about this?
mountains.jpg
I like the rough thicker lines of the pixelated one, but I figure I could just use a thicker pen drawing them. The new result is much better in general though. The mountains on the left are set to multiply, the others are just normal.
Looks pretty good, with that old 17th century maps feeling...
Yep.
- Go to Select > Color Range and click on the colors which you want to be rid of (the big areas will do, and the little eyedropper with a + lets you select more than one color). Set the Selection Preview to Black Matte (this shows everything NOT selected as Black). Adjust the Fuzziness to the point where the black lines look good and there's little/no black noise elsewhere. Click OK.
- With that selection open, go to your Masks panel and create a new pixel mask with it. Invert it. Apply it.
- If needed, use a Vibrance Adjustment Layer (clipped to layer) to desaturate any bits of color left around the edges.
- If your lines aren't dark enough for your taste, use a Levels Adjustment Layer (clipped to layer) to darken the mid-values.
- You may still have a little noise to clean up around your lines, but it does a lot. You could, beforehand or now, go to Image > Adjustments > Replace Color, drag the Lightness to 100, select a pixel of the noise you want to lighten, then adjust the Fuzziness to suit until you see what you want. Then Select > Color Range to get rid of the white noise (this may be moot if you're just making a PS brush from it where the white won't register). You could alternately erase the little bits of noise by hand, or select color range black, adjust fuzziness and then mask off the noise you don't want.
Hope that all made sense. Here's what happened to your uploaded pic from doing the above.
scan retouching to remove background colors.png
Thank you!
A possibility to create clean lines would be tracing in a vector program like Inkscape or Illustrator. This gives sharp edges if you have the right settings.
Last edited by Sapiento; 04-17-2013 at 12:37 PM.
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