New to Digital Cartography? Software General Information

[Notsonoble]

Out of curosity... if I save an inkscape work as a .xcf it does realize that's a gimp file and I can open it... but it's flat... Is there a way to export it with layers?

Edit: nevermind... I seem to be able to copy objects in the clipboard from inkscape to gimp... handy.

Edit again: Or not... grrr...

[SandmanNet]

Hello everyone. These are the tools I use for map-making.

Photoshop and Illustrator (CS5) are obviously my two main weapons of choice. Illustrator is perfect for creating coastlines, walkways and paths and even house outlining. And for tapered rivers and other items that are mathematical objects even when drawing them freely.

Painter is an awesome tool with a pretty high threshold to create natural looking paintings and sketches. Photoshop has gotten increasingly better by the years, so I'm not using Painter as much as I used to.

I try not to "cheat" too much. I.e. not using drop shadow on layers, not using layer effects on a too obvious way. I can use pattern overlay to add a gritty looking feel, but the opacity is usually set very low and I'm rarely satisfied with the result. I'm the kind of guy that draws pretty much everything by hand. You can see examples in my threads and in the Myst Book Project in my signature. I do just as much drawing with pen and paper as I do with a Wacom as well, so I am pretty experienced with doing things manually

I live and die by my Wacom tablets. I have the A4 Intuos3 (looking to buy a Intuos 4 wireless now) and two Cintiq 21UX, one at home and one at work. These are amazing tools and I couldn't do anything without them.

So, that's that