How to Create Political Borders/Roads/Labels/Etc in Photoshop.

[Silverscribe]

Howdy Do,

Recently finished up a map I've been working on (following the Saderan Tutorial), gotten it to where I'm more or less happy with it and now I've reached the point of doing the political borders, adding all the roads, city/town markers, place names, etc. Unfortunately the tutorial I used to get this far doesn't cover that end of things whatsoever.

I've tried looking at a few other tutorials I could find that covered the topic, but the instructions in those all involve interacting with the various layers and such those tutorials walked you through creating, which of course my file doesn't have since I made it following a totally different tutorial.

What I'm looking for is a good way (or a link to a tutorial specifically about this, if I overlooked one somehow) to make the different coloured political borders that doesn't just look like I drunkenly dragged a magic marker around the world in the vague shape of countries. The map has a variety of biomes using different colours/textures, so I'm also looking for a good way to do the labels and markers that makes things readable regardless of the biome it's on top of.

I'll try to attach a shrunk down jpeg of the map as it is so far, if you need an idea of what I'm working with. Any assistance is appreciated! I can follow a tutorial well enough, but when it comes to trying to figure out Photoshop on my own it's like walking into a brick wall over and over, lol.

[Freodin]

My two cents...

Political borders:
"What I'm looking for is a good way [...] to make the different coloured political borders that doesn't just look like I drunkenly dragged a magic marker around the world in the vague shape of countries."

I think you shouldn't do that at all. Using two different sets of colours - one for biomes, another one for borders - will only lead to a horrible clash between these two.
Instead, you could try to do it in the way "modern" physical maps do it... use a single contrasting colour (mostly red) to just depict borders without distinguishing between seperate political entities. This would be an example of what I mean.

If you want to have a map showing the political view as well... best way to do it would be to do a seperate map. Don't try to put every possible piece of information into one map.

Labels:
I cannot see any reason why you shouldn't keep the labeling quite simple, similar as in the example map I linked to. None of the colours on your map are dark enough that a black / very dark grey label would not have enough contrast.

If that doesn't work out... if you think the contrast is not enough, or plain text just doesn't fit the style... a simple lighter outer glow effect is the easiest way to go.

[Silverscribe]

My two cents...

I think you shouldn't do that at all. Using two different sets of colours - one for biomes, another one for borders - will only lead to a horrible clash between these two.
Instead, you could try to do it in the way "modern" physical maps do it... use a single contrasting colour (mostly red) to just depict borders without distinguishing between seperate political entities.

Labels:
I cannot see any reason why you shouldn't keep the labeling quite simple, similar as in the example map I linked to. None of the colours on your map are dark enough that a black / very dark grey label would not have enough contrast.

If that doesn't work out... if you think the contrast is not enough, or plain text just doesn't fit the style... a simple lighter outer glow effect is the easiest way to go.

Sounds like good advice, Mainly what I'm looking for though is literal step by step instructions for how to do those things. Like I said, trying to figure out photoshop without something to work off of hurts my teeny tiny brain. I.E. How do I draw a border that follows the coasts/rivers/etc but then also goes where I draw it manually for borders that cross open terrain, etc. For labels I likely need to figure out the best/most easily readable way to do the whole glow effect, curve the words, etc.

[Freodin]

Sorry, can't help you with that... I am a GIMP user. I could tell you how to do this stuff in GIMP, and I know that PS is capable of doing the same. I even have a basic idea of where to look... but to give you a detailed description? Difficult.

[Josiah VE]

First of all, the map looks great!

Do you have a separate layer for the coastline? I think I could do it myself fairly easily, but I don't know what the situation with your layers is, and how to explain it...
One way you could do it is select the landmasses that you would like to add borders to on the coastline layer with the magic wand tool, then using the lasso tool deselect (hold ALT) the areas you don't want for a certain country. Now you should have the selection for one country or area that you would like to put a border around. Do "New Layer" and fill the selection with black. Put fill down to 0% and add an inner glow with the colour of your choice in the blend modes of the layer. Then do the same thing again for the next area you would like to make a border for, and so this border doesn't overlap with the other one using the magic wand tool go to the first border layer and deselect that area.
Hope that helps and makes sense, I just thought through it and wrote it down basically, if you have a question about anything just ask.

For roads, a common way is a dotted line. Take a square brush, and in brush properties (I think that's what it's called) squash it sideways, then turn the spacing larger, so it's dotted, and in Brush Dynamics make Brush angle "Direction". You could fiddle with it to make it look nicer.

For simple city icons what I often do is just use square and round brush. Take the brush and click once for a city. You could use circles as towns, squares as cities, or smaller circles as towns, bigger circles as cities... ect...
Here's a simple tutorial on Fantastic Maps to make labeling look nice: http://www.fantasticmaps.com/2013/06/simple-labeling/

Hope that was what you were wondering about.

[Silverscribe]

Thanks Josiah, will give it a shot!

[Silverscribe]

That method worked out well enough, only question left now is if there's a way to end up with a dashed line style outline for the borders, instead of the solid line?

[Josiah VE]

That method worked out well enough, only question left now is if there's a way to end up with a dashed line style outline for the borders, instead of the solid line?

I'd like to see the result!

For a dashed line take a square brush, in the brush settings make it thin and set the brush angle to "Direction"..

[OUdaveguy98]

I use maps in the classroom every day and love them. But, I think trying to fuse a biome map and political map together is mission impossible, and agree with the comments above that a color clash seems inevitable. Different map types have different purposes. You may have to settle for two maps?

On a separate note, I'm highly interested in seeing the same political border techniques as a tutorial for Illustrator if anyone has any ideas?