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[Jaekaido]

i need a tutorial for how to make a realistic map using photoshop cs3 and wilbur as apparently they work well together though most of the tutorials i have found use gimp. i have gimp but can't seem to use it.

question 1 is there a way to make realistic maps using only photoshop and are there any tutorials? i don't care how long it will take to make one map but i need to know before i put all my effort into this project.

question 2 is wilbur something i can use to make my map from question one look better?

question 3 are there any reasons i should not be using any of said programs?

question 4 is there an easy way to make a realistic map?

[Elterio Delgard]

I can show you a tutorial on youtube on how to HAND DRAW a map, but as it come to computer programs don't worry, alot of people here will be able to support you throughout your quest. And who knows, maybe I will myself follow in your footstep and explore computer programs. Just one question, are you planing to use a tablet?

this is one on tectonic plates which could be quite useful for your mountains and volcanos.
https://youtu.be/x_Tn66PvTn4

This is the first of a series of videos where you learn step by step how to make a fantasy world map. I learned alot by watching him twice.
https://youtu.be/p1eo-SzLCcY?list=PL...TEgEVfIIfgSNO9

[Azélor]

I think Pasis is the reference regarding realistic maps https://www.cartographersguild.com/member.php?u=4877

Indeed, this is not a popular style around here. Personally, I don't like that kind of map because it's rare to see realistic maps that are actually realistic and not an ugly patchwork of textures. It's not the easiest style to work with in my opinion.

Wilbur is a nice tool to get things going but you will need another program to finish the map, for the textures and details.
Photoshop will do. You can use Gimp or any other, they are just tools and you can do pretty much anything with them once you know how.

[Jaekaido]

well this is what i have so far and honestly the only thing i want is mountains that look good with what i have and in the right spot so here's the picture

[johnvanvliet]

mostly i am the one that is doing this type
and i use Gimp 2.10 ( and the development 2.99 version )

Wilbur but in WINE on my Linux OS ( i DO NOT!!!! use Microsoft !!!)

also i use Blender to make guided some what random textures
like this : albedo map



and this heightmap

[Hai-Etlik]

question 4 is there an easy way to make a realistic map?

No there is not.

The first problem is that you have to have a clear idea of what you even mean by "realistic", but anything that could reasonably be called "realistic" is going to require a a fair bit of specialized knowledge, time, and effort. There's also the question of how cartographically sophisticated the audience you are trying to fool into thinking the map is realistic is. There are a lot of fantasy maps that look fine to the average person, but look HORRIBLY wrong and nonsensical to anyone who knows about cartography or geography.

Do you want the content to be realistic? What is the content? What feature types (terrain, political info, transportation, weather, ley lines), what extent (How big, what latitude)?

Do you want the map to look like something prepared by a real cartographer? In the setting or not? What technology is available to your notional cartographer? What is the purpose of the map? What kind of raw data do they have? How ready are they to 'cheat' to fill in gaps?

Or by "realistic" do you mean you want to mimic an air photo or satellite orthophoto mosiac?

[Jaekaido]

thank you all for your responses sorry it has taken me so long to respond been busy. based on everything you have mentioned and asked i guess my problem is not knowing where to put the elements into my maps where they make sense so i will do more research on those things and come back when i have a more refined set of questions. once again thank you

[johnvanvliet]

i guess my problem is not knowing where to put the elements into my maps where they make sense so i will do more research on those things and come back when i have a more refined set of questions

that is the question

the image i posted above has the desert areas in some of the wrong places , still working on that issue in Blender

for the most realistic i would need to use a climate and weather model that researchers use and let them run for a week or more on my desktop
( they really need a super computer to run in a timely fashion )

but for a hand painted after you have a Height map there are some guides

i start with a height map first and work from that

find the rain shadows and highlands those are dry lands and desert areas

[Hai-Etlik]

thank you all for your responses sorry it has taken me so long to respond been busy. based on everything you have mentioned and asked i guess my problem is not knowing where to put the elements into my maps where they make sense so i will do more research on those things and come back when i have a more refined set of questions. once again thank you

Well, your exiting map doesn't seem to be accounting for the shape of the planet. To draw a map of a spherical (or approximately spherical) planet, you need to know what projection you are using, and any projection is going to have distortion. You need to understand that distortion and include it in the map otherwise you will have baked the opposite distortion into your world. Without getting this right, there isn't really a "right place" for anything because space itself is inconsistent.

Your climate also doesn't make sense as the equator should be wet rather than dry. The circulation cells of the atmosphere should be converging at the equator leading to lots of rain. That's what there are tropical rainforests. There's a bit more complexity than that as the "intertropical convergence zone" moves north and south with the seasons (this is what a "monsoon" is) and it isn't a strict circle at a particular latitude. Earth has three cells in each hemisphere, so there are tropical rainforests near the equator where the Hadley cells converge, then deserts further out where the Hadley and Ferrel cells diverge (The horse latutudes), then temperate and boreal forests where the polar and Ferrel cells converge (The polar front), and polar deserts where the polar cells diverge from themselves (The polar high). I think the number of cells is mostly a function of rotation rate, so a faster rotating planet has more cells, though think it's supposed to always an odd number per hemisphere and alsways converging at the equator and diverging at the poles. A shower rotation than Earth would give one cell such as on Venus. I'm not sure of the particular relationship. For an Earthlike planet with an Earthlike day, there should be the same three cells as Earth.

You also have the issue of overly regular fractal dimension. The amount of "crinkle" to your coastline is very, very consistent which makes it look artificial. If you look at Earth, the coastlines are vary from place to pace, and from scale to scale. This is sometimes called being "multifractal". Coastline shape is also very much driven by the same geological processes as mountain formation so you can't really draw your coastlines in any detail until you know where the mountains are going to be.

If you are really dedicated, you can work out where the tectonic plates are, what shape they are, what direction they are moving, and so on. This HAS to be done on a globe as any map will so distort things as to not be practical. It's also a complicated process because the shapes of the plates come from the directions they are moving relative to their neighbours and all of those movements are fundamentally rotations, not straight line translations. This is very hard to do right, and doing it wrong is just a good way to waste an enormous amount of time and effort convincing yourself to include things that would otherwise obviously be wrong.

Unless you are willing to learn to do that, and expend that effort, you are better off using rules of thumb like "make some big blobs of land, some of which may be connected, then put mountains along some of the edges, then draw the coastline details by looking at the coastlines near similar mountains on Earth for inspiration. You can also have significant areas of your initial "big blobs" covered by shallow seas. Hudson's Bay, The North Sea, The Bering sea, and The Baltic Sea are good examples in the modern day, but there have been much bigger ones in the past such as the Western Interior Seaway. Land away from the blobs on the other hand would tend to be small islands or occasionally larger fragments like New Zealand.

For refining your "big blobs" it would be best to do so in a projection appropriate to that blob then convert the result back to a global projection. This requires learning about appropriate local projections and how to use software able to handle arbitrary projection transformations. (Most of the easy projection software like G.Projector is one way from equidistant cylindrical to other projections) You would need to learn at least a bit of something like GDAL or QGIS to pull this off, but it makes getting the shapes right MUCH easier and the conceptual part is something you really need to know to make remotely realistic maps.