Your labels are what really stand out to me. I'm torn because I like nice clear labels, but your method is so unobtrusive that it invites the viewer in and you don't even notice the labels until you are really looking around. Dare I say, its a seductive technique.
I love the effect that looks like an oil paint texture, how did you achieve that? It's a unique and very effective style, I love it.
My only criticism is the text is quite hard to read.
Response
Thanks again for all the feedback and questions and criticism.
To answer some of the questions that popped up:
1. The maps purpose is solely out of the joy of world building and further advancing my skills with photoshop, as well as creating a home-brew world for my private game of D&D.
2. The technique I use could best be described as photo-bashing. Because I used probably around 150 real world satellite images and around 20 to 35 different textures and concept art brushes to create the look and feel of this map.
I spend around 15 hours scavenging the web for the best fitting satellite recources and images. Then I spend around 25+ hours in photoshop alone to Frankenstein all these bits and pieces together (where most of the time each individual layer has around 3 to 4 additional color blending, speed paint and concept art brushes applied to it).
The Iconography is clearly a homage to the Elders Scrolls Series and medieval Europe. But done with a more personal twist.
The readability of the fonts is quite good in the original size (40x60 cm), but due to file size and resolution limitations here I had to resize the whole map down to around 25% and reduce the dpi to 74.
The final look is a combination of some Highpass Filters, the actual "oil painting filter" from CC2020 and some tweaks within the layer visibility and blending settings.
I hope I have answered all questions so far
And thanks again for all the kind words, they are highly appreciated.
Let's find out!
Thanks for the link!
This map blows me away. I'm fairly early on in the process of working on a map myself and when I saw this I almost wanted to scrap it and learn how to photo bash like this from scratch!
Oh Thank you - but don't stop one creative process for another.
Learn different techniques and don't be afraid to combine them.
As part of my creative process and journey I already created and recreated this map 5 times so far. (Hexmap, Hand-drawn, 1st PS-Version, Vector-baed Topography map and now this Version)
The next time I rework or refine this map I want to use 3D imagery and tools like Blender or Cinema 4D - to really enhance the overall realistic look and the feeling of depth and textures.
That's a great map and I like the style for the labels. The only thing I would suggest is maybe adding a heightmap under the mountains and set the layer above to multiply (or something like that).
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