• OldGuy's Tutorial on Creating Realistic Coastlines

    Our latest award winning tutorial is by OldGuy, showing how to roughen up coastlines and make them more realistic.
    This joins a number of tutorials for randomizing coastlines, provide a simple, quick method that produces some fine results. Check it out and give OldGuy a hand!
    Comments 11 Comments
    1. OldGuy's Avatar
      OldGuy -
      WooHoo!

      Thank you everyone that voted for me.

    1. Diamond's Avatar
      Diamond -
      That's a handy tut.
    1. kael.stormseeker's Avatar
      kael.stormseeker -
      OldGuy, this is Terrific!
      Great effects, simple, easy and Fun!!!!

      Pretty handy!
    1. peanut's Avatar
      peanut -
      Thank you for the help. What version of Photoshop do you use also what type of tablet interface do use?
    1. JHazen's Avatar
      JHazen -
      Because I havent posted this before. Excellent tutorial
    1. Antonymph's Avatar
      Antonymph -
      Good tutorial!
    1. mssandhu's Avatar
      mssandhu -
      As you know, this tutorial has been nicely adapted for GIMP. See:- GIMP Method
      RobA (at Cartographer’s Guild) converted this process to work with the GIMP, and I repeat the steps, as well as giving an additional step that some may find useful. RobA's steps are as follows:

      •Filter | Noise | HSV Noise (Boldness 1, Hue 0, Sat 0, Value 255).
      •Edit | Fade (Darken Only)
      •Filter | Blur |Gaussian Blur (2 or adjust to taste). *(1 will create very fine distressing and the larger the blur, the larger the effect)
      •Colors | Threshold (adjust to taste). *(I found 160 is a good start, up to 185 for a glacier coastline)
      •Fuzzy Select Tool (Threshold 0), click in black surrounding area.
      •Ctrl-I to invert the selection
      •Fill with White.

      MY MODIFICATION (in GIMP 2.:- In the last step, before filling in with white, I did SELECT > DISTORT so as to distress the shoreline even further.
    1. AtlasNerd's Avatar
      AtlasNerd -
      This really helped me fix my shorelines. Thanks for the tip.
    1. Runninghead's Avatar
      Runninghead -
      Used it, played with it, it's awesome.
      It also plays very nicely with masking techniques that partially protect any designed areas you're precious about, allowing you to preserve less roughened bits here and there. Thanks OG!
    1. Wildeman40's Avatar
      Wildeman40 -
      thank you for the tutorial!
    1. Dom de Mattos's Avatar
      Dom de Mattos -
      Thanks for the tutorial - it looks really promising. I'll let you know how I get on!