[Award Winner] Making a continent in photoshop

[JDragon]

Just wanted to say thanks.

Found this a few months back but just finally tried it earlier this week.

Got a cool map and it gave me a lot of ideas on how to improve what I've already been doing.

JD

[Ascension]

Glad to be of help I'd like to see what ya come up with in the future. Cheers

[bryguy]

is there any way that this could be done in GIMP?

[Steel General]

is there any way that this could be done in GIMP?

I actually did try to duplicate this in GIMP. While much of it can be duplicated, where it fails badly is the layer properties (pattern overlay, etc.)that Photoshop has that GIMP does not.

Though it may be that I just did not know GIMP well enough to duplicate - the local GIMP expert is RobA. Hopefully he can more fully answer your question.

[Ascension]

I have GIMP but am nowhere near proficient with it. Logic would intend for me to be the one to do the cross-over so that the styles could be the same however I just can't get the hang of it. I've tried but I get frustrated and confused so if someone else wants to attempt then be my guest. The first thing that comes to mind that can not be replicated is the lighting effects filter. I make heavy use of this for texturing the hills and mountains so as a substitute one could just use any of the "mountains in GIMP" tutorials. Some of the layer styles that I use could be done but in a more time consuming and laborious way but I think most of them translate in some sort of fashion.

[bryguy]

i can figure out a way to get as far as adding my own variation of the hills, but thats it

[Steel General]

I beleive there may be some GIMP plug-ins, scripts, etc. to "imitate" the lighting effects, etc. in Photoshop, but you'll need to search for them.

[bryguy]

i havent found any yet. Ill keep searching and experimenting tho. Right now im trying to get the same reef effect ascension got

[Ascension]

Ah ok the reef, now that I know where we are I can help a bit to point ya into another method of experimentation. Render up some green to blue clouds then cut em down to keep em close to the land. The layer's mode was set to normal but an additional layer on top of the reef was set to color dodge, thus lightening and brightening things. If GIMP doesn't have color dodge then just render up something lighter or use some black n white clouds as some other type of adjust, like screen or lighten or overlay or soft light. The bottom line is all about experimenting to see what you like best. I myself just went back the other night and made a whole bunch of tweaks to the tutorial based on nothing more than changing the way I did things to see what would happen and if I liked it then I added it in (I spent about 3 hours trying to create some of those cool white waves around the coast but didn't like anything).

[bryguy]

Ah ok the reef, now that I know where we are I can help a bit to point ya into another method of experimentation. Render up some green to blue clouds then cut em down to keep em close to the land. The layer's mode was set to normal but an additional layer on top of the reef was set to color dodge, thus lightening and brightening things. If GIMP doesn't have color dodge then just render up something lighter or use some black n white clouds as some other type of adjust, like screen or lighten or overlay or soft light. The bottom line is all about experimenting to see what you like best. I myself just went back the other night and made a whole bunch of tweaks to the tutorial based on nothing more than changing the way I did things to see what would happen and if I liked it then I added it in (I spent about 3 hours trying to create some of those cool white waves around the coast but didn't like anything).

uh okay......

i cant figure out what exactly it is you wanted me to do, but by playing around a bit, i managed to make an O.K. looking reef.

edit: hmm... it looked slightly brighter on GIMP...