The Road to Tiamis

[Mouse]

Thanks Damonjynx

I haven't found the GIMP glow button yet, but I don't suppose its as simple as that, is it

EDIT: The colouring in a pencil sketch is pretty nice in GIMP, but adding a glow to the text is definitely a CC3 job. The amount of trouble you have to go through to get anything like it in GIMP is just the pits, and then it isn't adjustable. You're stuck with what you get unless you do it all over again each time you change your mind about the amount of glow you have. I'm beginning to understand why non CC3 users seem to find doing text effects such a bind!

[Straf]

/me whispers "what is stroke/glow thingies?"

[Mouse]

Oh bless!

Here Straf - this is what a black CC3 glow effect looks like on white text (this is only a test plate I did 5 minutes ago to check that CC3 text was the way to go)



The bitmap in the background is the raw scan file, and the hard black and white of the text looks wrong with it in this example (its also clearly the wrong font for the job as well), but when I do the final version of the map I will increase the contrast of the graphite drawing and colour it in GIMP before I bring it into CC3 for the text to be added.

I've watched a couple of videos on how to do a glow of this kind in GIMP on YouTube and quite frankly its a lot of messing around - especially since all you have to do in CC3 is simply click a button to add the effect and its done and dusted

This is going to be a 3 way hybrid map - Hand drawn in graphite, contrast adjusted and coloured in GIMP, and text added in CC3

EDIT: I believe the PS users would call the black shading a 'stroke'. I'm really not sure that its called anything in GIMP, because GIMP doesn't seem to know how to do this without 3 additional layers, a mask, and various degrees of Gaussian blur. Added to that the GIMP 'glow' is not adjustable, so you have to do it all over again if you change your mind about the width and intensity of the glow.

[Mouse]

Ok. This is NOT the finished article. The drawing isn't finished, the colouring isn't done, the scan is imperfect, and the compass may need a bit more work (the border too), but while I had it 'on the bench' in CC3 (working on the text) I hit on a different look that I rather liked

[Tonnichiwa]

This is awesome mouse! It is darker than I thought it would be though. But I like it!

[Mouse]

Thanks Tonnichiwa

Its dark because I wanted it to be dark in its b/w form. I imported the raw scan into CC3, laid a sheet of Solid Black 30 over it, applied a linear burn blend mode to the Solid Black sheet, then added the text in white with a black glow effect.

All done in 3 sheets, including the Bitmap sheet with the scan on it.

Though its probably down to lack of experience with GIMP, I just couldn't get the text to work with a proper glow until I put it in CC3!

[kacey]

In PhotoShop an outer glow is an outer glow, and you can acheive it in several ways. If you double click a layer in the layer panel a box opens where you can add outer glow, inner glow, bevel, and emboss effects and so on, there are several options, but I won't name them all. I wasn't sure about gimp so I did a quick search, and there are plenty of YouTube videos on how to add a plug in to gimp to get PhotoShop like layer styles. A quick Google search should give you plenty of information on the subject, just type in how to get PhotoShop layer styles in gimp.

And by the way, the drawing looks fantastic, and I like the dark effect, but I would lighten the lights a tad if I were you. In PhotoShop you can use levels to adjust the brightness, and darkness of light, dark, and mid tones, it's also a good way to darken the lines on a scanned image. I'm not sure if gimp has a levels adjustment panel, but I'm sure if it doesn't theres probably a plug in for that too.

I also had some luck in gimp long ago by duplicating the text layer, and make the underneath copy white, or whatever colour you choose, and blur that layer, you might have to fiddle with how much blur, but the outside blurry edge goes out past the original text, and makes a glow, you can then adjust the opacity, and blend mode to you're liking giving you allot of control over how the glow looks, so long as the blurred text copy is underneath the original text it should just pop out from under the edges to give a glow effect. And by the way you talk about blend modes in c33 it sounds like there allot the same, I think in general across most graphics programmes the effects are the same, multiply in PhotoShop, and gimp, is the same effect as in Corel painter, so I imagine the blend modes from cc3 would be the same names in gimp.

Edit... Try to find the layer effects plugin on gimp.org
Edit #2 There's a little blurb about it here https://www.smashingmagazine.com/200...ace-photoshop/

[Mouse]

Thanks for all that Kacey

I've never used PS and I'm not likely to (for financial reasons). I don't know how to steer that software either, so adding PS attributes to GIMP would turn a horrible learning curve into a deadly one from my point of view.

Besides, if CC3 can do the job to my satisfaction on a single sheet, I'll probably save myself some time by sticking with that for now.

I've decided to make 2 versions of this map - one black and white as above, and the other one colour, using GIMP to colour the scan for the colour version before loading it into the same CC3 map file to impose the text and border.

CC3 is pretty flexible as far as blend modes go, I may play with the highlights a bit, but I'm actually quite happy with the steely look of the one I've just done. If I keep it that dark I'll probably tone down the text quite a bit in the finished map

[Voolf]

Awesome job Mouse.

[kacey]

It sounds like the newer version of cc3 is much better then the older version that I have. I've recently been thinking about upgrading, and playing around with it some more so I went over to the profantasy site the other day, and it looks like they have some promising new annuals that weren't there when I was using it. I've been seeing some really nice maps come out of it recently, some I didn't even know were made in cc3 until I saw the new styles on there site.