Personally, I like the outer glow - maybe shrink it just a little bit.
Just a quick look at the map being created for my friend's campaign setting. We're debating the use of the outer glow around the names. Mountains of course were done using Pasis' technique. The continental outlines were a fluke that just worked out once we deleted all the extra crap that was there after we used difference clouds a few thousand times.
Edit: Wow, I can't believe what a half day of work can do to a map. That's such a huge difference when you look at them side by side. Thanks for the suggestions everyone!
Last edited by NymTevlyn; 03-28-2009 at 12:18 AM. Reason: Added near-final map for comparison
Personally, I like the outer glow - maybe shrink it just a little bit.
My Finished Maps | My Challenge Maps | Still poking around occasionally...
Unless otherwise stated by me in the post, all work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
That was a 2px outer glow. I'll try 1px. What about the thoughts on the drop shadows on the clouds beneath the skylands? This is a world where the continents drift in the air.
Try to make the dropshadow stronger, and reduce the offset a little. Had you not said it was continents floating in air, I'd surely have missed it completely.
The dropshadow was low to try and mimic the diffusion of light in the atmosphere. Like when a cloud passes over it doesn't blacken the ground completely. I'll try a little stronger though.
Last edited by NymTevlyn; 03-27-2009 at 11:01 AM.
I'd also suggest bumping up the drop shadows, but make sure they only appear on the clouds - otherwise what are the shadow's being cast upon? It may well be worth increasing the number of clouds and desaturating it a bit. Right now it looks a lot like water. If it were less blue and more obviously cloudy it would help to dispel this first impression.
I'd also suggest blurring the drop shadow a bit - due to precisely the atmospheric diffusion you mention.
Also, don't forget things tend to move toward a bluish tone when viewed from above - something that served me well on my Magus Aerie map.
There are some really good tutorials out their on making realistic clouds - nothing wrong with what you have currently, just something to consider
My Finished Maps | My Challenge Maps | Still poking around occasionally...
Unless otherwise stated by me in the post, all work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
I'm not good enough in photoshop to just show the shadows on the clouds. I'll fiddle around with the clouds and try some other styles.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8J11qdE4GFM
Really nice clouds!
Last edited by NymTevlyn; 03-27-2009 at 11:34 AM.
Have you got the clouds on a transparent layer? If so you should be able to do the following.
1. Add a layer mask to the drop shadow layer and make it totally black
2. Select all on your clouds layer and paste it on to your drop shadow mask.
That should do it. This is for gimp, but I think the steps are the same for photoshop.
Equally, I think photoshop has layer blending modes and allows you to set one layer to modify another? If so, you can set the drop shadow layer blending mode to darken only, and apply it to your clouds layer.