[Award Winner] Using GIMP to Create an Artistic Regional RPG Map

[RobA]

Post 12: Let There be Mountains – continued

Similar to the dirt, apply a Gaussian blur and noise spread to the layer mask blend the mountains in a bit better. (Note, the Dirt layer was turned of in this image by accident)
Post12-1.png

Create a new layer called “Mountains Bump” and fill it with 50% grey, and set its mode to overlay. Now run a bump map filter, using the “mountain bump map” layer you had made a duplicate of a while back. Play with the elevation and depth to get something that look good.
Post12-2.png

To make the mountains pop a bit more, you may want to duplicate the “mountains bump layer.
Post12-3.png

This is another useful technique. Make bumpmaps on a 50% grey layer and they can be overlayed on colour below. That lets you go back and edit the colour layer without affecting the bumpmap. Since GIMP doesn't support layer effects this is one of the ways I have come up with to to keep the image editing flexible.