Quickly creating land edges you can edit in Photoshop

[Dumont]

EDIT: UPDATED TUTORIAL VIDEO! I made a new one years after the original that updates the process, makes it more intuitive, and has much better production value.


This is a quick video walkthrough to make coastlines in Photoshop that look random and realistic, while still having a level of control over the shape of your geography. I used this method when creating my map of Daxtera.



One of the frustrations I had when starting to work on projects was that the tutorials I followed would end up with something that looked good, but I had little control over the final result. This process gives you more input, even at a very detailed level.

QUICK INSTRUCTIONS:

1. With your FG/BG colors as black and white, Filter > Render > Clouds
2. Create a new layer ("Land"), fill it with black
3. Apply the Hard Mix blend mode to the Land layer
4. With a large, soft, white brush and low opacity, begin to draw on the land layer to add land mass.
5. Switch the brush to black to remove land
6. move the Clouds layer beneath it to create variants of the detail

[Olvyr]

Wow, thanks a lot! This is just what I was looking for!

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

[Anna Robinson]

This is the most underrated tutorial on here. Made making coastlines so easy! Thanks so much

[Corro]

I don't have the cloud filter, why is it so? :/

[Dumont]

Looks like you're using Photoshop LE, which doesn't have a full feature set.

[Dumont]

REVISION TO TUTORIAL THAT'S MUCH EASIER:

1. Create layer with rendered black and white clouds

2. Create new layer, fill with black, apply Hard Mix

3. Using a low opacity soft white brush, begin to draw in your continent

Drawing your continent and then blurring it later is a needless step, you can just start to rough in everything using the soft brush and then use black to revise coastlines as necessary.


I post this because I was thinking about this years after I originally posted it and as an experiment, I put together this ~5k res continent map together in about 15-20 minutes.




This will likely become a new WIP thread in the coming days!

[Dumont]

Update: I've uploaded an entirely new video for this process!

[Naima]

This video is no longer available because the uploader has closed his YouTube account.

[Dumont]

This video is no longer available because the uploader has closed his YouTube account.

Fixed! Really late last night I'd realized I'd set up the new channel wrong and had another go at it, so I've reuploaded it.