Over world Map / I stink at Photoshop

[clmckay]

Hi,

I know a few of you are really good at Photoshop. Can you give me some hints at smoothing and matching textures?

I've been working on an over world map for HQ. (I dunno why, boredom maybe). I found an awesome Warhammer Map at gitzmansgallery.com it's the "Super huge detailed" map. I guess I'm some sort of crazy Completionist by nature, so I've been attempting to add the missing land masses. I've actually finished the entire southlands continent. The problem is...it looks good, considering I added it, but is pretty pathetic compared to the work of the fellow who made the map. I have chunky and misaligned textures, that are passable, but not up to the quality of the original.

So that bring me back to the original question, is there any helpful tips that you know to help mesh textures nicely? I'm hoping I'm just too dumb to figure out how to use the proper tool in Photoshop.

[The Road Warrior]

I'm not sure if this will be any help to you but I actually bookmarked this tutorial on tile creation myself a few weeks ago. You should be able to apply the same techniques when creating your map.

http://www.cartographersguild.com/tutorials-how/27077-battlemaps-photoshop.html

[clmckay]

Thanks! I'll give it a read over, it looks pretty helpful!

[StratosVX]

You could try highlighting the layers, then go into the "Edit" menu and select "Auto-Blend Layer." If the textures are too different, it won't work but I have gotten pretty good results with it in the past.

I'm not sure if this will be any help to you but I actually bookmarked this tutorial on tile creation myself a few weeks ago. You should be able to apply the same techniques when creating your map.

http://www.cartographersguild.com/tutorials-how/27077-battlemaps-photoshop.html

That looks like a pretty useful link. Thanks for sharing!

[Big Bene]

It's not you.
It's Photoshop that stinks.
Try Picture Publisher.
Really, I have both, and I do practically everything with Picture Publisher. It's way more simple to use, doesn't take a hour to start, doesn't eat up all your hardware ressources, doesn't cost you an arm an a leg, and offers all Photoshop does expect for some fancy schmancy plugins I need once a decade (in wich cases I often give Gimp a try before Photoshop). I have a friend, a professional photographer, who loves photoshop and uses it a lot, but takes ten times the time I need with Picture Publisher for a given task.

[clmckay]

Stratos - That method worked really well. Thanks!

I know what you mean about Photoshop. It's just overkill for things like this (or most anything). The only reason I'm using it vs...anything else, is that the original map was soooo huge, that only photoshop could open it and edit it. I carved out the portions I was working on, but kept having to go back in for textures and icons, so I just wound up doing it all in photoshop.

Thanks Guys!

[StratosVX]

Glad I could help! That's a fairly useful command when you combine multiple images and you're looking for some consistency.