Map Making Guides

[DeletedUser]

Originally posted by Allyboo

Photoshop Map Making Guide​

Make your maps using www.twstats.com. This is by far the fastest and most flexible site to use. Note that I never add more than 15 colours (tribes) to one map generation, because using more makes it extremely difficult to pick out the correct colours. Set it to high zoom for a more accurate map. You'll need to centre the map in various spots to get the whole thing (I usually take 4 snapshots per 15 tribes - one for each corner of the map). Make a note of which tribe are in which colours, or you'll probably have to do it over again when you realise you've forgotten which is which.

If you're doing more than 15 tribes, you'll need to generate another map with the same settings, then overlay this later. Don't forget to tick the grid option.

NOW, IN PHOTOSHOP:

1) Open your map sections. You'll get an embedded profile mismatch. Select "discard" for every image.

Then with one of your map sections, do IMAGE > CANVAS SIZE

In the canvas resize panel, anchor your image to the corner it belongs in, and expand your canvas roughly so it can contain the entire map.

2) Open your other sections of the map, and using the pointer tool, click and drag each section on to your big canvas, lining up the images to the correct position (use the grid as a guide).

You can now get rid of all the map pieces and work on one canvas. Your layers panel will look something like this:

3) LAYER >MERGE DOWN (or CTRL + E) to get all your map pieces on to the background layer. Then use the rectangular marquee tool to select the entire map, excluding the unused bits of canvas, and do IMAGE > CROP . You now have a map! But it needs sprucing up a bit

Here's how it looks so far (at 25%)

4) LAYER > NEW > LAYER (or CTRL + SHIFT + N) to make a new layer. Make 15 of these, or 1 for each tribe. Then in your layers panel, click the little arrow, and select "NEW LAYER SET". Name this "Tribes - done". Rename each of your layers to the names of the tribes you will be featuring. Click the eye icon beside the "tribes - done" layer set. This makes it invisible, so anything you put in there will be stored safely out of the way.

5) Using the EYEDROPPER tool, select the colour of the first tribe. Then do SELECT > COLOR RANGE. Select "sampled colors" at fuzziness 4. Then hit OK. You should now see loads of "marching ants" around the tribe colour you selected.

SELECT > MODIFY >EXPAND. Expand by 1 px.
SELECT > MODIFY > SMOOTH. Smooth by 1px.

6) Now, with the correct tribe layer selected, choose the gradient tool, and make a gradient. Play about with this till you figure out what you like best. Don't make the change in gradient too strong though, just a small variation is enough to remove the "flat" look that solid colour gives.
Then, click and drag your mouse across the selected area, and release.

SELECT > DESELECT (or CTRL + D) to see what you've just done.

7) Now we need to add an outline and a shadow. In your layers panel, double-click the layer and you'll get a "layer style" menu. We need to make a new style.
Click "drop shadow" and adjust this until it looks good.
Then click "stroke" and set this to 1px "outside", and make it black. Click the "new style" button and this adds your new style to the "style" option at the top, so you don't have to keep repeating the process (from now on you can just click "style" then choose the style you just created!).
Hit OK.

Here's what it should look like:

Now that tribe is done, so move the layer into you "tribes - done" layer set. Don't worry that it's disappeared, if you want to see it, just hit the eye icon beside the layer set. But it's better that it's out of the way while you work on the rest.

8) Repeat steps 5-7 with every layer until you've done every tribe in a different colour.

Once you've done that, flip the eye back on and you should have something like this:

9) Time to do the "other villages" now.

Make a new layer, above the background but below the layer set. Same again, eyedropper for the red villages, then SELECT > COLOR RANGE. This time don't expand, just SELECT > MODIFY > SMOOTH by 1px.
Set your foreground colour to 91R 92G 37B (RGB values), then EDIT > FILL, using the foreground colour.
Set your foreground colour to 55R 92G 37B then EDIT > STROKE. 1 px, outside. Deselect.
Double-click the layer and add a drop shadow at about 30% opacity. Don't worry if it looks odd... we haven't done the background yet.

10) Time to do that now. Make a new layer directly above the background layer. Set your foreground colour to 71R 116G 49B. Then do EDIT > FILL, using foregound colour. You now have something like this:

Now, make everything you've done so far invisible, except for the background that contains the original map.

11) Make a new layer on top of every other layer. Working on this layer, using the pen tool, do a click at the top of one of the vertical grid lines, and a click at the bottom. Use CTRL and click to adjust the points to make them perfect.

Select your pencil tool, and set it to 1px and pick a nice light green.

In your paths panel, select "Stroke path" Then deselect the path and you'll have a grid line. You can now either repeat this, or just "duplicate layer" then move it with the pointer into the correct position.

Once you have all the grid lines, merge them down into one layer, and call it "grid". Set this to between 30 and 50% opacity, depending on what you like

12) IMAGE > IMAGE SIZE. With "constrain proportions" ticked, scale your map down to a presentable size. Now it' all looks fuzzy!
To fix the fuzziness, go through each layer in turn and do FILTER > SHARPEN > SHARPEN MORE.

13) Now comes the tricky bit. You have great-looking map, but some tribes overlap each other heavily. How to fix this? You have to do it by hand. Two possible ways:
* Right-click one of your lower layers in the layer panel, and select "duplicate". Then drag this up to the top. Now this overlaps the one below it, but it's fine. Using your lasso tool on this new layer, trace sections where the other tribe is more strongly represented and then backspace to erase these from the top layer (your bottom original will still be intact). Repeat this process until all your tribes have a fair representation.
* Duplicate a layer, place it on top, and lower the opacity. This is the only way to get a 100% accurate representation, but can look very messy. It depends what you're after to which method you should use. For a super accurate map, use opacity, for a graphical eye-pleaser, use solid colour and do the work by hand.

14) Once you've finished fiddling with the detail, save it, then LAYER > FLATTEN IMAGE. Always save before you flatten, then save under a different filename after flattening, in case you need to go back to the layered version to make corrections.

15) Add text, using opacity and stroke techniques you've just learned (having the continent numbers layer set to "screen" looks great), and hey presto, a finished map!

 

[DeletedUser]

Originally Posted by Allyboo.

GIMP map making guide​

GIMP is a little more basic than Photoshop, but it gets the job done and it's free! Here's a guide.

STEP 1:
To piece together the base map, open one of the pieces. You get a menu in the same window as the image you just opened. From this menu, do IMAGE > CANVAS SIZE. Use the arrow keys to adjust the size roughly by eye to fit in the other pieces of the map.

Now, do FILE > OPEN AS LAYER.

Open the other map pieces and position them correctly, using the move tool.

Now, right-click the top map layer in your layers panel and MERGE DOWN, until you're left with one layer containing all the map pieces. Use your "selection" tool to select the finished base map, then do IMAGE > CROP IMAGE.

STEP 2:
You need to create 15 new layers now for each of the 15 tribes. Do this in your layers panel:

Rename each of the layers to the tribes represented by double-clicking the layer.


STEP 3:
You now need to have the original map layer selected. Do SELECT > BY COLOUR (set threshold to around 10 in the options). Then click on the colour of the first tribe you will be representing.

Then do SELECT > GROW. Grow by 1 px (if this doesn't look good, which it might not for early worlds, grow by 2 or even 3 pixels).

Switch back to your first tribe layer and pick the gradient tool from your tools panel.
Under the gradient options, click the gradient and make sure "FG to BG" is selected. Now set your Foreground and Background colours (by double clicking on them) then click and drag across the selection.

***UPDATE***


Once that's done, you need an outline. Set foreground colour to black, and edit the "pencil" tool to "pixel (1x1 square)" then do EDIT > STROKE SELECTION (stroke with a paint tool, with paint tool set to pencil). Deselect by doing CTRL + SHIFT + A.

Now hide the layer by clicking the eye beside it in the layers panel, and do the other tribes in a similar fashion. The "other villages" I've done in red at about 40% opacity.


Grid lines: Make a new layer and use the paths tool to draw in a grid line. Choose a colour, then do EDIT > STROKE PATH. Repeat this step for all the grid lines.

For the background, make a new layer, pick a green and do EDIT > FILL WITH FG COLOUR.


Size the image down to something that will fit in a web page using IMAGE > SCALE IMAGE. AFter this you'll notice it looks a bit fuzzy. To correct this, select a layer and do FILTERS > ENHANCE > SHARPEN. Set sharpend to 10-15 and hit of. Select each of the other layers in turn and do CTRL + F to repeat the filter.

Text: Text in GIMP is pretty basic. To get the shadow effect, you need to duplicate the text layer, colour it black and place the layer below the white layer. Then use the move tool to knock it a couple of pixels down and to the left. Text would probably be better done with other software after the map is completed.

This map was done entirely using GIMP.

 

[DeletedUser]

Originally Posted by Royalgamer

A map making manual

This is a basic guide for those players that want to know how to make customized maps of there own style. I suggest you read the whole guide and follow the guide accurately as any slip ups can ruin the whole map. If you have any issues to do with this feel free to PM me.

You will need to have the software Adobe Photoshop

Please note clicking the (

) image will take you to your desired content.

Start Guide
You will firstly need to make your map on TW stats

I made a quick map of T:V on W1.

Copy and paste that map into Photoshop and make sure the size of the new file is at 1000 x 1000 pixels

And it should look like this:

Then you use the Eye dropper tool and select any were on the tribe as in my case i will click anywhere on the yellow villages which make the T:V.

Once you have done that you should go to:

Select>Color Range

Once you have done that this should come up and you should have your fuzziness at 4:

Now once you click OK you should see the tribe have little like sparkling lights or "ants" flashing.

Now you can modify the look of the tribe you can change the shape of it by going to:

Select>Modify>Border and make sure the border width is 4 pixels to create a diamond shape of the villages.

I am not going to do that but am going to expand the villages to make them look like blobs, I am going to do this by Select>Modify>Expand

And i like mine nice and big so I expand by 4

Now once we have done all this use the brush tool and brush all over the map, I suggest you use a big brush so you don't miss anything out, Or Edit>Fill

 

[DeletedUser]

Continuation of the above post.​

I always use this size for this

Now you should end up with something like this:
Make sure the colour that you had selected and the color that the brush will paint is according to the colour of the tribe.

Now From Her We will Take It to Blending Options Which You can Do by click on to the painted Mpa Layer In your layers section right clickin that and Go to Blending Options:
LAYERS>RIGHTCLICK>BLENDING OPTIONS

You Can Drop The Shadow , Bevel An Emboss and adding a STROKE is a good technique to use.

Here are the effects That Will Take Place:

Now That Was The Last Step And Now You Have your Map I Hope You found This informative and PM me on any issues regarding this thread.

Now once you get the hang of it you can change the background and the continent border lines like this:

Here is a random tip:
This Tip Was replied To:


after the color range is selected, create a new layer and fill the selection with the desired color (instead of brushing it...filling is faster...1 click). Also, I like to do it on a new layer in case I want to start over

I I hope you found the guide informative and straight forward

Fell free to give me rep

Now a guide by using GIMP by witheringxuponxlove:

I wrote one for pyronixcore not long ago...

But that was the first day I'd used GIMP... so the transparency was a bit difficult to work with (so I left it out)...


Map Making - GIMP translation.

This guide was put together for all the people reading allyboo's tutorial and asking how to do that in GIMP. Thanks goes to allyboo for writing the photoshop tutorial, without it I wouldn't have started making maps.

This guide is made to accompany that guide.


-Make sure you save often.
-Remember to take note of which tribe is which color.
-For this guide, I will not be adding the continent grids until the end.


Part 1.
Where allyboo gets a twstats map, we get a twstats map... using the same settings.

Now, in GIMP

Open up your sectors. First goto IMAGE -> CANVAS SIZE...
Change the width and height of the north-western (top-left) corner so that your map will fit, in this case it will be 2000x2000.

Then goto IMAGE -> MODE -> RGB on each image.
Then, drag each sector layer onto the larger canvas like so...
(you can close the sectors as you merge them in)

Make sure they line up perfectly - you will have to zoom in for this to be accurate.


Now, goto IMAGE -> Flatten image.

Your map should now all be on the one canvas and be seamless.

If you're working with a newer world, you'll have to make a judgement call on where to crop.

To crop effectively, just use the Rectangular Select Tool (R) to pick the regions you want to keep then goto IMAGE -> Crop to selection.

You should now have gotten rid of any empty continents - if there are any.

Now, we're going to make a new layer for each tribe.
Click the create new layer button in the layers palette.
For each layer, keep the settings default, just add in the tribe names for each tribe you'll be mapping.


You should now have one empty layer for each tribe.

Part 2.
For your first tribe, goto SELECT -> By Color (Shift+O), then click on a village belonging to that tribe - make sure you have the right layer selected.

This will take a fair while if you have a computer as slow as mine, so zoom in if you want to be sure that you don't misclick and pick all of the green.

Now, you should have "marching ants" around every village belonging to your first tribe, like so...

Here's the tricky bit...

Goto SELECT -> Grow....
For this example, I used 2 pixels, but you can play around to get the value you like.
Then, goto SELECT -> Feather.
For this example, I used 5 pixels, again, play around with it a bit.

Then, find the Bucket Fill Tool, make sure you've got the right layer selected.

In the tools section, make sure Fill whole selection is checked and fill the selected area with the color of your choice.

Here's what mine looked like at this stage...

CTRL+Shift+A will release the selection and let you have a better look at what you've got.
If you don't like it, use CTRL+Z to go back and do it again with a few different settings.

If you'd like to put a border around the tribes, goto SELECT -> Border use 1 pixel, then fill the same way as above using black or the tribe's own color if you want.

Once you're happy, turn off the layer for that tribe, using the eye symbol and go back and repeat Part 2 until you've done all of the tribes.


Part 3.

As I'm new to GIMP, I can't figure out the transparency settings beyond >50% is on and <50% is off and won't go into blending.

I won't show you the full map either, because my GIMP crashed during Part 2 on the second tribe.

 

[DeletedUser]

As someone who has used these guides to make maps with GIMP, I'd suggest only using them to learn the basic steps (separating the tribes onto different layers, "growing" the villages and colouring in entire tribes). Once you can do those things there are a lot of features in the newer versions of GIMP that can actually make the map look good. There are even some cool plug-ins for GIMP you can download. Pretty much I don't find the maps produced by these guides attractive but they work if you just need it for a war declaration or something

 

[DeletedUser]

Bad Horse, can you separate the Photoshop Guide, and the GIMP Guide???

 

[DeletedUser]

hey.. is there any chance you can get me a link for the GIMP download...Pm me if its not allowed to be posted on forums ...thanks

 

[DeletedUser623]

hey.. is there any chance you can get me a link for the GIMP download...Pm me if its not allowed to be posted on forums ...thanks

Ditto. Could you skype me it....

Skype username: Uninspired.