How To Draw A Map On My Computer

This tutorial covers my unabridged process for how to depict a map – from outset to terminate. In this example I'one thousand illustrating a simple town map, just the steps apply to whatever map.

Tools and Software

I used Photoshop for this map, but all of this can be done in Gimp (for costless). I also utilise a graphics tablet. Tablets are great for this work, and if you're thinking almost digital map making I'd recommend picking one up. I utilize a Wacom Intuous, but I started on a Wacom Bamboo (much cheaper and most all the same functionality). You tin can besides follow along using pen and paper, a scanner and a mouse.

I've uploaded the full photoshop file if you lot want to look at the final file and see how the sausage was made. The total size last map is hither. Feel free to use it for personal use.

Outline of how to draw a map

My steps in drawing a map are pretty consistent:

1. sketch an outline
2. ink in the outlines
3. add detail lines
4. block in night areas
5. add together overall light and shade
6. lay in base of operations colours
7. add together detailed low-cal and shade
8. label
9. final smoothen – border, colour balancing, tone balancing

I'll go through each of these steps in social club.

Setup

To brainstorm, permit'southward open a new document. Here I've started with a small document as this is purely digital. It's 1200 pixels by 900 pixels (I trimmed it down at the end). That's large enough to fill most computer screens. If this was for print, I'd create a document 3600 by 2700 pixels. This is because print requires a resolution of 300dpi, and screens tend to be closer to 100dpi. So for print, you need to up the resolution by 3x.

I grabbed one of my parchment textures and set it every bit the background. This is one I built myself, merely there are a bunch of old paper textures out in that location to use. CGTextures has a ton of old paper textures.

So far, and so unexciting, only this is a solid base to kickoff from.

Sketch the base for your map

The offset step in any map is to create a sketch. This is when the core design piece of work is done. This step can have days, or tin be a quick process of laying down an idea yous already have fully formed.

Here I want to lay out a boondocks, some forest, and a cliff. Designing a town can be a complicated procedure – I wrote upwards a full tutorial on how to design a boondocks map so I won't become into that process here.

For the sketch, create a new layer and use a hard round brush. I use a 5px round brush with the size fix to force per unit area-sensitive. I chop-chop block in the big outlines of the forest, a line for the cliff, and the roads to ascertain the town.

At this stage – you lot want to see whether the map makes sense. Does it fit the page? Are you cramping the detail in some regions? If information technology's a battlemap – how would it play in a combat? If it'southward a boondocks map – are there sources of food, water, trade, and defence force? These questions mean that the basic of the map make sense, and ensure the final map volition hang together. Information technology'due south easier to change it at present before we start adding particular.

Ink the Outlines

Once you have the general design in identify – it's time to lay in the detailed lines. Start by creating a new layer, and dropping the sketch layer dorsum to 30% opacity (you can only see the sketch in the map beneath). If you're using pencil, pen and newspaper, now is the time to movement to pen.

These lines will define the outlines of the major features of the map. Offset by prioritising those elements that define the edge of a large feature – coastlines, the edge of a woods, a river, roads, cliffs. These are the most important details of the map – they are the data.

Here I've used the style of line to sell the feature it represents. The edge of the forest is most similar the edge of a cauliflower, or a child'south drawing of a deject. Lots of small curves joined together to make larger curved shapes. Don't worry most making the edge completely face-to-face – it tin be messy.

For the cliff, what you really encounter is all the edges, all the way downwards. Each border is a ledge on the cliff, and because of the abrupt driblet, those lines are bunched close together. Where the lines are further apart, the heart naturally reads that as a smoother descent. Then – we've illustrated our cliff, and conveyed useful information about the relevant steepness at different portions of the cliff. For more on how to describe cliffs in different styles, check out this tutorial.

For the buildings, I've kept information technology really simple. Drawing building at a larger scale can take a while, and there are lots of tricks and tips for laying in large amounts of buildings chop-chop. In this I've used a simple collection of directly lines, elbows, and circles, to give some variety. I've placed some larger structures near the eye, and followed the roads. At that place's an unusually shaped structure off in the forest on the left (which will be a tower), and I've decided to place two flanking structures around the roads to the south-due west and east. The town doesn't have a wall, but information technology can take a couple of roadside lookout towers for defense.

Note – at this fourth dimension we have a serviceable map. Everything from this point on (disallowment the labeling) is to go far pretty.

Add the Detail Lines

Outlines are merely the start of the story – we need to add some detail.

As before, create a new layer. We're still using a 5px difficult circular brush with size set to pressure sensitivity.

The detailed lines help sell the map. Some people make the mistake of skipping this stage. Detail here is actually pretty quick, and information technology makes life then much easier down the road. Lines are a very efficient way of conveying detail.

For the forest I use brusk curved dashes. I follow the edges of the forest, except when the outline comes into the bulk of the forest. In those notches into the outline, I bring the details into the middle of the forest. This allows me to define the bulk forms of the woods within the outline. You can meet the forms of clumps of copse that break up the mass of the forest. Notwithstanding, notation that I don't draw individual trees anywhere (except when in that location's a couple of copse out at that place on their own).

The cliff is already detailed, so I get out that alone. Even so I decided that the town needs a river. Afterward all, people demand to drink – and the cliff looks similar it may accept been carved by a river. So I add together a new layer, draw a river outline, and motility the relevant buildings out of the manner.

For the road, I proceed the same brush, create a new layer, and ready the blend mode to overlay (and the opacity to xxx%). And then I depict in the smoothen lines of the road. This keeps it carve up from the lines, but very clear and piece of cake to read. If you lot desire a fancier version of roads with clean outlines, at that place'south a slightly longer method here.

If you lot're using pen and newspaper for this, now is the time to erase your pencil lines. Information technology's actually pretty easy to plough your pen and ink map into an anile paper map similar the one above (and the rest of this tutorial tin can be completed with a mouse). Here's a run downwardly on how to plow your newspaper map into digital line art. That'll become y'all to the right identify to take on the next steps.

Block in the Bulk Shadows

Not all elements of a map live in the same tonal range. By this I mean that the light parts of a tree are darker than the light parts on a patch of grass. The deep shadows of a wood are darker than the shadows on a road. So, to brainstorm with, we block in the overall tone range of our map. Make the darker areas night, and if at that place are especially light areas, lighten them up.

For this – create a new layer and set the blend mode to overlay. I and then pick a difficult round brush with size gear up to around 20-30px, and opacity fix to pressure level sensitive. This means that if I press lightly, I get an nearly transparent line, if I press hard, I get a deep opaque black. Oh, and set the brush colour to blackness.

I then piece of work into the forest with an almost opaque black. Because the blend mode is overlay, all this does is create a darker tone of paper – and we go along those overnice paper textures. Blend modes are super useful – if this if your offset time hearing almost them, read this quick run down of what blend modes are and how to utilise them.

Afterwards blocking in the forest, I lay in some shadow under the lesser correct edges of the forest. I'm going to work on the light and shade as if the lite was coming from the top left of the screen so the wood would cast a shadow to the bottom right. The shadow isn't every bit dark as the forest itself, but helps to give the woods some dimension.

Add Overall Light and Shade

Forests aren't just a unmarried flat shade. So we need to give the map some body. This is where we'll add that squeamish 3D feel to our map. Start off past adding another overlay layer. Pick a very light yellow for the highlight colour (nigh white – something similar #f8f8e6), and a deep blue for the shadows (something like #04050a).

Now, permit'southward talk a little about brushes. Up until now we've used hard round brushes for this whole map. That still works for laying in the shadows on the river and the houses (notation the difficult clean edges on those shadows), simply organic calorie-free and shade is rarely clean and hard edged (note the highlights on the forest). If you utilise hard brushes for everything you'll get a map that looks plastic. Here I apply hard round brushes (with force per unit area sensitive opacity) for the river and houses. For the rest of the shadows I use a grunge brush. There'south lots of them out there, but this particular brush is so useful that I created a tutorial for creating a grunge brush both in Photoshop and in Gimp. This is the brush that I apply for the majority of the light and shade.

Let's start with the cliffs. I apply a low opacity, medium sized castor (effectually 30-40px and around 20% opacity – call back with force per unit area sensitivity fix to opacity as well). I slowly build up the shadows on the cliffs with multiple passes. Cliffs tend to be steepest at the top, so I piece of work into the acme edge carefully (decreasing the size of the brush so that I tin can go a sharp edge there). I lay in a light shadow beyond all of the basis below the cliff. This subtly pushes the lower ground into the background, and allows the reader to hands gauge that it'due south lower than the country at the height. Equally the cliff tapers out at either end, the shadows are less intense – but every cliff edge has a shadow confronting it.

Now for the copse. Hither I use the mid sized grunge castor to deepen the shadows on the edges of the tree groups abroad from the light (and so the bottom correct edges). Remember those groups nosotros defined within the body of the forest? Now nosotros are giving them course. After laying in the extra shadow, I switch to the highlight colour and sketch in some highlights on acme of these groups of trees. This is non careful or precise. Forests are messy. Simply where there is a line, there should be a highlight or a shadow beside that line to show whether that side is higher or lower. Follow that and you won't get too far wrong.

As I mentioned, the river and houses get an piece of cake quick shadow – the river is all darker, the houses throw a clean single cast shadow. Are we done? No! The grassland needs some light and shade likewise. Here I driblet the opacity downwardly to effectually 10%, and increment the size of the brush to 50-100px. I lay in a very light scattering of shadow on the grassland to give information technology some form. And equally a low-cal pass with the highlight colour. Information technology adds some subtle shape and particular to an otherwise uninteresting piece of land.

Lay in the Base of operations Colours

So far so good – but all that dark-brown is getting me downward a chip. It's time to add the color and see where we're at.

Get-go past creating a new layer, and set the blend way to colour. This ways that anything you draw on that layer won't impact the underlying tone (low-cal and dark) of your piece, just volition set the hue and saturation. And then nosotros can go along all of that shading piece of work we did, and add together colour on top (once again, hither's the blend modes tutorial for a refresher)

When using colour layers I've found it'due south best to start with a very low opacity brush (10% or less) and never use highly saturated colours. Otherwise you end up with neon lines beyond your map and it looks very bad very quickly.

Clearly the main colour here is green. I start with the largest areas first. I pick a mid dark-green for the foreground, and a dissimilar mid-dark-green for the background colour. So, I pick my grunge brush once again, and in the brush settings I set colour jitter. This means that the colour will change every bit you draw. This is cardinal – it's never the example that yous become one colour uniformly across a natural area. This means you don't have to change colour hundreds of times, photoshop (or Gimp) volition add the colour variation for y'all.

Here'southward the settings I use – note the two greens in the foreground/background colour picker. They are different I swear. The foreground light-green has more yellow in it.

The 100% foreground background jitter ways that the brush tin exist entirely the foreground colour, entirely the background colour, or anything in between. The saturation and brightness jitters allow the brush colour to vary away from the foreground and background colours. This gives a decent range of colours without going as well far from your core colours.

At present set the brush size to pretty large (50-100px+), low opacity, and cake in colours across the map. On the offset laissez passer it will change a lot. Then build up slowly. Notation, here I actually lay the dark-green in uniformly beyond everything – trees, cliff, grass, houses, river.

Once the base dark-green is done, I move both my forground and background greens closer to bluish, and slightly decrease the saturation, and add more colour to the forests. They should be a different green, and a trivial more saturated than the grassland.

That'due south coming along, only we notwithstanding accept light-green cliffs and a green river. For the cliffs, I use the eraser to remove some of the green. I use a hard round eraser with pressure sensitivity set up to opacity. This means I tin remove a little of the dark-green, simply not all of it. This keeps the map hanging together colour wise. Then I switch the foreground and background colours to greys and build up the gray along the cliff. Now I know that cliffs aren't actually gray, but it'south a visual trope that'south easy to read.

Finally, the river. I do this last because it's the only feature with a hard edge. This ways that past doing it final I don't need to worry near mucking it upwardly when working on the other elements. I pick a mid grey-blue and a hard edged brush. And so I lay in the colour carefully. Now our map looks a lot amend.

Add Detailed Light and Shade

We could leave information technology at that. But I want to go a petty more intense with my light and shade. This phase is very much up to your own taste. In this instance I wanted some deeper shadows and some nice bright highlights. So I created 2 new layers – a normal layer (where what you draw is what yous see) and another overlay layer. On the overlay layer I employ my grunge brush with night blue and do a pass over the whole map to darken the tone and deepen the shadows.

On the normal layer, I take a very depression opacity dark blue and lay in cast shadows along the border of the forest and forth the edge of the cliffs. This darkens the shadows, but also adds a colder color.

Finally, after deepening the shadows, I go dorsum to the new overlay layer selection a nice bright highlight, and a small brush. I lay in bright highlights along the edge of the cliff, along the lightest edge of the wood, and along the edges of the waterfall. There'southward a lot of white rushing water there, so we need some vivid edges to show that. I also add some brilliant touches along the cliff lines to show where a ledge catches the sun.

Identify Labels

What nosotros accept and then far is really a pretty picture – merely information technology's not actually a map. You lot can't use this to convey annihilation other than – there'south a cliff, some forest, and a town. The next step is to add some text to the map to say what lies where. For a longer tutorial on this part of the process, here's a full tutorial merely on how to label a map.

In this case I pick Baskerville – just whatsoever clean font works. I also pick a night brown. Pure black text is a little jarring. I avoid heavily styled fonts for labeling – so no gothic fonts, no script fonts, and definitely no papyrus (unless you're really mapping a pyramid tomb). Apply the font tool to lay in the numeric labels. When placing the labels try to avert placing a characterization over a line. Information technology'll be super hard to read. Instead, offset the label from the characteristic it refers to in the nearest articulate space.

In one case the numbers are placed, discover an open department of map to place the legend. Here I take the top right and bottom left grassland to pick from. Lay a single text field and write out the fable. The fable font size should be smaller than the individual number labels.

For the labels along the roads I use a nifty fox in Photoshop. Take the pen tool, click to lay an anchor point, and so move along the line you lot're post-obit (in my case the route), click again and drag a piddling. You'll see a line appear betwixt the first and second anchors, and as you drag, the shape of that line morphs. Move a little farther over again, and click to end the line. This is a path.

Switch to the blazon tool, and click at the beginning of the path You'll notice that the cursor is actually on the path, and every bit y'all type the text follows the path. This is a keen play tricks to get labels to catamenia along features.

Once all the text is in place, select all the text layers, right-click, duplicate layers to get a 2d copy. Select all the re-create layers, right-click 'merge layers' to get one layer with all the text equally a unmarried image. Now hide the text layers.

At that place's a reason for that rather cabalistic sequence of actions – the text on its own gets lost in the map. We need to give it a subtle highlight. To do this we'll use layer styles. Double click your text layer. That'll bring up the layer style dialog. Give the text a light stroke. Here's the settings I used:

This adds a subtle light outline around the text. Nevertheless that has a hard edge which looks a little odd on a hand drawn map. So we're going to add an outer glow too. Hither'southward the settings for that part:

That looks much better – nosotros can now encounter our text labels, even in the darkest parts of the map.

Add Last Smoothen

The last stage is to add any extra detailing you lot like. Here I decided to lay i a black outline to brand it look like the map had a torn paper edge (you tin check out the photoshop file to see how that was done), added a signature to the bottom right. With those final tweaks, the map is complete! Save the map out as a tiff, or as an uncompressed jpg.

A quick note – information technology'due south worth walking away from a map at this stage and coming back a twenty-four hour period or then later. Yous'll run across things yous want to change.

I promise you found this useful. This is my core process for all maps. Dungeon maps, encounter maps, and regional/world maps all have their own tricks along the manner, but the cadre workflow is the aforementioned. I'll write upwards a few more posts on how to depict a map for those styles later.

Feel complimentary to tag me on Google+, Twitter, or Facebook with any maps you describe and I'll drop over and bank check them out. If y'all have questions about this tutorial, throw them in the comments and I'll answer them.

How To Draw A Map On My Computer,

Source: http://www.fantasticmaps.com/2015/02/how-to-draw-a-map/

Posted by: goffprike1971.blogspot.com

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