# Mapmaking Discussion & Philosophy (WIP/Critique) > Dungeon/Subterranean Mapping >  Tomb of the Earthlich

## delgondahntelius

A short adventure that I'm developing for pdf publication, its meant to be a 'one-shot' (D&D 3.5... so far) that I may end up designing a series over. but this is the initial map (taken by digital cam cause the scanner isn't big enough)

I kept it at 100% for detail. 
It was inked using Kohinoor rapidograph pens (.13, .18, .25, .30) this may or may not be the final render .... depending on how bad I mess this one up depends on whether or not i'll be drawing it again.

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## delgondahntelius

wide view of entrance

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## delgondahntelius

and close up of the entrance

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## delgondahntelius

close up of the tomb area and the mud room...

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## ravells

Really nice feel, delgon. Is the paper blue or is that a digital camera effect. I really like the hatching.

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## delgondahntelius

wow... it didn't look blue when I cropped and edited them ... but now I can see how blue they really look... wierd, it's the same paper that I mapped the lighthouse and its white...

I think... my overhead desk light which is one of those newer ones that have a flourescent bulb that hints a blue (supposed to be better for the eyes and brighter than standard bulbs... you know the ones ...)

You wouldn't like the hatching after you finish one by hand on a map that size... but, it looks great so the pain and long effort pay off  :Very Happy:  ... thus I soldier on, plodding through hatch after hatch after hatch  :Very Happy:  
Thanks for the compliment  :Smile:

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## jaerdaph

More good stuff, delgondahntelius. Excellent work!  :Smile:

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## RobA

> I think... my overhead desk light which is one of those newer ones that have a flourescent bulb that hints a blue (supposed to be better for the eyes and brighter than standard bulbs... you know the ones ...)


If you intend to use a camera as a copy stand, make use of the custom WB setting in the camera.  Set it against a blank sheet of paper.  Should be good to go!  (oh yeah, and don't use the flash, light from both sides...)

-Rob A>

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## pyrandon

Nicely done--and your poor hatch-drawing hand has both my thanks and my sympathy!

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## delgondahntelius

Jaerdaph -- Thank you .. you compliments bring warm feelings to my heart.  :Smile: 

Rob -- Great advice. Now for my next act.... This is my first digital camera.. I actually bought it for my wife for xmas, ( i got tired of seeing roll after roll of undeveloped film building up in the top drawer of the dresser!) I've scanned the user manual... and I'm pretty dumb about this d.camera but I did find that WB is White Balance ... and AWB is auto ... so, i've figured out how to get into the manual adjust to set it ... and I'm to set it while pointing it at a blank sheet of paper ? .. yes... hopefully I can get this down so that I can get another snapshot  :Smile: ... please bare with my digital cam ignorance  :Frown: 

Don -- My hands are grateful for your thanks and your sympathy... and so am I  :Smile:  we do what we must in the name of great mapping, right?

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## Midgardsormr

That's correct.  You shot your images under an incandescent light, yes?  Incandescents throw a yellow light; the camera assumes that the light is white, so everything you shoot under that light gets a blue cast to it.  By telling the camera that the object you're pointing it at is white, it adjusts for the color temperature of the light.

You can do the same thing in the photo software, but it's simpler to do it in the camera, usually.  If you're shooting in RAW mode, though, it doesn't matter--RAW doesn't store any of the in-camera processing.  In that case, you'll have to do the white balance in the software.

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## delgondahntelius

Bryan ... you are a genius when it comes to ... all that stuff..  :Smile:  lol...  :Smile:  ty vm for the info ... have some rep  :Smile:

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## delgondahntelius

Would you suggest RAW ? ... it seems to be easier cause I just hit the auto or flourescent setting and it cleans it up real nice... then numbers my and saves the photos as .psd files  :Smile:

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## delgondahntelius

here is some quick shots I did to see if I got it right  :Very Happy:

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## delgondahntelius

and another

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## delgondahntelius

and yet another .... the last for the moment

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## Midgardsormr

RAW format is simply all the numbers generated by the camera's sensors, without any kind of interpreter to turn it into an image.  If you want the best possible quality and are comfortable doing touch-up work, then shooting in RAW-only format can be quite powerful.  

However, if you're in a hurry to get your pics out of the camera, then having them in jpeg format as well is certainly handy.  Jpeg does use a lossy compression algorithm, though, so you'll automatically lose a little bit of quality.  At 5 or more megapixels you're not likely to see it, but the quality loss is there.  

It sounds like the software that you're using to transfer from camera to computer is well automated.  I encourage you to learn some color correction techniques, either in that software or in Photoshop.  That's advice I need to follow, myself.  I know the theory, but I'm a little short on practice.

The pictures you just showed us now look just a little brown, but it looks to me like it's mostly due to low light.  That kind of photography is difficult if you don't have the equipment for it.  I have a hard time getting enough light on my work, too.

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## RobA

These are the plans I used to make a copy stand (when my original scanner died...the scanner ended up making a nice light box...but that is a different post  :Smile:  ) :

http://www.csigizmos.com/products/ph...hotostand.html

-Rob A>

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## delgondahntelius

> However, if you're in a hurry to get your pics out of the camera, then having them in jpeg format as well is certainly handy. Jpeg does use a lossy compression algorithm, though, so you'll automatically lose a little bit of quality. At 5 or more megapixels you're not likely to see it, but the quality loss is there.


I used the PSD format so I could edit them with PS, and from there save to a jpg. I believe I was snapping them at 7 or possibly 8 MP. 




> It sounds like the software that you're using to transfer from camera to computer is well automated. I encourage you to learn some color correction techniques, either in that software or in Photoshop. That's advice I need to follow, myself. I know the theory, but I'm a little short on practice.


Once I dl them to the comp, I open the folder in Adobe Bridge, it then uses PScs3x to open the raw file, which in turn opens Adobe Camera Raw, which, from what I can tell is just an awesome touch up utility for RAW files. As for color correction techniques... well I guess I'll have to google that phrase, lol... cause I just either use one of the presets... or start goofing around with all the little woodads and whiz'n'nannies...




> The pictures you just showed us now look just a little brown, but it looks to me like it's mostly due to low light. That kind of photography is difficult if you don't have the equipment for it. I have a hard time getting enough light on my work, too.


for now I suppose my amatuer camera work will have to do for wips. when I get the finals done I will just use Staples (OH how I wish we had a Kinkos) to get them 'professionally' scanned... when the final b/w are done and scanned... I can then use those and touch up with colors or washes or whatever in PS. that is the plan anyways  :Very Happy: 

Thank you very much for the great advice on RAW pictures  :Very Happy:

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## delgondahntelius

> These are the plans I used to make a copy stand (when my original scanner died...the scanner ended up making a nice light box...but that is a different post  ) :
> 
> http://www.csigizmos.com/products/ph...hotostand.html
> 
> -Rob A>


Fantastic link Rob, if I find that I'm using my camera to snap shots of my maps on paper, I'll definitely be investing in one of these... 

And a LIGHTBOX out of an old scanner .. which I happen to have one or three of... GENIUS ... one of these would come in so VERY handy....and where is this post?  

Rob... you are like friggin YODA... in fact... that's my new nickname for you... YodA. Are you sure you aren't small, green and 900 years old? unfortunately I can't give you any more rep than I already have, but I would if I could.

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## ravells

YodA - I like it!

But wouldn't it be easier to buy a second hand tripod from ebay? You can point those vertically down, can't you? (although I've never tried with mine).

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## RobA

The legs tend to get in the way (at least on my tripod).

-Rob A>

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## ravells

You mean: 'In the way, legs tend to get', surely?  :Smile: .

But even if you er...spread your legs wide enough? It would bring the camera lower, but might be a bit unweildy I guess. The solution you posted is much more elegant (and looks cooler too).
The other thing I was thinking of was a joby 'gorilla' (picture below) which binds to most things, so you could just use the edge of a chair or something.

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## delgondahntelius

that's really cool.. but 20 pounds... that's like... 45 $ .... I'm thinking that the PVC idea is a little cheaper route ...  :Smile:

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## ravells

They're going for about US$ 8 on ebay with shipping on top.

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## delgondahntelius

oh well... now that is a different story .... i believe i'm going to have to check that out  :Smile:  thanks rav

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## RobA

The other (practical) reasons I like the PVC stand is that it is repeatable (and I can use a standard correction to compensate for barrel distortion in the lens) at one of the fixed height stops, and I know it is shooting square to the page.

(plus I had done some work around the house and had leftover supplies.  Only needed to purchase end caps and a few T's.)

-Rob A>

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## delgondahntelius

I was playing around with Turgenev's style of mapping and applied it to a digital version of the tomb... this is just what I have so far

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## Arkkeeper

Nice Maps man, Two Hints with digital, Using a incadescent bulb and lighting it right will give you pic a old fashioned yellow look, which is cool, also if you can do it right, take a picture with flash in Pitch Black, it'll be hard to position but if done properly it pay's off well.

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## delgondahntelius

I'll keep that in mind the next time I take some pics of my maps..  :Very Happy:

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## torstan

I've been meaning to do this for a while but finally got round to it. I used Gimp to turn all the white to transparency and put this over a parchment background.
Here's a quick and dirty result:

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## delgondahntelius

Nice... I think once its done it might look pretty good on parchment.

Unfortunately, I haven't found the time to get back to this one .. or any of my hand drawn maps I posted.... I don't even think I'll have time for this month's challenge  :Frown: 

Thanks for taking the time to do that torstan, I appreciate it.

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## torstan

No problem at all. They are all lovely distinctly hand-drawn maps and I had always wondered what they might look like on a parchment background. I got the idea from Hellhound's posts actually as his hatched ink maps looked great moved over to parchment.

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## delgondahntelius

Yes, after you posted his posts up I took a look and immediately liked the parchment look... A tutorial on here that was recently bumped http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=714 was pretty good for making parchment ... I did a quick and dirty one here

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## torstan

Ah, excellent. Good result and much better than my very quick and dirty parchment look.

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## delgondahntelius

Well.. the parchment I did as part of that tutorial however many months ago... How I got the black away from the white is something I did accidently ... while trying to do that very thing... if that makes sense.. lol. You know.. the kind of thing where you go back in and try to do what you did before only this time around it takes you 5 times longer 

Or ... maybe that only happens to me?  :Very Happy:

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## torstan

In gimp you can separate the black and white in one step. Go to Layer->Transparency->Colour to Alpha. Select white in the following dialogue and voila - all your white is now transparent.

You get better results if the background is pure white first. This can be done by messing with the levels first. Seems like you did a good job of it yourself though. What method did you use?

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## RobA

Even easier than turning the white to transparent is to just use a different blending mode for the layer... multiply or overlay do it nicely.

-Rob A>

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## torstan

True enough, but then it affects all layers lower down in the layer order which isn't too serious but can sometimes lead to weird little bugs/features. Almost certainly not an issue with maps of this form however.

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## Turgenev

Love the parchment look, delgondahntelius.

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## delgondahntelius

Torstan, in photoshop its select>color range ... it then brings up a dialog so that you can choose a color ... from there its hazy but eventually I just selected all the black and then pasted as a new layer over the parchment.psd I had done... and scaled it. after I scaled it it was really light so I just used the Edit>Stroke command to darken it up.... 

Turgenev... thanks  :Very Happy:  ... I think when I get it fully done and digitally rendered I'll use that parchment effect

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## Turgenev

> Turgenev... thanks  ... I think when I get it fully done and digitally rendered I'll use that parchment effect


Cool. I'm looking forward to seeing it when you're done.

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