# Mapmaking Discussion & Philosophy (WIP/Critique) > Town/City Mapping >  WIP - Ascension's Photoshop Town Tutorial Follow-Along

## phatticus

I am new to mapping,and Photoshop, but I was enthralled with Ascension's huge town tutorial.  

http://www.cartographersguild.com/sh...-Town-Tutorial

I wanted to create a thread to follow my attempt to create a town using the tutorial text, with the intention of creating a full PDF tutorial with images at the end.  So, each update to this thread will be the next step (or group of steps) from the tutorial with a screen shot of the work-in-progress.  

Each post will contain a snippet of the original tutorial steps that the image will implement.  My comments will appear in Yellow.

Without further ado:

This is the starting image - a white background, 11" x 8.5"

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## phatticus

TERRAIN
From the tutorial:
7.	Click on the Background layer then Filter > Render > Clouds.

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## phatticus

8.	Duplicate this layer (it will be named Background copy), either use Layer > Duplicate Layer or click hold, and drag the layer to the little square within a square icon at the bottom of the layer stack.
9.	Any changes that we make will be made on this layer instead of our original clouds on the Background layer.

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## phatticus

10.	Grab the Brush tool (if you see a pencil then right click on that and change it).  At the top left of the screen you will see a little image of what tip you have and next to it is a little upside down triangle...click on that triangle to bring up the Brush Preset Picker.  Scroll down the list to the Airbrush Soft Round 300.  At the top of the screen you will see the word “Flow” and a box next to it with a number and a tiny triangle...click on the triangle and a slider will appear.  Grab the slider and move it to the left until the number changes from 100% to 10%.
11.	Now we are going to paint in a rough river valley with black and then we are going to go over everything else with white.  We will leave some gray around the valley edges.

NOTES: This step I am interpolating since the original tutorial didn't have an example image to show exactly what was being done.  If I did this wrong, please correct me and I will update it.

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## phatticus

12.	Duplicate this layer (it will be named Background copy 2) and rename it to Hills.  To do this double-click on the words that say Background copy 2 and then enter the new text (Hills).  Duplicate this layer and rename it to Mountains.  Lastly, hide this layer by poking out the little eye on the layer stack and click on the Hills layer.

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## phatticus

14.	Filter > Render > Lighting Effects.  Use the settings in the attached image. What confuses most people is that there are 5 lights (one in each corner and one in the middle).  To add a light click on the light bulb, hold, and drag it into the preview image.  All are Omni lights and all have the same settings: Intensity = 6, Gloss = -100, Material = 100, Exposure = 0, Ambience = 8.  Make sure that the Texture Channel is set properly to Red, “White is high” is checked,  and that the Height is all the way up to 100 (Mountainous).  Make sure that the ring around each white dot covers its quarter of the image and that the center dot extends to overlap with the others.  This gives our terrain a bit of depth even though it sort of looks like stone.  Lastly, set the layer's blend mode to Overlay.

NOTES:  I have shown the sequence of lighting effect, and the final result.  I am not 100% sure this is how it should look, but it is close enough to continue (I think).  If I have done something obviously wrong, please tell me.

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## phatticus

15.	Click on the Mountains layer.  Filter > Render > Lighting Effects...use the setting in the attached image.  Here we have one spotlight coming in from the bottom right.  Intensity is 13, Focus is 100, Gloss is 100, Material is 100, Exposure is 0, Ambience is 8, Texture Channel is Red, “White is high” is checked, and Height is all the way up to 100.  Lastly, set the layer's blend mode to overlay.

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## phatticus

16.	Create a new layer and rename it Land color.  Fill this layer with your favorite green color...I went with a sage green, hex code 555A41 (85, 90, 65).

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## phatticus

17.	Create a new layer and rename it Adjust1.  Hit the D key to reset your colors to black and white.  Change the black to a dark green, hex code 142800 (RGB 20, 40, 0) and change the white to a yellow, hex code F0DC82 (RGB 240, 220, 130).  Filter > Render > Clouds.  Set the blend mode of the layer to soft light with a 50% opacity.

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## phatticus

18.	Create a new layer and rename it Adjust2.  Change the green to hex code 506E32 (RGB 80, 110, 50) and change the yellow to hex code 807040 (RGB 128, 112, 64).  Hit ctrl+f to repeat the clouds.  Set the blend mode of the layer to Soft Light at 50% opacity.

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## phatticus

19.	Click on the Hills layer (in the layer stack).  Click, hold, and drag this layer up to the top of the layer stack.  Repeat for the Mountains layer.  Set the blend mode of the Hills and Mountains layer to Overlay with a 50% opacity.

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## phatticus

20.	Duplicate the Background layer and move it to the top of the layer stack.  Rename this layer to Bumps.
21.	Select > Color Range = use white with a fuzziness of 200.  NOTE: Photoshop Elements does not have this function so skip this step.  Select > Inverse.  Hit the delete key then deselect.  Set the fill of the layer to zero and then add a layer style of Bevel and Emboss.  Style will be Emboss, Technique is Smooth, Depth is 50%, Direction is up, Size is 250, Angle is -45, Altitude is 30, Highlight Mode is white at Color Dodge and 75% opacity, Shadow Mode is black at Multiply and 75% opacity.  On this layer you can use the airbrush and add in more hills or erase hills if you want.
22.	Our base terrain is done and you should have 8 layers: Background, Background copy, Land color, Adjust1, Adjust2, Hills, Mountains, and Bumps.

Attachment 25668

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## phatticus

23.	RIVER
24.	These steps are optional but I figure that I'd better cover it.
25.	Click on the Pencil Tool.  If you only see the Brush Tool then right click on that and change it to the pencil.  You can choose any size tip that you want, I went with the Hard Round 19 pixels.  We have to do one minor edit to our tip so at the top of the screen click on Window > Brushes.  This brings up the Brush Editor window.  On this window click on the words that say Brush Tip Shape.  At the bottom of this screen find the word that says Spacing and set this to 1%  
26.	Create a new layer and rename it to River base.
27.	Using white, draw in some squiggly lines to define the edge of the river and make sure that they reach all the way to the edge.  Grab the Paint Bucket Tool.  If you only see the Gradient Tool then right click on that and change it.  Fill in the space between your lines.

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## phatticus

28.	Duplicate this layer (it becomes River base copy) and then hide the River base layer.  The reason that we make duplicates is that if we mess up or don't like something then we can go back and start over.  Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur = 25.
29.	This layer will have 4 layer styles but first set the fill of the layer to zero (on the layer stack).  First there is a Pattern overlay. Find a good, realistic-looking water pattern on the web.  I got mine at the Dunjinni.com user forums and it is called RealWater1bLg_dgw.png (don't worry I have included it in the zip file that accompanies this tut).  I set the mode to Screen and the scale to 25%.  Next we add a Color Overlay of something teal, hex code 4B7D7D (RGB 75, 125, 125).  The mode is normal and the opacity is 90%.  I want the middle of the river to be deeper, and therefore darker, so add an Inner Glow.  I use a medium gray, hex code 606060 (RGB 96, 96, 96).  The mode is Multiply, the size is 100, and poke the button for Center instead of the default Edge.  Lastly, we start adding in some wet sand with an Inner Shadow so I went with a sand color, hex code E9E2B4 (RGB 233, 226, 180).  The mode is Color, the angle is -45, distance is 0, choke is 33, size is 76.  When we do the next layer, most of this will barely be noticeable.

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## phatticus

30.	Duplicate this layer (it becomes River base copy 2).  On the layer stack, right click on this layer and choose Clear layer style.  This layer will have 2 layer styles.  First, we put down some good looking mud as a Pattern overlay.  I used something called mud_grass found here: http://local.wasp.uwa.edu.au/~pbourk...ud/index2.html  I then reduce the scale to 75%.  Next, I want my mud to be wet so it needs to be darkened with a Color overlay of something...I went with a medium gray, hex code 84817B (RGB 132, 129, 123).  I set the mode to Multiply.

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## phatticus

31.	Duplicate this layer (it becomes River base copy 3).  On the layer stack, right click on this layer and choose Clear Layer Style.  Ctrl+click on the River base layer to load it as a selection.  Select > Modify > Contract = 50. Select > Feather = 50.  Select > Inverse.  Hit the delete key then deselect.  What this does is cut our river away from the edge because we want our edges to be shallow (and therefore we can see some of that yummy mud).  Lastly, set the fill of this layer to zero (on the layer stack).
32.	This layer gets 3 layer styles.  First, we put in a Color overlay of a medium gray with a hint of blue, hex code 505A64 (RGB 80, 90, 100).  Set the opacity at 90%.  Second, we add an Inner glow of a medium gray, hex code 606060 (RGB 96, 96, 96).  Set the mode to overlay, opacity at 50%, and size is 100.  The reason that our gray is not 50% gray is because in overlay mode it is invisible; so by setting it to be darker than 50% gray the overlay acts to darken things up.  Lastly, we add an Outer glow to enhance our sandy river bank.  I went with a sand color, hex code E9E2B4 (RGB 233, 226, 180).  Mode is soft light, opacity is 100%, and size is 100.  This might not look like much but just wait to see what happens after the next few steps.  You will notice that I went and smoothed my bumps with a big airbrush.

I played around with the Contract and Feather sizes.  50px was too much for my narrow river, and I ended up with 30px.

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## phatticus

33.	Let's add some eye candy and put in that sandy river bank.  Create a new layer, rename it to Sand1, and fill it with black.  Ctrl+click on the River base layer.  Select > Modify > Expand = 100.  Create a new layer and then fill it with white then deselect.  Merge down (ctrl+e).  Filter > Pixelate > Crystallize = 12.  Filter > Pixelate > Crystallize = 6.  Filter > Pixelate > Crystallize = 3.
34.	At the top of the screen click on Image > Adjustments > Brightness/Contrast.  Move the slider for contrast all the way up to 100.  Filter > Brush Strokes > Spatter = use the default settings.  Select > Color range = black with a fuzziness of 200.  Hit the delete key and deselect.  Move this layer underneath the River base copy layer.

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## phatticus

35.	This layer will have 5 layer styles.  First we put down a pattern, I like that mud grass so let's use that again...and again set the scale at 75%.  Since this doesn't look like sand we need some color so add a color overlay of something yellow, I went with hex code F0DC82 (RGB 240, 220, 130).  I set the mode at Linear dodge and the opacity at 33%.  I want this river to look more like a stream than a full-blown river and so it will have banks rather than just being kind of flat so let's add a Bevel and Emboss.  Inner bevel, chisel soft, depth is 50%, direction is down, size is 100, angle is -45, altitude is 30, highlight mode and shadow mode are both the same color of brown, hex code 5A461E (RGB 90, 70, 30), highlight mode is at screen and shadow mode is at multiply and both are at 100%.  We add a contour as well; on that window you will see an image that looks like a square with part of it white and part of it gray with a little triangle next to it...click on that triangle and a screen will pop up so scroll down and choose the Half Round.  Next, we add an Inner glow to enhance the shadow effect.  I went with the same brown as in the bevel, hex code 5A461E (RGB 90, 70, 30).  Mode is normal, size is 150, range is 40, and the contour is the half round.  Lastly, we add an outer glow of something tan, hex code 8C8250 (RGB 140, 130, 80).  Mode is normal, opacity is 50%, and size is 250.

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## phatticus

35.	This layer will have 5 layer styles.  First we put down a pattern, I like that mud grass so let's use that again...and again set the scale at 75%.  Since this doesn't look like sand we need some color so add a color overlay of something yellow, I went with hex code F0DC82 (RGB 240, 220, 130).  I set the mode at Linear dodge and the opacity at 33%.  I want this river to look more like a stream than a full-blown river and so it will have banks rather than just being kind of flat so let's add a Bevel and Emboss.  Inner bevel, chisel soft, depth is 50%, direction is down, size is 100, angle is -45, altitude is 30, highlight mode and shadow mode are both the same color of brown, hex code 5A461E (RGB 90, 70, 30), highlight mode is at screen and shadow mode is at multiply and both are at 100%.  We add a contour as well; on that window you will see an image that looks like a square with part of it white and part of it gray with a little triangle next to it...click on that triangle and a screen will pop up so scroll down and choose the Half Round.  Next, we add an Inner glow to enhance the shadow effect.  I went with the same brown as in the bevel, hex code 5A461E (RGB 90, 70, 30).  Mode is normal, size is 150, range is 40, and the contour is the half round.  Lastly, we add an outer glow of something tan, hex code 8C8250 (RGB 140, 130, 80).  Mode is normal, opacity is 50%, and size is 250.

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## phatticus

36.	Now that looks much better.  The screen edges kind of mess up the bevel so grab the Eraser tool.  At the top of the screen make sure that you are in brush mode, set the flow to 5%, and pick the airbrush soft round 300 tip.  At the screen edges do some light erasing to get the bevel back under control...this will take a certain kind of touch so you will need to play with it and undo thins until you get it right.

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## phatticus

37.	You know me and that I like to over-complicate things  :Smile:   So duplicate this layer and clear the layer styles.  Set the fill to zero and add a pattern overlay of Gouache Light on Watercolor; it comes with Photoshop...if you don't see it then you will have to load it in from the Presets folder (Edit > Preset Manager > Patterns > click the Load button and then navigate your way to the Adobe/Photoshop/Presets/Patterns folder and load all of those in).  Set the mode to hard light and the opacity at 50%.

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## phatticus

38.	Click back on the River base copy 3 layer.  Duplicate this layer and rename it to Ripples.  Clear the layer styles (right click on this layer in the layer stack).  Set the fill to zero.  Add a layer style of Bevel and Emboss.  Leave all of the settings alone except for shadow mode...set that at zero opacity.  Add a Texture to that bevel...pick something that you like.  I went with something called crystal4 and set the depth at +18.  This pattern is included in the zip that comes with the tut.

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## phatticus

39.	The last part of our river will be to put some ripples around the edge.  So create a new layer and rename it to Edge ripples.  
40.	This part can be confusing for rookies.  Ctrl+click on the River base copy layer in the layer stack.  Click on the Paths tab (or open it if you have turned it off). At the bottom of the paths window click on Make work path from selection. Click on the Brush tool and then at the top of the screen click that little triangle to open the Brush Picker.  Scroll down the list and pick the one called Ornament 1 (it looks like a little wave or tilda).  If you don't see this brush listed then load it via the Preset manager following the steps I showed you for loading up the patterns...but this time go to the Brushes folder instead of the Pattern folder.  We need to modify this brush tip so open the Brushes window (Window > Brushes). Click on Brush Tip Shape and change the spacing to 100%.  Click on Shape Dynamics and set the size jitter to 100%, angle jitter at 5% (set the control for this to Direction), and roundness jitter at 100%.  Click on Scattering and set the Scatter to around 300 and the Count is 2.  Make sure that white is the foreground color. Still on the Paths window, at the bottom, click on Stroke path with brush.  When done, drag the path to the trash can at the bottom of the screen.

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## phatticus

41.	Click back on the Layers tab.  Filter > Distort > Ripple = use Large ripples.  Ctrl-click on the River base layer.  Select > Inverse.  Hit the delete key and deselect.  This erases white ripples on the bank.  Create a new layer and then Filter > Render > Clouds.  Select > Color range = black with a fuzziness of 200.  Delete this layer by dragging it to the trash can at the bottom of the screen. Now hit the delete key a few times...I did it 10 times, then deselect.  This erases randomly and cuts out big chunks of ripples creating something quite random looking.  If there are still some ugly ripples left then just erase them with the Eraser tool (make sure that you use a small tip like 5-9 pixels).  
42.	Our river is finally done.  It looks pretty good, too.  If you want to you can play with some pattern overlays on the River base copy 3 layer.

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## phatticus

42.	Our river is finally done.  It looks pretty good, too.  If you want to you can play with some pattern overlays on the River base copy 3 layer.
43.	On the layer stack, at the bottom there is an icon that looks like a folder...click on that.  Rename it to Terrain.  Click on the top layer in the stack, it should be Edge ripples.  Click, hold, and drag this layer into the folder.  In order the keep the layers in their proper order, continue going down the list putting each layer into the folder from top to bottom.  Don't put the Background layer in.  To the left of the folder name is a little triangle, click that to collapse the view.  Now we have more space in our layer stack.

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## phatticus

45.	TOWN PLANNING
46.	Now it's time to start thinking about our town and how it would be laid out.  The first thing I look for is the high ground and plan to put a castle or fort there.  Create a new layer and rename it to “Layout”.  Grab the Pencil tool and draw a circle there.  Next, I think about the walls and draw a line around an area that is fairly elevated but nothing too strict. I'll put my nobles here.  I draw another, wider ring, to encompass a larger area for my merchants to live and work.  Lastly, I draw out an even wider ring to encompass the rest of the town.

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## phatticus

48.	I'm doing a village here and it will be inside of a fort...sort of a frontier village thing.  So let's lay in some rough idea of roads.  Create a new layer and rename it to “Roads”.  Grab the Brush tool, it doesn't matter right now what size tip that you use to draw your roads since we're not ready to worry about scale just yet.  Start at the castle and draw a road that leads away from here to the river somehow.  Cross over the river and continue to the edge of the screen.  This will be our “Main Street”.  Taking into account how we laid out our rings for the various areas, put one road that goes from the main street through the area for nobles.  Put in a road for the merchant area and then a road for the peasant area.  Now we can start adding in smaller streets and alleys.

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## phatticus

49.	Once we have a decent looking road layout we can start thinking about what buildings go where.  Create a new layer and rename it to Notes. Since I'm building a frontier fort I'm going to put in some industries that support the defenses...tanner (cures hides), armoury (armor and shields), bowyer (makes bows), fletcher (makes arrows), and shield painter (designs heraldry and makes basic non-metal shields).  I want these buildings to be rather close to one another, my personal preference for a small village.  A large city might have these buildings on opposite sides of town or have many of them scattered around.  The exception to this is the tanner  it's a very smelly place and people usually don't want it too close to where they are trying to eat their dinner.  
50.	There are other smelly buildings like dyer (colors cloth, leather, etc), launderer (collects chamber pots from window sills to clean clothes), slaughterhouse, soap-maker (boiling lye is smelly), chandler (they didn't have potpourri candles back then), paper-maker (not sure why but it is smelly), oiler/oynter (boils blubber for lamp oil), butterer (stale milk, cheese, and butter is smelly), etc. so I try to keep them together and away from the residences.  Since nobles are usually a rather sedentary bunch they like to sleep in so there won't be a smithy or carpenter nearby waking them up in the morning.  Scandalous lot that they are, smithies wouldn't want to be near them anyway.  So I use the Pencil tool and draw little circles for where I want to put things.  I also write in what is what so that I don't forget.
51.	There are some good-smelling places like the bakery, brewer, vintner (makes wine), spice shop, and the perfumery.  There are some quiet places like the scribe, book-binder, library, seamstress (plain dresses), cobbler, weaver, monastery, abbey, nunnery, church, shrine, etc.  The barracks usually needs lots of space for their training yard and if you want to have a stables for the cavalry then you're going to need a large amount of space (unless they train out in the countryside), the archery range also takes up some space.  Nobody wants to live near the jail, courthouse, stockade, gibbet, dong-farmer (cleans up after the horses), or other such vile places.  Oh, and don't put in a thieves quarter or thieves den as these places are meant to be secret and can usually be found near the wharf, brothel, slums, underground, etc...if there is a run-down part of town you can safely assume that the thieves live there...although, most would say that the nobles are the real thieves  :Smile:

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## phatticus

59.	Now we have to start thinking about scale.  How wide of an area does the image show?  Is it a few hundred yards for a tiny village or is it a much larger distance (mile or kilometer) for a big city?  Whatever you decide on is important because your brush tip size will be relevant here.  If you're doing a big city and you pick a really big brush tip then the scale will be off and you'll have to redo your roads.  So the next thing you have to figure out is how much does 1 pixel represent?  For a big city, 1 pixel = 5 to 10 feet (for me) and a village will be more like 1 pixel = 6 inches to 1 foot.  If you want you can go smaller but I'm not very good at that scale and this will result in a very large image.  
60.	ROADS
61.	So with my village in mind I choose a 27 pixel soft round brush tip to represent 15 foot wide roads (wide enough for two carts to go by each other), since this is an odd number I set it to 30.  This means that my scale is going to be 1 pixel = 6 inches.  I start painting in my roads (color doesn't matter) and when done I apply some layer styles; Pattern overlay to give it some texture (I went with the mud grass again at 50% opacity), Color overlay of something tan (I went with 9C8860, RGB 156, 136, 96 at 33% opacity), outer glow and inner glow are the same tan color but outer glow is set to normal at 50% opacity and inner glow is set to screen at 33% opacity (it is also set to center and not edge), I add an inner shadow of the same tan to put some mud around the inner edges (distance is zero).  Lastly, I set the fill of the layer to zero to remove any of the paint color.  These roads might not final but at least they look good and their placement is near final.  Later, we might have to erase and redraw in some places.

NOTES: I have chosen a scale of 1 pixel=5ft, as my town is relatively large (really, it is a city, so I wanted large paved roads).  As a result, I have chosen a 5 pixel wide brush.  I used a stone tile pattern from my library for the pattern overlay.  I used a dark brown (58492b) for the color overlay to make the stone tiles "dirty", and then used all the above additional styles with the same brown.

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## phatticus

62.	CASTLE
63.	With that done, the only thing that I really know is where I want to put the castle...on the highest ground.  So create a new layer, set white as the foreground color, click the pencil tool, and draw in a castle shape.  Not so easy is it?  What I do is to pick the 24 pixel hard square tip.  In the brush editor window I set the spacing to 300%, and then mess around with the shape dynamics of size jitter and roundness jitter (size jitter will give varying size squares and the roundness jitter will produce rectangles and combined we get varying size of squares and rectangles).  Then I draw some lines.  What results is a bunch of blocks that I will use to start shaping a castle.
64.	Next, I grab the Magic Wand tool (it looks like a dandelion).  I click on a shape and drag it into a position around one of the bigger chunks, I'll rotate if necessary (Edit > Transform > Rotate), then deselect (ctrl+d).  I keep doing this until I have something that looks halfway decent.  As you do this you will eventually begin to see with your imagination a castle shape form...it's sort of like building a castle brick by brick.  Once this is done erase the unused blocks.

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## phatticus

65.	Add a layer style of pattern overlay of some rocks, blocks, or bricks pattern (I use  something called rock10...it's in the zip file).  You'll have to set the scale of the pattern to suit you so I went with 10%.  This pattern is far too teal so I add a color overlay of a dark brown, hex code 4B4000 (RGB 75, 64, 0) set to color at 50% opacity.  I like to do my castle as a big rectangle on one layer (called Castle) and then towers on another layer (called Castle towers).  Next I'll add a stroke; black, outside, size is 2.  Lastly, I'll add an inner glow of white set to screen at 75% opacity, size is 2 and choke is 100 to act as a parapet.  Do not rotate anything yet.

NOTES:  I used a brown rock tile from my library.  It was too red, so I used a color overlay with a dark gray (55534e) to dull it out.  In my case, my town sits against granite mountains of this color, and I wanted the castle to be made of the same stone.  For the inner glow, I used a gray-green (85846d), which makes the parapets appear to be of the same material as the rest of the castle wall.

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## phatticus

66.	Create a new layer and rename it to “Castle roof”.  Grab the Rectangular Marquee tool.  Click, hold, and drag out a rectangle to be used as a roof for a section of the castle.  Click the paint bucket tool and fill this layer then deselect.
67.	Add some layer styles.  First, we get a pattern overlay of something that looks like roof tiles, shingles, or wooden planks (I use “red shingle roof” in the zip file) at a scale of 15%.  I like my rich people to live under copper roofs so I add a color overlay of blue, hex code 004064 (RGB 0, 64, 100) set to color mode. This is too dark and so I add an inner glow of white; mode is screen at 25% opacity and size is 30.  Next, I add an inner bevel, chisel soft, size is 21, angle is -45, altitude is 30,  highlight mode is white at screen 50% opacity.  Now it looks like weathered copper.  Lastly, I'll add a 2-pixel black stroke to the outside.
68.	If you want to rotate the castle then link the Castle layer and Castle tower layer and merge them together then link to the castle roof layer.  You do this by looking at the layer stack, click on the castle layer, you will see an eye and a paintbrush, directly above the paintbrush is the Castle tower layer but it has an empty box instead of a paintbrush.  If you click in the empty box a chain will appear...the layers are now linked together.  Merge down (ctrl+e) and rename the layer to “Castle”.  Click on the Castle roof layer and link it to the Castle layer.  Now you can rotate and preserve any bevel properties on the roof (highlight and shadow) but not pattern, it always stays oriented to the page unless rasterized (the layer style has to become part of the layer itself instead of just being an effect).  When we merged our Castle and Castle tower layers this rasterized the layer styles and allows us to rotate the castle and since our roof is linked but not merged the bevel will retain its orientation to the sun.

NOTES: I used a red cedar roof texture, which I darkened to give it a more weathered feel.  I used a bevel to give it the appearance of shape.

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## phatticus

69.	CURTAIN WALL
70.	Now I need to put in a block wall around my castle.  Keeping image scale in mind I choose the 6 pixel hard round pencil tip and draw a curtain wall.  If you want to keep lines straight then click once to place a dot then hold down the shift key and then click again somewhere else on down the line.  If this were a big city I'd make my wall thicker but since this is a village I probably should not even have a block wall...but who cares  :Smile:   On the layer stack, right click on the castle layer and choose “copy layer style”.  Right click on the block wall layer and choose “paste layer style”.  
71.	I want a gatehouse to cross the road leading in to my castle so I click on the castle layer.  I draw out a rectangle with the rectangle marquee tool and then fill with the paint bucket.  Since there are layer styles already built into this layer I don't have to do anything more unless I want to rotate the gatehouse.  Once I have rotated then I deselect.  If you try to rotate after deselecting then the whole layer will move.

NOTES:  I wanted a stone wall around both the castle and the city, so I used a thicker brush (4px) for the curtain wall, and thinner crush (3px) for the city wall.  I used the same stone texture for the walls that I used for the castle, such that the entire city appears to have been created from the same quarry stone.

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## phatticus

I wanted a covered stone bridge, so instead of following steps 75-80 I instead created a new layer and named it Bridges.  I set the foreground color to white, and used the pencil to draw in a straight path bridge across my river.  I then copied the style from "City Wall" layer and pasted onto this layer.   Next, I duplicated the "Bridges" layer and named it "Bridge Roof".  I cleared the style on this layer, and then copied and pasted the style from the Castle Roof.  I played around with the sizing on the roof, and ultimately decided I like it covering the entire bridge, but keeping them in separate layers allows me to change my mind and remove the roof if I want.

I also increased the thickness of my city walls to give them a walkway for guards, and added gate houses to all the major entry points.

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## phatticus

81.	Now we have to do something real tricky and I haven't yet mastered it ...making a shadow for this bridge.  The first thing we need to do is create a new layer and rename it to “Bridge shadow”.  On the layer stack move this layer beneath the bridge layer.  Click on the Pen tool (it looks like a calligraphy pen). Pick one end of the bridge and make a click near the end in the middle.  Click again where the water meets the sand.  Cross the river and click on this side where the water meets the land.  Click one last time on the middle of the bridge near the end.  Right click on the Pen tool and change it to the Covert point tool (it looks like an upside down V).  We will use the tool to modify our two interior nodes (points).  So click on one and hold down.  Drag the mouse and try to make the resulting curve “fit” the river bank.  You'll have to use your judgment here.  Do the same thing on the other interior node.  Now click on the Brush tool and pick the same tip that we have been using for roads (27 soft round scaled up to 30). Click on the Paths tab.  Make sure that your foreground color is black.  At the bottom of the Paths tab you will see a ring, when you hover your mouse over that it will say “Stroke path with brush”.  So click that and a line will appear along the path.  If you like what you have then drag that path (on the path stack) to the trash can.  If you don't like what you have then hit shift+ctrl+z to undo the stroke and then go back to editing your path with the various path tools (right click on the Covert tool and you will see the various tools available).  Click back on the Layers tab and make any small adjustments by hand to the shadow.  Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur = 10.  Set the layer's opacity to 75%.

NOTES:  I used 5 points for my path, I added a point in the center of the bridge so that I could get the shadow to fall on the water properly in the middle of the span.

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## LonewandererD

Whoa  :Surprised:  

That's a lot of posts to put up in one go. I like your idea, Ascension's tut is great and now that someone is showing a step by step process it can help others to understadn it a little better. A few notes though, mayeb you should move away from using blue in your posts, its a little hard to read. Some of the streets on the northern side of the river are meeting at odd angels, making triangular plots of land that look like it would be difficult to place a house on it. Finally, I think you may have made a mistake in making the land, I've used the same process and I remember the land looking rougher, yours looks a little too blurred. I could be wrong though, I'm sure Ascension will pop around soon to clarify this.

Rep for the effort.

-D-

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## phatticus

NOTES: Steps 82-85 in the tutorial are intended to create wooden platforms for the gatehouses in the palisades.  Since I am using stone gate houses, I skipped these steps.

86.	FOOTINGS
87.	If you have some really long bridges then you're going to need some support in the middle.  I choose to do mine in stone since they will be sitting in the river (wood will get pummeled and destroyed in floods).  Create a new layer and on the layer stack, drag this layer underneath of the bridge layer.  Grab a square pencil of a size big enough to be sturdy for your bridge.  Click, hold, and drag out a line big enough to be seen then add some layer styles.  Stroke, 2 pixels and black; pattern overlay of the rock10 pattern at 5% scale; color overlay of brown, hex code 4B4000 (RGB 75, 64, 0) set to hue at 75% opacity; and an inner bevel chisel soft.  Use the Marquee tool to make a selection around this chunk and rotate it to fit the bridge properly (that is, perpendicularly).  Draw out some more lines and marquee them and rotate them if necessary.  If you plan to put in a mill along the river, which I do, then we will be adding more footings later.
88.	Hold down the ctrl key then click on the icon (in the layer stack) for “create a new layer”.  This will create a new layer underneath of the footings layer.  Rename this layer to “foam”.  Grab the Brush tool, if you do not see it then right click on the Pencil tool and change it.  Change the tip so the soft round 3 pixel tip and at the top of the screen, change the flow to 20%.  Now draw in some squiggly lines that make it look like water flowing around the footings.  If you plan to put in a mill then we will be doing some more squiggles later.

NOTES: For the foam, I set the foreground color to white, and drew in the foam lines with a 5px soft tip brush.  I then selected the smudge tool, again with a 5px tip, and smudged over all the lines until I got the result I wanted

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## phatticus

89.	MILL
90.	So let's get that out of the way right now.  We will start out with the same process that we used for the bridges so we will use a line as before and we will also use something bigger.  We will add a new wrinkle as well, though.  
91.	First things first.  Create a new layer.  Now we need to keep our scale in mind.  Since my roads are roughly 10 feet wide and I used a 19 pixel tip that means that my scale is about 6 inches per pixel.  I'll start with a 20 pixel hard square tip on my pencil.  I'll make 4 clicks, one right next the other so that my building is 40 feet long.  Ctrl+click on this layer in the layer stack, duplicate this layer, Filter > Noise > Add Noise = 400%, Filter > Blur > Motion Blur = 90 degree, distance 10, deselect, merge down.  On the layer stack, right click on the bridge layer, choose “copy layer style”, click back on this mill layer and right click and select “paste layer style”.  This is going to be our roof but it's flat right now.  I could add an inner bevel chisel soft but I don't want that kind of roof for a simple village. Instead I'm going to add a gradient overlay to simulate the roof shading.  
92.	This gradient is going to be a little tricky if you've never edited a gradient before.  So click on the cursive F at the bottom of the layer stack and pick “gradient overlay”.  The first thing that we are going to do is change the blend mode to overlay.  Next, you will see a little preview of what the gradient looks like, it should be black to white, so click on this.  This brings up the Gradient editor.  The sliders along the top are for opacity and we'll leave these alone for now.  The sliders along the bottom are for color.  Click, hold, and drag the white slider to the middle at 50.  If you hover your mouse just under the gradient then your pointer should turn into a hand and this will let you add a new slider if you click...so do that.  Click, hold, and drag this slider all the way to the right.  At the bottom of this screen you will see the word “color” with a box next to it.  Click on that box and bring up the Color Picker (you can also just double click on the slider).  Change this color to something of a light gray, I went with C0C0C0 (RGB 192, 192, 192).  Add another slider and change this to something of a medium gray, I went with A0A0A0 (RGB 160, 160, 160).  Now click, hold, and drag this slider to the middle at 50.  Here's the tricky part...a slight movement, either to the left or right, can change the gradient here.  What we want is a gradient that goes from black to medium gray then forms a hard edge with white and goes to light gray.  If we move just to the left a hair it will change to black to white, medium gray to light gray.  You might want to save this gradient for future use (we will be using it again).  To do this, type in a name (where it says “custom”) and lick on the “New” button.  The “Save” button saves the whole set of gradients to a file so that you can upload that file and share it with others.  Lastly, we need to think of where the sun is.  For me, it's in the lower right so I need to hit the box that says “Reverse”.  Do not rotate this shape just yet, we have more stuff to add.  

Sicne I am using stone city walls, I needed to manually define the styles for the mill.  I used the values from the section of the tutorial where the bridge was constructed, as that seemed like the best option.

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## phatticus

93.	Grain mills are usually arranged with at least 2 floors, I'll explain in a bit. So make a larger square with the Rectangular Marquee tool (hold down the shift key to keep it square), create a new layer, grab the Paint Bucket tool and fill with black, then repeat the process from the previous step (noise, motion blur, color, gradient, etc).  On the layer stack, link this layer to the mill layer.  Create a new layer. Now change the pencil tip to something smaller and draw an upside down T, this is going to be our waterwheel.  Again, do the noise, motion blur, and color overlay but omit the gradient.  Link this layer up as well.  The reason that mills had multiple floors is that the moving parts were often loud and caused injuries (you could lose an arm in the gears and no one wants to buy bloody flour) so only the millers were allowed up hwere.  The waterwheel was connected to a horizontal beam with gears on it that connected to a vertical beam with gears on it which was connected to a horizontal grindstone to grind the grain into flour.  This didn't matter for saw mills, though.  The actual moving parts were usually on the top floor (I'm not sure why that is but it is) and the lower floors were for packaging, baking, and sleeping.  Having mills on the river was also a benefit because the moving parts often caused fires, especially in the dry winter air (lots of static electricity).

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## phatticus

94.	I also put a deck around the mill in the same way that I did the platforms for the gatehouses.  Then I put a railing in so that people won't fall into the river. This was just a 1 pixel pencil and then given a brown color overlay.  Next, I put in some steps.  For these, I did the usual noise, blur, color overlay, but the gradient was different...it was black to white, black to white, black to white, and black to white.  The black to white was gradual but there is that hard edge where white turns back in to black like we did for the mill roof...these hard edges were at 25, 50, and 75 so that means there is a black slider at 0, 25, 50, and 75 and a white slider at 25, 50, 75, and 100.  Lastly, I merged all of these layers together and then rotated it to fit the angle of the river.  I then finished it off with some more footings on that layer and some foam on that layer.  
95.	With this done I went and moved the bridge and mill layers beneath the roads, then airbrushed some road onto the mill steps and bridges to look like wear spots.

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## phatticus

96.	HOUSING
97.	Let's get started on this and really make some headway.  Oftentimes you will see the palisade walls have nothing under them except for things like hay, carts, and tools.  This is not very efficient for a growing village so I choose to make houses right up against the wall.  This allows more people to live there without having to move the walls or build upward or build new sections of town with more walls.  Of course the people who live here are in some serious danger in case of an attack but hey, the people who live here aren't rich either.  The guards have to have something to walk around on anyways so why not just drop a wall in and let people live there?  This part will be exactly like how we did the bridges.  Draw out a long line, ctrl+click, duplicate layer, noise, motion blur, deselect, merge down, color overlay, gradient overlay. 
98.	This next bit is important because we didn't have to do it for the mill.  The layer styles have to be rasterized (this means that they become part of the layer instead of just being an effect upon the layer) or else the gradient overlay will get messed up once we start rotating.  So create a new layer, link it to the house layer, on the layer stack move this layer underneath the house layer, click on the house layer and merge down.  Now we can grab the Rectangular Marquee tool, drag out a selection, move, rotate, repeat.  
99.	For individual houses we'll do exactly like we did for the mill...minus the layers for deck, railing, etc.  
100.	I like to put some shacks in to denote lower class housing, again, just like the mill but the color overlay is slightly more yellowish.  
101.	Lastly, I put in some huts with a hay-looking roof of a tan or yellow color overlay.  


NOTES:  I started with the housing in the slums.  First, I wanted to make the ground appear a little less inviting, so I created a layer (between the terrain and the road layers) named "Slum Ground".  I used the polygonal selection tool to snap out a rough area for the slums (using my roads as a guide).  I then feathered the selection with a 15px size.  I then used a pattern style for a cracked mud pattern from my library, reduced to 10% size.  I then switched to the eraser tool and selected a large splatter brush, and used it to cut through and erode the mud so some areas of green poked through.  I then proceeded to place the huts.

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## Katto

I'm looking forward to the final pdf. I have not managed this tutorial, because of my bad english and lack of pictures. Please post your notes in a different color. They are very hard to read.

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## phatticus

OK, so I have determined that I made some serious mistakes early in the process, and to figure it out I am reworking those early stages.  I will post more when I get to the point that I have something to show.  Thanks for the input so far, I am learning a TON in the process.

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## ScenesFromAMemory

OK, I must be doing something wrong when beginning construction of the river. I am looking great, up to the inner shadow. If I set the choke to 33%, I can see nothing of my river. It looks nothing like you depict in this screenshot. It turns into a brown muddy mess with no blue whatsoever. At the end of the river process, I end up with something that looks more like a muddy, grass road than a river. Any suggestions?

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## Ascension

I can't answer your question today as my brain is out of the office.  I'm hoping it comes back within the next few days.  In the meantime could you post a screenshot showing the layer palette?  When calling for it fails I just put up screenshots and it comes back.

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## ScenesFromAMemory

Ask and you shall receive Ascension. 

Here is the screen shot that you requested. I don't know if I messed up on of the steps or if I am experiencing an absence of basic Photoshop skills.

If you would like any more details or screenshots, please ask. Thank you!

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## Ascension

My first thought is that your rivers are too thin, fatten those puppies up...take em from streams to rivers.  It seems like you're a little too far "zoomed out".  My second thought is that the opacity levels are pretty low, because the rivers are thin, so you don't have any solid areas.  Third, change the settings and see what happens...half of the fun is striking out on your own and seeing what you come up with.  It might be golden or it might be junk but then you can try something else and _that_ might be golden.   :Smile:

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