# Mapping Resources > Mapping Elements >  My Tree and Mountain Brushes & Patterns

## Wag

Howdy Folks

I finally got around to organizing my Tree and Mountain brushes & Patterns to share with the community.  They are all meant for use in Photoshop but if somone can make them work in gimp and other programs, please be my guest.

I used Photoshop CS3 to create these brushes and Patterns.  These are the same brushes I used in A Comprehensive Mat of Avani, and my work in progress Avani's Western Lands

Anyone familiar with Photoshop shouldn't have too much trouble importing these brushes or defining these textures.  I'll try to post a tutorial on how to do that in this thread when I get the chance.

These brushes are free for anyone to use on their maps and I hope people can enjoy them.  I do not require any references or links to myself or anything goofy like that.  The only thing I ask is that you do not try to relabel and sell these brushes as your own.  They are meant to be free to all who can use them.  I would even prefer people obtain them thru the Cartographers Guild so please keep re-distribution to a minimum as well, instead, please inform them of this forum and where they can find the brushes.

You may use these brushes in maps in your own artwork and cartography even if you intend those works to be sold.  I hope everyone can use and enjoy this little pack.  Thanks to everyone in this wonderful community!

Here are some samples of the Brushes:

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## Wag

And here is the brush and texture pack itself.

Enjoy!

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## Ascension

Awesome.  Thanks, man.  I snagged em.

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## Sigurd

Big thanks Wag. I'm going to enjoy experimenting with them. 


Sigurd

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## Exlor1986

This was exactly what I was looking for! I'll be experimenting with these brushes in my Japanese-style political map.

By the way, I just dumped the files in my .gimp-2.6\brushes folder and they worked immediately. Do brushes made for GIMP specifically work better in GIMP, or is this fine?

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## Steel General

Thanks Wag! I'll check 'em out.

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## RobA

> By the way, I just dumped the files in my .gimp-2.6\brushes folder and they worked immediately. Do brushes made for GIMP specifically work better in GIMP, or is this fine?


This is fine.

Gimp can happily use this style of brush (they are internally converted on load).  

-Rob A.

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## Nomadic

Awesome! Thanks for the sweet brush pack. Hmm I wonder if there's a way in photoshop to assign symbols to a que so that each time you click it chooses the next one. Would be a nice way to randomize mountains and trees.

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## RobA

> Awesome! Thanks for the sweet brush pack. Hmm I wonder if there's a way in photoshop to assign symbols to a que so that each time you click it chooses the next one. Would be a nice way to randomize mountains and trees.


Nope.

But gimp and psp can.

Attached is a set of three gimp image hoses.  one trees, one dead trees and one mountains.  The mountain one is huge, so use with caution  :Wink: 

-Rob A>

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## Wag

> Awesome! Thanks for the sweet brush pack. Hmm I wonder if there's a way in photoshop to assign symbols to a que so that each time you click it chooses the next one. Would be a nice way to randomize mountains and trees.


Man, that would be sweet for quick mapmaking.  I haven't found anything like that just yet I'm afraid, but it wouldn't surprise me if there was a way to do it somehow.  I know you can do a "dual brush" in photoshop somehow.  I'm not sure how that works or if you can do more than two.  If I ever find a way I'll be sure to post.

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## Ascension

I tried messing around with dual brush and that doesn't work.  The second/dual brush acts as a mask that is applied to the top/main brush...much like adding texture to a brush.  Say you have a 50-pixel mountain shape and your dual brush is like a 25-pixel mountain...only the pixels that correspond to both will be printed so you end up having to use a round brush  large enough so that it doesn't clip off an bits.  Then if you have large spacing the 2 brushes don't space properly as they are different size.

All in all dual-brushing doesn't work...I've beat myself about the head for many weeks trying to get it to work but it won't.  The best you can get is setting the size randomness (which has a whole new set of pains to be endured -- if said tip is 50 pixels at one spot the spacing to the next tip is 100 pixels but when the next tip prints it's at 30 pixels and 200% is then 60 pixels so if the next tip is say 100 then the images produced tend to overlap).  You can offset this a bit by setting the spacing to 300% or more but then it doesn't cluster properly.  

So what I end up doing is a series of single clicks and if something overlaps I undo it.  But it's still the same shape, which sucks, so it's best to learn GIMP or Paint Shop Pro for this kind of stuff.  Or have tremendous patience.

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## shpena

Awesome stuff man.  Reminds me of the CC2 hand drawn symbols, and I _LOVE_ those.  :Smile: 
Thanks for sharing!!!

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## Wag

> All in all dual-brushing doesn't work...I've beat myself about the head for many weeks trying to get it to work but it won't.  The best you can get is setting the size randomness (which has a whole new set of pains to be endured -- if said tip is 50 pixels at one spot the spacing to the next tip is 100 pixels but when the next tip prints it's at 30 pixels and 200% is then 60 pixels so if the next tip is say 100 then the images produced tend to overlap).  You can offset this a bit by setting the spacing to 300% or more but then it doesn't cluster properly.


Yeah, I've tried all those things before too and didn't get any further than you did...  it's frustrating.

This brush pack I did go thru and resize the brushes to manageable sizes and they all have different size/spacing/angle/roundness and other jitters to aid in a more fluent look, but in my maps I ultimately ended up using these textures that I could fill in here and there for forests.

Mountains aren't so bad because once you know where your range is going you can just fill them in as needed.

I'm glad you like them shpena.  My goal in making many of these brushes was to make photoshop as easy to use as some of those tools in CC2.  I tried out CC2 for a bit and was able to do some simple maps, but missed the complete control and flexibility that I had with Photoshop.  Once in photoshop, I missed the fractal terrains and dodaad stamps that they had so I began making my own brushes that I could use as my own "rubber stamps."  I know CC2 is intended to be an easy mapmaking tool, but it was so radically different than photoshop, which I have been using for upwarsds of ten years now, that I found it difficult to adapt and change.  I haven't tried CC3 yet, but it looks to be much more impressive than CC2.  I have a feeling I'll be sticking with what I know tho.

I intend on doing a set of castles, outposts, towns, and other landmarks at some point as well.  I'll continue to post the ones that I can.

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## Eldask

what about water brushes in this style? do you have one?

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## guyanonymous

Brilliant! Thank you!

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## Ghostman

The mountain brushes are very useful indeed. Being a GIMP user, I tried RobA's randomized hose, but found it unpractical because the mountains are of different sizes and shapes. So I made my own GIMP hoses, separating low and high mountains to their own groups and adjusting the sizes to roughly match. I've included them in the attached zip file, in case anyone is interested.

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## RobA

> The mountain brushes are very useful indeed. Being a GIMP user, I tried RobA's randomized hose, but found it unpractical because the mountains are of different sizes and shapes. So I made my own GIMP hoses, separating low and high mountains to their own groups and adjusting the sizes to roughly match. I've included them in the attached zip file, in case anyone is interested.


Brilliant!

Any restriction on use/license?  I want to finish up this request and this would save me the time of making my own set.

-Rob A>

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## Ghostman

They're just Wag's brushes placed in GIMP hoses and scaled a bit. If anyone has the right to restrict their use, it should be Wag, not me. It's not like you couldn't get the exact same results by using the original brushes as you would with these hoses - you'd just have to do more work by manually selecting and scaling each individual brush.

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## Miss.Sunkiss

Thanks for the brushes  :Smile:  I am going to try and make my first map!

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## Coyotemax

bring it on!  and don't be afraid to post your progress as you go, we love seeing that sort of thing  :Smile:

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## Juggernaut1981

Consider yourself Rep-Whacked....

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## Leetsauce

thx repp wurthy !

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## AutumnRain

Thanks so much for sharing!!!  :Very Happy:

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## jeffreyboutte9

thank you for the brushs and patterns

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## thedukeofnuke

Very nice brushes - those mountains are just what i was looking for.  Cheers!

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## MrZwij

Apologies for resurrecting this old thread, but I'm just getting started figuring out GIMP and how to draw my own maps. This site is _super_ helpful and inspirational. But here's my question: I love the mountain brushes but they're too big. How do I resize them? Am I even asking the right question?

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## Ghostman

> I love the mountain brushes but they're too big. How do I resize them?


No need to modify the brushes themselves. In the GIMP toolbox, select the *Brush* tool, then choose the mountain brush you wish to use. Right under that you should see a horizontal scaling bar. Adjusting the bar will change the scale at which the brush will be painted.

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## MrZwij

> No need to modify the brushes themselves. In the GIMP toolbox, select the *Brush* tool, then choose the mountain brush you wish to use. Right under that you should see a horizontal scaling bar. Adjusting the bar will change the scale at which the brush will be painted.


Oh, dang! Of course! *slaps forehead* I was moving that "spacing" bar around in the Brushes toolbox. Did I mention I'm just getting started with GIMP?  :Smile:

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## JiveMiguel

What version of PS do I need to make these work? I downloaded your .abr files and Photoshop 7 said that they can't be used because they were made in a different version. I keep running into these issues here and there and am starting to think I really need to upgrade my PS.

Thanks in advance!

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## Ascension

If you're getting the incompatible thing then the PS version needs to be newer than what you have.  I have plain old CS (number 1) and don't have too many problems with brushes from newer versions (in fact, I don't think that I've ever had a problem getting a CS3 brush to work in my CS) but I had a heck of a time when I was still on 7 trying to get CS brushes to work.  So you will need to update but is the price worth it to you?  Alternatively, you could just take an image, crop it accordingly, and click "edit - define brush preset" and make your own brushes from the given image.  It's a lot of work but it's far cheaper than upgrading.

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## ianobscura

Cheers Wag - these are a really great help! You're too modest though, If I ever do get my damn map off the ground, you'll be sure to get a credit  :Very Happy:

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