September 2016 Challenge: Varenthia

[Mouse]

Oh my! Very beautiful

I really like the embossed feel to everything, and the coastline is very convincing.

[kacey]

Thank's Mouse, I wasn't sure if it was too much.

[Mouse]

If you increased it in any way it would look too plastic, but as it stands its just right

[Diamond]

You know, I don't know WHY it never occurred to me to do a bevel on the rivers like that. Genius! And I love love love your border elements and icons. Lovely and impressive.

[arsheesh]

This is really coming along nicely! You've done a great job of placing the colors you had to work with. And I love what you've done with the ornate border, it looks really nice. One thing I noticed though is that the stone texture you are using for the part of the border is not quite as crisp and clear as the textures in the rest of the map. It's a small detail really, but I can't help but think that replacing the existing texture with a higher rest stone/granite texture would only further enhance the piece. Just my 2c. Great job so far.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[kacey]

You know, I don't know WHY it never occurred to me to do a bevel on the rivers like that. Genius! And I love love love your border elements and icons. Lovely and impressive.

Thank you so much Diamond. I was really unsure about the rivers, I'm so glad you approve.

[kacey]

This is really coming along nicely! You've done a great job of placing the colors you had to work with. And I love what you've done with the ornate border, it looks really nice. One thing I noticed though is that the stone texture you are using for the part of the border is not quite as crisp and clear a<script id="gpt-impl-0.10291155477546454" src="https://partner.googleadservices.com/gpt/pubads_impl_95.js"></script>s the textures in the rest of the map. It's a small detail really, but I can't help but think that replacing the existing texture with a higher rest stone/granite texture would only further enhance the piece. Just my 2c. Great job so far.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

Thank’s Arsheesh, I really appreciate you’re feedback. I actually adapted you’re geographic icons tutorial for Gimp, and Inkscape into Photoshop to do my icons. I’ve never used embossing before this, or made little gems, and tho I had to do things a little differently to make it work in Photoshop, it was you’re tutorial which made it possible, so I can’t thank you enough!

As for the border resolution problem, I am well aware. It’s been driving me crazy because it only looks that way after resizing to jpeg, and posting it on the forum. My full res PSD does not have this problem, even when I zoom in fairly close. So it’s odd to me that it only effects that part, and I don’t know how to fix it because it’s definitely the jpeg compression causing it.

I took a quick screen shot of my web browser showing my map as I see it through the forum, over top of my actual file in photoshop, I tried to zoom them in on the same spot. I hope you can see what I mean...Keep in mind that this is just a low res screen shot, zoomed right in, comparing the two so my actual file is much more clear, and not so pixelated.



To me this is not a small detail...It’s a big one, because the texture on the actual map looks nice, and clear, and sharp in photoshop, and I’m really happy with it, then when I post it here it looks like garbage.

Do you think that reducing the size even more, and saving it as a PNG before posting could possibly solve this problem? The jpeg compression makes everything look really fuzzy, and I think it really takes away from the quality of the image.

[kacey]

I think I fixed the resolution problem on the border texture. I figured out that it was reducing the file size in photoshop causing the blurry texture not necessarily the jpeg compression. I ended up saving the full resolution file as a jpeg, and reduced the quality to 11 instead of 12 to get the file size small enough to post on the forum. The funny thing is, the blurry version is bigger at 9.4mb, then the new more clear version at 6.6mb. It’s not perfect, changing it to jpeg still reduces the quality quite a bit, but I think it’s much better now.

Let me know what you think, is the border texture more clear now that I’ve changed it?

### Latest WIP ###

[Meshon]

Those borders are fantastic, and the texture is looking crisper. One thing I noticed is that the light seems to be coming from the top of the map but some parts of your border also have highlights on the other side. Are the settings for light direction uniform across those elements? Or is it some sort of reflected light? Either way, this map is coming along really well!

cheers,
Meshon

[kacey]

Those borders are fantastic, and the texture is looking crisper. One thing I noticed is that the light seems to be coming from the top of the map but some parts of your border also have highlights on the other side. Are the settings for light direction uniform across those elements? Or is it some sort of reflected light? Either way, this map is coming along really well!

cheers,
Meshon

Thank's Meshon, I appreciate the kind words. The light on the other side of the border is indeed suppose to be reflected light. At first it was an accident when I added a gloss contour to my layer style, but I liked the look of the border more after it happened so I decided to keep it.