However, I do want to cover some absolute basics. Even if you’re a Photoshop wizard, you’ll want to read the section about The Grid, as I’ve got some specific settings that work really well with fantasy cartography.

The Grid

You’re going to get so used to typing <command>’ that your fingers are going to fall off. That’s the key command that will turn on or off the grid in Photoshop. The grid is your friend, especially when it comes to shapes and polygons.

First, you’ll need to set it up. Photoshop’s defaults are alright but (trust me) you’ll want to have it super tight.

Now you have a grid that shows every pixel boundary. This isn’t super important with outdoor maps but you’ll find it invaluable with blueprints and battlemaps.

You’ll want to turn on “snap to grid”. This will ensure that when you set down points and lines in your shapes that they won’t be “halfsies” and create weird blurs.

You won’t turn the grid on all the time, and you’ll discover that it provides a color distortion effect when on, but when you’re moving anchor points around, you’ll think it a godsend.

Guides

Similarly useful to the grid, a Guide is useful for aligning objects and snapping them into line. Guides can be horizontal or vertical. There are two ways to add guides.

The second way is programmatically, and is useful if you need one placed exactly (e.g., at 4.25 inches in an 8.5 x 11 inch canvas).

You can move guides after the fact by switching to the Move tool and centering on the guide. You can prevent them from being accidentally nudged with View -> Lock Guides.

Layers

You need to understand what layers are. This is a “first-grade” lesson but it’s important.

Photoshop documents are structured in layers, in a stack, and read top-down. Layers can be turned on or off and individual effects can be applied to them. They can be duplicated and deleted.

You should never be afraid of adding or duplicating a layer. You will usually want to have one layer per object on the map, though “object” here can be broadly defined. For instance, I often make the entirety of a dungeon’s walls as a single vector layer.

Layers can (and should) be grouped into folders. You can turn a folder’s visibility off and on just like with a layer. Collect layers of like things together; that way you can turn them on or off if you need to as you work.

Additionally, you can give layers or folders colors. This can be useful when you have a lot of layers and groups to deal with (and you will, oh yes, you will).

Layer Comps

The Layers panel has a tab called Layer Comps. Layer comps are alternate views of a file. Each layer comp can define the visibility and layer style of any layer independently. This allows you to have multiple versions of your map in the same file. For example, you may want two versions of your map: one with color and one in black and white. Or you may want to have a version of a world map that shows nation borders and one that does not. You do this with layer comps.

You create a new layer comp by clicking the “New Layer Comp” button at the bottom of the pane (looks like a document). Give it a title (“Black and White,” say). This will create a new layer comp based on the current document state. Make changes to your layers (visibility, style, etc.). You’ll need to update the layer comp it for it to be saved.

With multiple layer comps, switching between map styles is a breeze. Note that adding layers and groups to the document does not automatically turn them on in the various layer comps; you’ll have to do that as you.

Selecting Whole Layer Pixels

A technique you will want to use a lot is selecting all of the pixels in a layer. This is a way for you to constrain where you’re editing or to do duplications (select a layer’s pixels, create a new layer, and use the paint bucket) or subtractions (select a layer’s pixels, switch to another, and hit <delete>).

Selecting a layer’s pixels is easy and requires only one click.

Smart Objects

Photoshop has the ability for you to define what are called Smart Objects. Smart objects are a great way to manage your maps when you have a lot of the same object over and over again, like settlement icons or bits of furniture in a battlemap. You can think of them as being similar to templates.

When you turn a layer or a group of layers into a smart object it becomes its own “mini document” that you can edit independently. Changes made to a smart object are immediately applied to all instances of that object.

Smart objects are non destructive. You can modify any cloned instance of a smart object independently (resize, mask, or even add layer effects) and it won’t affect the other copies (unless you modify the core object).

Making a smart object is easy.

You’ll have a new layer with a special icon inside it’s preview window. You can now duplicate this layer and move it anywhere you want.

Editing a smart object after the fact is just as easy.

You’ll notice that all the clones of the smart object will immediately update in your original document.

In the examples below, I have two icons that I want to convert to smart objects. I do so, and then clone the “City” icon several times. Afterwards, I edited the “City” smart object and changed its color to a blue.

You can “uncompile” smart objects by editing the object and then selecting and dragging the layers out of the smart object window and into your original canvas (drag to the original document’s tab to switch documents, then drag and drop the layers onto the canvas, not the layer’s tab).

Smart objects also allow you to use non-destructive filters on them (smart filters). However, how to use them is beyond the scope of this tutorial.

Gradients

I’m gonna be honest: working with gradients is a pain in the ass. Not because they’re difficult, but because they’re tedious. There’s a lot of back-and-forth with clicking dialogs and the like. Working with gradients is an exercise in experimentation.

However, you’re going to end up working with them from time to time so let’s talk about the gradient editors and how they work.

There are two main ways to add gradients: with the Gradient tool (a sub-tool found in the Paint Bucket menu) and through a Gradient Overlay Layer Style. Each behaves slightly differently.

When using the Gradient tool, the settings for the gradients are located in the top bar. When using layer styles, the settings are in the layer styles dialog. The biggest difference between the two ways of applying gradients is thus:

When using the Gradient tool, the direction of the gradient is set by clicking and dragging on the canvas, while in with Gradient Overlays it ise set in the dialog. Otherwise, editing gradients remains (mostly) the same (Gradient Overlays have a few extra bells and whistles).

Gradient Styles

There are several styles of gradients. They are:

• Linear. The gradient goes in one direction, source to end.
• Radial. The gradient flows outward from a central point.
• Angle. The gradient rolls away from its starting angle, in a circle.
• Reflected. The gradient goes in two directions from its center.
• Diamond. The gradient goes in four directions from its center.

You’ll probably use “Linear” and “Radial” the most.

Other Gradient Options

Gradients have several options beyond style that are important to know how to use.

• Blend Mode. Sets the blend mode for the gradient. You’ll want to use Color or Normal in most cases.
• Dither. Just don’t.
• Reverse. Changes the direction of the gradient to the opposite.
• Angle. Changes the direction the gradient is applied (Layer Style only).
• Scale. Changes the gradient’s internal scale. You probably won’t mess with this much; it can have subtle and unexpected effects.

The Gradient Editor

If you <double click> on the gradient box you’ll open the gradient editor. This window has several presets that you can immediately apply if you so choose (and you can save gradients to it).

The important thing to know is the bit at the bottom, with the color scales and stops. This shows what you’re gradient will look like.

The stops on the top of the preview denote the opacity of the gradient. The stops at the bottom denote the color of the gradient at that point.

Selecting any stop will allow you to edit the properties of it. Each stop has two options that can be modified: Color or Opacity, and Location.

You can edit the location of a stop by dragging it or entering a number. These numbers are percentages along the length of the gradient.

You can only edit the color on color stops and the opacity on opacity stops.

Adding a new stop is easy. Just click anywhere there isn’t a stop. You can drag it wherever you like or manually enter the location’s percentage.

To start, you need to know the difference between pixel layers and vector layers (also called “shapes” and “paths”).

A pixel layer contains that: pixels. Each pixel on the layer can be its own color or opacity. Pixel layers are difficult to work with because they’re “rasterized” – effectively “permanent”. You can overwrite pixels with other pixels, and you can mutate the layers, but it warps the pixels. However, pixel layers are very useful in other ways (especially with large documents).

A vector layer contains what’s called a shape or a polygon or a path. Vector layers are described with math that describes the coordinates of each of its anchor points and the connections between them.

Consider a red square that is 30 pixels by 30 pixels and is located at 100,100 (x,y). On a pixel layer, all pixels in the area between the area are colored red with an opacity of 1 (or 100%). On a vector layer, the same thing is described in math (anchors at [100,100], [100,130], [130,130], and [130,100], with a color fill of “red”).

You can resize both layers! But you will likely get blurring with a pixel layer when you do so, whereas with a vector layer the points remain exact. Since map making (especially blueprints) often requires rapid manipulation of shapes, vectors are the choice here.

The number of people I meet who think that Photoshop doesn’t or can’t do vector shapes well is weirdly high. Over the years, Photoshop has become my go-to for shape work.

Shapes

So how do you make them? It’s simple: you use the various Shape tools: the Rectangle, Rounded Rectangle, Ellipse, Polygon, Line, or Custom Shape tools.

Each shape tool has options (at the top bar) that you can modify. This is where you go to change the custom shape, for instance, or the border radius in a rounded rectangle. Don’t worry so much about fill and stroke right now.

The Pen

Okay, now that you’ve got shapes, it’s time to talk about the Pen tool. The pen tool also has several types, but you really just want to think about the main pen tool right now. This draws straight lines between anchor points. The pen lays down anchor points, allowing you to create arbitrary shapes. Just click on the first anchor point you laid down to close the shape (the cursor will change to indicate that you’ll be making a connection).

There are other pen tools. They can add or delete anchor points or change how they work. The big one to know is the Convert Anchor Point tool. It turns an anchor from being a solid corner to being curved with what are called “Bezier Handles”. Moving the handles around changes the curve of the point. Curves take some practice to get right.

The Selection Tool

Just above the Shape tool is the Selection tool. It’s either a black arrow or a white arrow, depending. The black arrow is the Path Selection tool and it will select all points and connections for a shape that you touch with it. The white arrow is the Direct Selection tool and will select individual anchor points. This one is far more useful for what you will do.

When you select individual anchor points, you can move just that point on the map. Want to resize only one half of a room? Select all the points on one side and not the other and you can move them with the arrow keys (hold down the <shift> key to move things by 10 pixels at a time). Hold the mouse and drag to move them all at once. Hold <shift> while dragging to force the motion to be in a line.

Combining and Subtracting Shapes

When you have two shape layers, you will often want to combine them or subtract one from the other. For instance, when I draw a battlemap room, I’ll often draw the shape of the room’s floor first. Then I’ll duplicate that layer, increase it’s size, and then subtract the shape of the floor (a duplicate layer) to create the shape of the walls. Or if I want a room that’s rounded on one side and square on the other, I’ll make a big circle shape and then merge it with a rectangle shape that is the same width.

Combining shapes is easy.

Bam. Now they’re a single layer!

But you have one more thing you need to do: merge the shape components. If you don’t do this, you’ll get weird effects when if you merge with another shape layer. To do this, select any shape manipulation tool (Shape, Pen, or the Path/Direct selection tool) and then in the top bar there’s a menu with a square or two square on it; you want to select the last thing in the list (Merge Shape Components). This deletes extra lines and combines anchor points that have the same coordinates.

Subtracting shapes is just as easy.

When shape layers merge they take the name, effects, and color of the “top” layer, always. I absolutely guarantee you that you’ll fuck this up a lot and have to undo work. You’ll forget to duplicate the layer you’re chopping, for instance, or you’ll lose some layer styles. It happens. You’ll get a rhythm eventually, though.

Making Holes

Say you have a shape for your walls, and you need to make a hole for an open doorway. There are a couple of ways to do this but the quickest is to add some anchor points along the shape and then delete some.

There are many layer effects. Not all of them will be useful to you (I’ve never in my life used the Satin effect, for instance) but some of them are so prevalent in my workflow I don’t know what I’d do if they went away.

Individually, the basic options of a given layer effect are easy to understand. Each one tends to have some more advanced features (such as contouring) but for the most part they are straight-forward.

Every layer effect has its own blend mode. Whichever blend mode you choose will change how the overall style behaves. Please be sure to read Photoshop Blend Modes for more information about blend modes when you’re done here; I’ll save discussing blend modes for that page.

Every effect also has an opacity slider. This obviously changes how opaque the it is and allows you to independently target them.

Some effects (like strokes) may be added multiple times. Other effects (like patterns or bevels) can only be applied once. If an effect can be applied multiple times there will be a “plus” icon next to it. There is a limit to the number of times you can add a specific effect. This will be most often used with strokes, glows, and shadows.

You can also use the layer styles panel to edit the blending options for the whole layer or to apply pre-defined styles from a library.

Layer Effects 101

Styles vs. Effects

The terms “style” and “effect” are often used interchangeably but they actually mean different things. An effect is a single instance (a stroke or an inner shadow). A style is the combination of several effects (the stroke and the shadow together).

A Note on CPU

Layer effects are heavy when it comes to Photoshop’s memory and CPU usage. The more layer effects and styles that exist, the slower and more difficult it will become to work with a document. This is compounded by a document’s size: the larger the size, the more work the system has to do to keep up.

Every time you move a layer with effects, the computer has to recalculate all the effects. If you move an anchor point, it has to recalculate all the other points. Drop shadows, glows (outer glows especially), bevels, and patterns are all “heavy” to calculate. Combine that with the math that blending modes require and you can find yourself burning battery pretty quickly.

Keep this in mind as you work and try to be economical (use groups over individual styles, etc.). You can also use a technique of Temporary Rasterization (see “Tip: Temporary Rasterizing” below).

Accessing Layer Styles

You open the Layer Styles panel for an individual layer by double-clicking on the right side of its entry in the Layers panel. Double-clicking the layer’s name will edit the name layer. If a layer already has had styles applied to it, a little “fx” icon will appear in the corner with a collapse/expand control.

Expanding the control will reveal all the effects currently assigned as well as their individual visibilities. You can turn on or off individual effects here by clicking on the “eye” icon (it disappears if the effect is turned off) or all effects by turning off the “Effects”.

You may find that the list of effects is short or incomplete. That’s because Photoshop will hide effects that aren’t being used from time to time. You can get them all back by clicking the “FX” icon in the lower left corner and selecting “Show All Effects”. You can also delete non-displayed effects from the same menu with “Delete Hidden Effects”.

Turning Off Layer Styles

By default, Layer Styles are turned on and display as you work. Many times, however, you’ll want to turn them off and work “naked” (usually for performance reasons).

Turning on or off layer styles is terribly easy:

Viola! The styles are gone! If you’ve been working in style mode for a long time, it can be a trip to see the changes. You may find errors in your maps that your styles are hiding as well (glows, strokes, and shadows can easily hide small gaps, for instance).

You turn them back on the same way:

Copying, Pasting, and Clearing Layer Styles

You will find that you often need to bulk apply a style you’ve designed, or you want to erase all of the effects from a layer. This is done by copying, pasting, and clearing layer styles.

Right clicking on a layer entry will open up a menu. In the middle are three options:

• Copy Layer Style. Copies the style into memory.
• Paste Layer Style. Applies the copied layer style to the layer.
• Clear Layer Style. Resets the layer and removes all styles from it.

Styling Layer Groups

Layer groups can be styled as well. The process to do so is exactly the same (double-click on the right side of the layer group). There are two major caveats to applying effects to groups.

The first thing to know is that the group’s style will apply to all visible layers it contains. This is often exactly what you want (say, you want to apply a color overlay to everything to create a sepia tone effect), but other times does weird things you don’t expect (like giving shadows to a layer’s already existing shadows).

Using group-level styles is a quick and easy way to change the style of all items. For instance, I like to group all of my labels for “water” areas together (the names of seas, lakes, rivers, etc) and then apply a single style to the group (a color overlay, a texture, a glow), which is then applied to everything.

You can achieve the same effect by doing a bulk style paste, but that’s ill-advised for two reasons.

The first is that each layer style present and visible in a document increases the CPU requirements of Photoshop. When styles are rendered, they’re rendered in order, then a group style is applied. If you have a folder with 20 items in it, all of which are supposed to get the same style, you’ll have 20 styles applied if you do them individually. However, if you apply the style to the group, there’s only one style applied (it is laid down after the group has been “merged” and becomes a single unit as far as Photoshop is concerned when displaying it).

The second is that you will have to maintain these styles. If you want to change the stroke color, you have to do that to every layer.

Now, there are times when you may want to do this (for instance, you want a white stroke around every text layer in the group except the ones on white backgrounds, in which case you want a dark grey stroke). I would normally put the exceptions into their own group, but if you want to be sloppy feel free, ’tis a free country.

Styling Smart Objects

Layers within a smart object can have their own styles applied. These styles are effectively “free” as they are pre-rendered by the Smart Object’s system. You can access the layers of a Smart Object by double-clicking its icon in the Layers panel.

You can style Smart Object entries themselves as well through the Layers panel as normal. These styles are applied on top of any styles that the Smart Object already has (this is useful for color overlays).

A Note on Light Sources

Many effects (such as bevels or shadows) depend on a light source. This is the direction that the light is casting from and affects how the effect is applied. Shadows, for instance, appear on the opposite side of the layer from the light source.

You can set the light source for each effect independently or you can use the “Global Light” (there’s a checkbox). If you have the “Global Light” checkbox turned on, there’s two things that happen:

• The effect’s light source will be the same as all other effects that have “Global Light” turned on, and
• Changing the angle or altitude of the light source will also change the “Global Light” value, which may not be what you want.

I nearly always set my Global Light values to 90 degrees with an altitude of 30 degrees.

Most of the time you will want to use Global Light except if you need two shadows coming from different directions.

When working with battlemaps, it is important to set your Global Light with a high altitude: 90 degrees. The reason why is that you want a top-down view and you’ll often be rotating rasterized objects and will need their shadows to be maintained.

Effects

Let’s talk about the individual effects and their types. I’ll go in order the order they are listed in the panel, top-to-bottom. This order is important to know: it is the order in which the effects are applied to the layer. The order is immutable, I’m afraid.

For each example, I’m going to show you what it looks like when applied to a red (#ff0000) square in the center of a white field. I will also include screenshots of the dialog used to manipulate it (but not the exact settings used).

Styles

The first entry in the list is a “pseudo” style called Styles. This allows you to quickly apply existing or saved styles to layers without having to recreate them. Simply select the style you want from the library present.

You can add a style you’ve created to your library. Apply your various styles as normal and then click the “New Style…” button on the right-hand side of the dialog. You’ll be asked for a name for the style; give it one and it will then appear in your library.

Blending Options

The second entry in the list, Blending Options is also a “pseudo” style. It allows you to control the layer’s overall blend mode (see Photoshop Blend Modes), the opacity of both the layer itself and the opacity of its fill.

Let’s take a moment to talk about Fill Opacity versus Layer Opacity. Both options affect how the pixels of the layer are displayed. However, the Fill Opacity affects the layer before styles are applied, while Layer Opacity affects the layer afterwards.

This is really useful when you just want to use a layer’s shape, but don’t want to show the layer. For instance, say you end up making a lot of screenshots of an interface and want to highlight certain areas. You’ll create a square or circle shape around the area you want to highlight, set the layer’s fill opacity to 0%, and give it a Stroke effect. Bam! Now you’ve got a border around your area and it isn’t blocked by the shape’s own pixels.

Bevel & Emboss

The Bevel & Emboss is a complex tool that can be used to create easy three-dimensional effects. You can control the type of bevel or emboss, the direction it goes (up or down), it’s depth, size, and in some cases how sharp the edges are. You will nearly always use inner bevels.

You will be tempted to use this effect to create pseudo-mountains. It can work fine, but there are gotchas and you’ll discover them as you go: they have to do with the way anchor points behave (it’s impossible to explain this; you’ll have to learn by trial and error). This is discussed in greater detail in Drawing Mountains.

Always use Screen and Multiply modes for your highlights and shadows here. If you apply them as “normal” details will fail.

Stroke

A Stroke is one of the most useful effects when it comes to cartography and Photoshop. You’ll find yourself applying strokes everywhere with varying degrees of opacity and blending. Shorelines are made with several strokes stacked on top of each other, for instance. Doors can become more easily discernible, walls more pronounced.

Use thin widths for creating definition; use thicker strokes to indicate interactivity (like with doors).

You can apply strokes in three places: Inside, Outside, and Centered. Only inside strokes maintain perfect corner fidelity: fat strokes on the outside and inside end up rounding in the corners.

The “overprint” checkbox is important. Flipping it on or off can do weird things to the opacity of the layer underneath the stroke. You will almost always want “overprint” to be on.

You can also use gradients or patterns as the fill for a stroke. I do this often when I want to create something like a pool. In the example shown, there are a total of seven stroke effects applied to it: three with a pattern overlay (the gold strokes and the thick marble stroke) and four of just a color (#222222) applied as Multiply and overprint to make the edges clearer.

When adding multiple strokes, each successive stroke must be larger than the one before it to appear (making this pool is described in the water technique for battlemaps tutorial so take a look there for it’s stroke layout).

Inner Shadow

The Inner Shadow effect uses a light source to cast a shadow in the inside of the layer’s content. Shadows are basically specialized gradients that are drawn by the light source. As such, they have start, middle, and end points, but they aren’t called that:

• Distance affects how far from the edge the shadow’s gradient will start.
• Choke affects the mid-point of the shadow’s gradient
• Size affects how far the shadow’s gradient goes from where it starts to where it ends.

“True” shadows should usually be a dark color set to Multiply but you may have your own ideas. Go with god.

You can adjust the shadow’s countour as well for interesting effects. Most of the time you’ll want the incline plane, however.

Inner Glow

An Inner Glow is similar to an Inner Shadow except that it is always drawn from the edges inward (instead of being directed by a light source). Like Inner Shadows, these are gradients, except you can’t control the gradient start point (just the Choke and Size).

If you set the Source to “Center” you’ll get the inverse of your glow (it will spread from the layer’s center).

For the forest example, the following settings were used:

1. Color: #6b5427
2. Contour: Reverse of default (double-click to edit the contour)
3. Choke: 25
4. Size: 10
5. Noise: 20
6. Blend Mode Overlay

Satin

The Satin style is similar to Inner Glow or Inner Shadow except that it applies the changes towards the center of the layer (unless you mess with the contour).

I honestly don’t find a lot of use for this one. I normally achieve its effects by using multiple Inner Shadows.

Color Overlay

A Color Overlay does exactly what it says on the tin: it takes a color and applies it to every pixel in the layer. You will most often use this with the Color blend mode, which changes the color value of the pixels beneath.

It’s terribly useful. When applied to a layer with a bunch of other details, the color will subtly affect things. A great trick is to apply a color overlay with #e1d3b3 as the color to a large layer group to give it a sepia-toned effect (which makes a lot of maps look great).

For two of the examples, I have applied a Color Overlay to a parchment texture in both yellow (#d7dd75) and green (#008740).

Gradient Overlay

The Gradient Overlay effect does just that: overlays a gradient. This is useful for subtly changing the colors of water layers, for instance (build yourself a nice gradient that passes through several shades of blue and green and apply it with a blend mode Color and apply it overtop a parchment layer).

The use of the gradient editor is described in more detail in Photoshop Basics.

You can control the angle, style, and scale of the gradients. I don’t recommend that you use dithering.

Gradient overlays can be tricky. You may find that you have to apply them in their own layer if you want to have them work with underlying textures. For the water example, the parchment layer is just set to normal, and a color layer of #0054a6 is set to Overlay on top of it. The color layer is given multiple gradients, each set to Overlay or Linear Light.

Pattern Overlay

My favorite effect – especially with battlemaps is Pattern Overlay. This effect allows you to take a pre-defined image and wall-paper it over the entire layer, giving it visual style. Over time, you will develop a large library of patterns (and many of them pulled from these tutorials; there are several included throughout).

The pattern overlay dialog is fairly straight forward but there are a few things you should know.

The first has to do with Scale. This will change the, uh, scale of the pattern. Large patterns will repeat more with lower scale numbers. You can scale up really high but I don’t recommend it as things start blurring very quickly. Scale down instead.

The second is Link with Layer. If you set this to false, the pattern will be applied starting from the 0,0 pixel of the document. If you set it to true, the pattern is applied from the 0,0 pixel on the layer.

You can see how this works by applying a pattern to a layer, turning off the “link with layer” checkbox, and then moving the layer around. You’ll notice that the layer moves but not the pattern. If you then turn the “link with layer” checkbox back on, it will freeze the pattern at that location, which is a neat trick (you can also click and drag on the inside of the object while the Layer Styles dialog is open).

The third thing is Reset Origin. If you have a pattern that you’ve locked in at a different start point (as described in the paragraph you just read), this will undo that effect and snap the 0,0 of the layer (or document) to the 0,0 of the pattern.

Most of the time you’ll want to apply patterns in “Normal”, “Overlay”, or “Multiply” modes. However, if you have a nice noise texture, applying it in Linear Light mode is probably what you want.

Importing Your Own Patterns

You’ll want to add lots of patterns to your library.

Outer Glow

An Outer Glow behaves similarly to an Inner Glow except that the gradients of the glow are drawn from the outside edges. Again, you can’t set the start point of the gradient, but the Spread value tells you how far from the edges the gradient will start and the Size value describes the gradient’s size after this.

You’ll nearly always use a Spread value of 0. I find other values are just ugly.

Drop Shadow

Drop shadows are also gradients but they are cast by light, like Inner Shadows. Drop shadows are
great for pulling things up off the page. You’ll use them most often with battlemaps but I like to apply them to things like legends and titles on other maps as well.

Go re-read the Inner Shadow section above, but know that it appears outside of the layer, and that the Spread value behaves the same as the Choke slider on Inner Glows.

Tip: Temporary Rasterizing

As you work on a map, you may find that it gets slower to use and Photoshop starts chunking because you’ve got too many layer styles or you have a lot of anchor points in your shapes

This can really become apparent while you’re dollhousing (see Designing Fantasy Battlemaps). I built an orrey component once that consisted of over 50 shapes, each of which had multiple layer effects and tens of anchor points – for a solid object. Moving it by even 10 pixels could take 30 seconds or more.

The solution here is rasterization. This takes your shape/layer and all of its layer effects and burns them into a pixel layer. Pixel layers are incredibly lightweight (to Photoshop, at least). You can take all your complex objects and rasterize them and then they can be moved around easily. Further, they don’t require the CPU to overtax itself.

The way you do single layers or groups is different.

Keep all your original shape layers. Maybe name them “XXX Shape” to distinguish them from “XXX Pixels”.

A layer’s (or a layer style effect’s) blend mode changes how the rendered pixels of the layer behave based on the rendered pixels beneath it. There are many modes, each of them with different math, and a full reckoning is beyond this short (hah!) tutorial. However, there are a handful of modes that you’ll use more often than others and which one you choose often depends on how “dark” the current layer is.

You’ll find a lot of happy accidents with blend modes, by the way. Experimenting with them is a great way to find new things and to learn how each mode behaves. I highly recommend it.

You can edit a layer’s blend mode from either the Layers tab or through the Layer Effects dialog. Note that blend modes do not reset when you turn off Layer Effects.

Basic Blend Modes

Here are some basic blend mode types.

• Normal. Show the rendered pixels of this layer exactly as they are.
• Overlay. Allow the layers below to “ghost” through. This is good for most layers of medium darkness. Does not work well if the lower layers are darker.
• Screen. Applies the layer in a “lightened” fashion (the “Lighten” mode also does this, but in a slightly different way). Use when your layer is light-colored overtop a medium or dark-colored layer.
• Multiply. Darkens or burns the layer into those below it (the “Darken” mode also does this but in a slightly different way). Use this when your layer is darker than the ones below it. It’s useless against a dark layer.
• Color. Applies the color of the layer to the ones below, subtly changing them to match. This is best used when the entire layer is a single color, or as a layer effect (Color Overlay with mode set to “color”).
• Color Burn. “Burns” the color of the layer to the ones below, overall darkening the layer but enhancing parts of its color profile.
• Color Dodge. “Dodges” the color of the layer to the ones below, overall lightning the layer and de-emphasizing parts of its color profile.
• Linear Light. Applies the pixels in a more black-and-white, high-contrast way. Lighter colors (especially white) tend to disappear. This one is super-useful for adding texture and noise.

Here is the same black-and-white image (an illustration showing convergent evolution) applied over a texture pattern in various blend modes:

As you can see, the various modes can have significant effects. The Soft Light mode is probably what you’d want to use if you wanted to make a parchment version of this image feel coherent. I love the effect of Difference but that probably won’t work very well. However, Divide may work very well, especially if the opacity is lowered.

Here is how the same patterns and shapes appear on a parchment background in various modes. The circles are just colored circles; the little icon is a simple but meaningless set of brush lines.

Blend modes can be applied to layer groups as well. When doing so, the entire group is affected as if it were merged. Groups have an additional mode, Pass Through, which means “don’t do anything funky at all”. Setting a layer group to Normal has the effect of “crunching” everything and canceling any effects it overlays. You’ll hate it; don’t use it.

Additionally, you can apply blend modes to various layer style effects. This will change how they display. The example below shows how applying a Pattern Overlay effect changes depending on the blend mode of its application and the color of the shape it’s being applied to.

The typography tools are not difficult to master and are frankly intuitive to use once you understand the basics of what each one does. Subtle effects with tracking and leading can lend better readability to your maps than simply sticking labels everywhere.

Typography Basics

There are a handful of useful concepts to understand about Photoshop’s typography tools.

Editable Text

Text layers are continually editable. You can always go back and change the text in the layer to add or remove words, fix speling mistakes, or change anything else about the font. This will continue to work as long as you don’t rasterize the text or convert the text into shapes.

Paragraph Text Boxes

The Type tool can be used to create re-sizable paragraph text boxes. These work in conjunction with the paragraph panel. Use them when you have blocks of text that you need to keep sized correctly.

You can convert existing text layers to paragraph text layers as well. The paragraph text box will be automatically sized to the exiting point text layer.

You can convert them back with Convert to Point Text.

Inline Changes

Nearly all character options can be applied to text inline. This means that you can edit a line of text and select a single word or character and change anything about it, from its typeface to size to color.

The only thing you can’t alter inline is any kind of layer style or blend mode as these are applied to the entire layer and not parts of it.

Rasterizing Text

If you rasterize a text layer you will turn it into pixels. This is un-doable, but useful if you want to manually add stress effects to a text layer with a brush (rather than applying a layer style that can achieve similar effects).

Converting to Shapes

You can convert text layers to shape layers. When you do so, the text is converted from an editable font to a raw shape layer. Each anchor point on the text’s shape can then be moved or deleted independently. Be aware that you will no longer be able to edit the text; this is a one-way trip.

This is useful if you want to apply different styles to different characters in a line of text or if you want to merge text shapes with other shapes (like working a map’s title into some border decoration).

The Character Panel

While many of these options are available in the character toolbar, you’ll use the character panel most often. Just go ahead and dock it on the right. It will be that common. Set the paragraph panel behind it while you’re at it.

Most Commonly Used Options

Typeface Selector

The typeface selector chooses the main typeface or font-family that you are using. The selector will show you examples of the fonts you have available. If you have lots of fonts, it has a built-in search function.

Variant Selector

The variant selector chooses italics, bold, or any of the other sub-variant fonts available in the typeface that you’ve selected. Some fonts – especially handwriting ones – don’t have variants.

Size Selector

The size selector does just that: changes the font’s size. This can be used inline or on the whole layer. You can enter any number but the drop downs are safest.

You can also directly size text with the Transform tool (<command>t) but be warned that this will set your font sizes to less than whole numbers.

Color Selector

Unsurprisingly, the color selector changes the font’s color. This can be used inline or on the whole layer.

Tracking

Tracking determines how much space exists between the letters in a line of text. You will use this often to spread labels out, especially in mountain ranges and rivers. Some fonts (like Trattatello do not have good default tracking values, so you’ll nearly always want to change it for those.

Less Commonly Used Options

Leading

Leading determines the space between lines of text. Some fonts – especially those with deep “y” type characters – will want to have larger leading values than others.

You won’t often use this with map making because labels are almost always single lines of text. However, labels with alternate names will benefit from this option.

Type Variants

Type variants will transform all of the text into a specific mode, like super-script, sub-script, all capitals, or small capitals. You will most often use the “all capitals” mode with map labels.

If you typeface doesn’t include bold or italic variants, there are faux bold and faux italics options, where Photoshop attempts to alter the characters for you. They don’t always work the way you expect, however.

Advanced Options

Kerning

Kerning controls space between specific characters. You can only use it inline. It is used when the default tracking isn’t sufficient for one or two specific points in the text.

Say you have your tracking set a little larger than normal (25) but you want the first character in the string to but up against the second. You would use the kerning option to change the spacing just there.

Kerning allows you the choice between metrics and optics. Metrics kerning sets the spacing based on the math inherent in the font – the kerning the font’s author designed. Optical kerning sets the spacing based on the vector shapes of the characters. Which one you use depends on the font and the effect you desire so you’ll have to experiment.

Baseline Shift

The baseline shift option moves selected words or characters up or down below the font’s baseline. You can use it when you want to “sink” part of a word or raise another. If you combine this with an inline size change you can effect super-script or sub-script; however, there’s an easier way to do so with the type variants tool.

Use this sparingly, if at all.

Alternate Ligatures

Some fonts (like Trattatello) have several alternative ligature options. These are alternative characters or connections between characters that can be used instead of the default. For instance, a font may display different capital letters if the character is the first in the line of text.

They can be used inline or on the whole layer.

Options You Won’t Use

You might use these options someday but you won’t use them when making maps.

Horizontal Scale

The horizontal scale controls the horizontal distortion of the characters. It’s goofy. Don’t use it. Use tracking instead.

Vertical Scale

The vertical scale controls the horizontal distortion of the characters. It, too, is goofy. Don’t use it. Use leading instead.

Language Selector

This option changes the language that Photoshop assumes you’re working in. This doesn’t translate text (for that you use the googles); rather, it informs the text engine various rules about when to hyphenate and so forth. You never need to change this.

Aliasing

This one turns on or off jankiness in your font display. The default setting was arrived at by many years of discussion and development by experts in fontography and typefaces. You will be a fool to change it.

The Paragraph Panel

The paragraph panel provides options that affect how text flows on the screen – even with single line text layers. You should dock this panel on the right, behind the Character Panel.

Alignment & Justification

A paragraph’s alignment tells it where to anchor the text: left, right, or middle. These are going to be your most common choices. You can also choose several options for justification, which attempts to space the words out cleanly in the space available. A paragraph’s alignment is different from it’s justification but justification always overrides alignment.

Note that if you are centering several lines of text with each other (using the Move tool’s alignment options), you will want to set those text layers to “Center” alignment before doing so. The Move tool’s alignment functions operate on the mathematical center of the layer and the font’s metrics may return a different number than the “true” center of the text.

Indent

This controls how deep the initial indent is with paragraph text. Since you’re not going to be writing a lot of copy on maps, you won’t use this much.

Margins

You can set the margins of a paragraph with four options: top, left, right, and bottom. This adds padding around the paragraph edges (left and right) or between paragraphs (top and bottom).

You probably won’t use this very often because you probably won’t be working with large volumes of text and can just drag text boxes to the desired position.

Hyphenate

Checking or unchecking hyphenate will cause paragraph text to hyphenate where applicable. This is probably something you don’t want, so leave it unchecked.

Curving and Warping Text

From time to time you will want to have a text layer “warp” and follow a bend, like when labeling a river, road, or mountain range. In this case you will use the Warp Text tool located in the type tool’s options bar. This will open a dialog that provides access to many different text warping options.

You will almost always use “Arc” or “Flag”. Remember that you’ll also be able to rotate the text using the Transform tool and spread the text using the character panel’s tracking option. Together, these tools will allow you to make labels that follow river or road paths.

Styling Text

Text layers can be styled like any other layer. Strokes, color overlays, and patterns are common effects to use with text layers and, when applied well, can give your maps a pop and vigor that sets you above the crowd.

When applying effects to text layers, it is easy to over-do it. Text effects should be subtle because text should be readable. Sometimes less is more. For instance, strongly stroked text can “vibrate” and be difficult to read. Try adding a subtle glow instead of a heavy stroke to bring out the edges of characters.

Some services offer printing onto un-stretched canvas. If you can do so and it is within your budget, I highly recommend this as the map will be much easier to roll and transport. Canvas maps are fairly immune to being held in a rolled position for lengths of times and will snap back quickly. If you do get it printed on canvas, make sure that you choose an un-stretched option; otherwise you’ll end up with something suitable for framing (which may be what you want, I don’t know).

When you’re finished with your map – and you’re sure you’re finished – it’s time to get it printed. You want to export the best quality image you can to send to the printer. If your printer accepts PNG files, you should just export it that way. However, these files tend to be massive – easily up to 100 megabytes in size – and your printing system may not be able to handle that, so you should export it as a JPG.

If you were smart and set your dimensions right, you may be able to print this on a home printer (though at lower fidelity).