Map making with Photoshop

[Jewnior]

Hey all, I have a question for you map makers and photo editing-savvy people out there. I have read through Snoopy's Map making tutorial (I think it was by Dr. Frag?) about the DEM maps and converting them into grayscale to be placed into Photoshop along with a blank, newly created .tga map in SMR.

My question is, do any of you have any tips or links or tutorials that would suit my needs for editing the grayscale maps in Photoshop? I get the grayscale part, but I guess my RGB values are too far apart (0,0,0 and 255,255,255) so that they're either as high as the map allows our super underwater. I don't know how to tinker with and adjust the values so I can get the map to be semi-realistic.

Cheers,
Jewnior

[atani]

Refer to this page: http://www.hookedgamers.com/gamewiki/Si ... ustom_maps in the section titled "The Grayscale Height Map". Basically, the "sea" stops at RGB: 48,48, 48 and "land" starts at RGB 49,49,49.

[Jewnior]

Ya, I do understand that part, what I'm having trouble with is finding out the exact RGB values for any given points on my grayscale map in Photoshop. Is there a definite way to determine RGB values or is it something you have to "trail and error"?

[CalmDragon]

When I want to know the value of a pixel, I will use the pickup tool and match my brush to it, then I can see what the value is. I try not to use anything less than 20,20,20 for my sea bottoms and nothing greater than 200,200,200 for my mountain tops, but that is just me.

[Jewnior]

Thanks CalmDragon. I'll try that, do you know which one the Pickup Tool is because I cannot seem to find it in Photoshop

[atani]

I believe it is an eye dropper looking tool.. At least with Gimp it is that.

Mike

[Rodea2007]

Try to use Paint.Net software http://www.getpaint.net, with this software you can edit almost all various bitmap Image file and save as DDS or TGA file or what ever do you want

[atani]

I did a test using Gimp 2.6.6 and the latest DDS plugin and so far it works properly. The latest DDS plugin is available here: http://nifelheim.dyndns.org/~cocidius/dds/#download

Note it only works with 2.6.x versions, I would recommend the latest version from http://www.gimp.org

Mike

[Jewnior]

Thank you atani, I did end up getting that and it's working fine for me.