Nice tut…Its like a real world map…

Thanks for sharing

wow this is nice.. Ill try to use this later… cool tuts bro..nice job.

Looks really professional! Thanks for sharing.

Nice Tutorial Johnathan!
I personally like it without the addition step (16) more, but I guess to each his own.

Also, I have a tip to make the edges a bit more soft since they seem a bit jagged in the final result. If you create the original Landmass on a larger canvas than the intended size, and then size down the landmass after deleting the white areas, it will turn up a lot less jagged.

I like the step 15 version. The land mass trick is wild. I like that. Thanks for the tutorial.

Thanks for pioneering such a great website. Absolutely the best photoshop tutorial/inspirational site available.

Thank you!

Simple, but will come in very useful. Thanks!

Hmmm, not to be ‘Mr. Raincloud’ over here, but this one doesn’t seem real useful to me. The first two steps are pretty nifty though!

Beautiful outcome as usual! Good use of filters in this one too, people are too scared to use filters these days.

Boring.

This is a really great tutorial, I gotta try this out.

I kinda like the result better actually before the last step where you puton the grain filter.
Ít´s very fresh and nice like that!
Great job Jonathan!

Sorry for double comment: One thing I would suggest though is you make the land texture in a larger document, then size it down so the edges aren’t so sharp. Know what I mean?

dope tutorial!
And it seems as if you tried to make it a bit easier to follow then the previous ones, good

I ‘wow’ed out-loud at the first two steps… So simple but so clever! Nice tutorial.

I found it useful to apply a slight blur to the landmass layer to get rid of some of the jagged edges that make it look unnatural.

Nice Tutorial!

I will not need a treasure map every day but the techniques used can be useful in a wide variety of projects.

Maybe I just found my inspiration for the Christmas cards I am due to make

It’s okay, but I’ve seen better on this site.

comparing to other tuts here, its kinda on low lvl.

Nice but The Grain Filter shouldnt be on the compass.

I do effects like this all the time to create maps and the parchment paper texture. There’s actually a rally nice way to do the grain that requires quite a few more effects.

For the landmass, when the white is still there, I would apple a Gaussian Blur, zoom in and adjust the blur just after you lose the pixelated edge. Now go to Image > Adjust > Brightness/Contrast and bring the contrast way up to sharpen the edge back up. You’ll now have a nice clean edge.

At the end, the grain filter is nice. but there’s better ways to go about it. Play around with a combo of Filter>Render>Clouds and applying Filter>Artistic>Watercolor.

Thanks for your tutorial, It´s a good one.

It’s amusing to me to see a tutorial that I needed a while back. Great tut

Considering these are fake land masses, I don’t see this being much real use. It’s kind of “hoakey” in fact.

Very cool! The rays in the last optional step look a bit out of place though.

I would lose the last “optional” step. Otherwise an easy to follow tut.

looks kinda useless…

The map idea might be useless but it’s all about the process. You can always pick up something useful. Thank you very much.

@ jens: The grain filter should be on the compass because its printed on the paper
@ joe: they might not be real landmasses but you could use the same effects on a real map, but thats besides the point, it doesnt have to be real for most purposes you could make an MMO bassed around that map and use it in gameplay to show your position, or you could make it to learn photoshop,burt monroy quote ” its not about the end product, its about how you get there.”

Check out the map i made on. [link] http://doeff.deviantart.com/art/Old-Sea-Map-71721501 [link/]

Greetz Doeff

The first 2 steps were interesting, then it got rather amateur. Especially the last step. The very “filtery” look of the map doesn’t make it look old-world, but more cheaply done in this tutorial.

I would suggest teaching people how to do a paper texture, then overlaying the map, adding grid lines, and the compass.

No offense, but I’ve come to expect more professional tutorials from this site. Little things, like in step 8, it says “Try to space them as evenly as possible.” about the white bars. Isn’t that what Distribute is for? It reads as very amateur.

Thanks to a very useful tutorials. It´s simple to follow your steps, even for a swedish guy.

/Michael

Collis…your tutorials rule. I actually send people from my newsletter here because it is what the internet should be all about.

Keep up the good work!

Thanks for the tips on blurring out the edges guys. Well if you don’t think it’s useful feel free not to use it. I mean there is nothing to lose here right? and remember sharing is caring!
@Jens Thanks for the idea, can’t believe I didn’t think of the idea.

The screenshot for Step 7 has the stripes that you introduce several step later. Minor issue though. Pretty good tutorial overall. Can easily be manipulated to achieve other effects.

Hi there,
really nice and very useful for header graphics with a map inside.

This one could be better.

The final effect is real cool. I like the most how did you create the stripes, i saw everywhere, people using in their designs.

I would disagree with blurring the edges, I’m sure it boils down to personal opinion but seeing as this is an old style ‘hand-drawn’ map, looking natural isn’t really a big deal.
One suggestion I can think of, if you go into Google maps and use the new terrain view to look at a remote area you can get a screen-cap . Past that layer above your land-mass then de-saturate the layer. Mask it with a soft brush around the cost-lines and other features then play with the layer styles an opacity to taste. Depending on the area of the map you choose and your zoom level, you will get some nice terrain and even some city marks.

Guys, dont be so harsh. The tutorial is good. Not because of the map effect but because of the technique in the first two steps. I really like the combining of clouds with posterize. If not for drawing maps use it for tons of ideas…… eg. Put the result of Cloud + posterize on a background wall to have flaky paint. Put it on background paper for wet – dry paper, put it as grunge beckground….

It’s alright. I expect better from this site, lol.

Not really a fan of this one. Seems like just a random assortment of filters, and high contrast. Really noobish compared with the outcomes f other tutorails on this site. Especially considering how bad the compass looks in the last image.

Well, like shadowfax said, step 1 and 2 is really the meat of the tutorial. The rest are basically extras to make a basic map for your average Joe. When I was making this tutorial I thought, who would be interested in a bunch of jagged lines in the preview image. So I decided to make it prettier by adding some basic effects to it. I’m sorry if you didn’t like the extras, I tried my best.

On another note, you can apply a basic dot or scanline pattern on your map to make a more futuristic look if you don’t like the “sepia” like map here.

Nice! A little bit too shiny perhaps. Great design of tutorials! Tutorials 2.0 Congrats, websites like this one make the web a better place.

Nice, except I think you should have stopped at Step 15. That’s a nice look. Step 16 is a little to much. though!

I think is a good tutorial until step 14. I guess you could make it more interesting if you add more old realistic paper texture to it, but again you showed the meat of this tutorial and is up to us to keep playing with it and change it to our needs.

Keep up the good work…

In my humble opinion, this tutorial could be better.
The creation of “landmass” is, somehow, useless as:

1. we, designers, always need the real replication of the continents,
2. the line and the edges of it are not smooth.

Here’s something I made using some of the techniques found in this tutorial. Awesome Blog btw. keep up the good work.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/50515724@N00/2113936526/

last step is terrible…

It’s true that you may not use this in your everyday design career, but you never know. So I thought I would just throw this out there and see what people think. Remember that you want to create your own identity. Don’t copy every step as shown, just learn how it’s done. Maybe one day, the effect you learn will come into use. Maybe not in the exact shape or form. For example, if one day you feel like designing an MMORPG flash game, then making a map for it would be as easy as pie =D. (not saying pie is easy to make)

@Timofey Nice, I really like how you took the tutorial and made it your own =D

I totally agree with the comments made by Greg, smear & Don, and in my opinion, this tutorial doesn’t belong on PSDTuts.
I don’t mean to be rude or anything, but there should be a stricter quality control.

I like it until step 15 tbh

You naysayers: wow, get over yourselves. If you don’t like it, don’t use it. As for the “quality” of the tutorial, and whether or not it belongs on this site, who are you to judge? If it’s not up to your standards, make your own site where you can decide what is worthy for people to see, and what’s beneath them.
For myself, as someone who is just starting to become a little more affluent with PhotoShop, I found this tutorial easy to implement, with very cool results. While I agree with those who stated that it would not have any use in a cartography field, I wouldn’t write the technique off as useless. The result, even up to and including the last step, is very similar to the effects I have seen in role-playing and adventure video games. So the technique does have it’s uses. Also, many of the steps could be implemented in other ways on other projects.
Guess it’s true what they say: “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, criticize.”

This rocks! For those of us still learning Photoshop, tutorials like this are just what we need. I learned several new things following this. Thanks!

http://www.andystewart-design.com

Nice one

Haha, instant landmass….that’s awesome, I love it.

This is an awesome tutorial…does anyone have suggestions for more tutorials that use those rays of light…and a better explanation of how to use them!?!

really cool i tried out and it work perfectly
ty bro

Hey guys, this tutorial got ripped by Tutorial Zone. Check it out! – http://www.tutorialzone.org/how-to-create-an-old-world-map-in-photoshop/

Any reactions?

Definitely been ripped by them. I left a comment, asking if they had permission to post it, and apparently they changed it, making it say “Really Cool Tutorial, Man. Thanks!”

They also submitted their “version” to P2L. I’ve alerted Faken [the Admin] to it already

so what about this one http://techworlds.org/forum/index.php?s=b8fbacbbc74141d1295692bf5d3bf6e6&showtopic=4000

Nice Tut! I was reading previous comments and some of the negs just have no inspiration! You keep uop the GREAT work my friend. I often cruise these sites for inspiration, and your’s is just awe inspiring. This is coming from a successful artist with 30 years of hard experience too. Kudos to you young man.

Do old maps have gloss?

Thanks for tutorial! Result is very nice. I would be only interested more in real world shape.

Helpful tutorial, appreciate your effort. Thanks.

Thanks guys, appreciate it.

@Kritik Haha, good point.

Nice tutorial! I was wondering if there is a way to prevent (or fix) the step effect when creating Gradients in Photoshop? I never noticed it on my old monitor but since I have a new one (a very good one) I can see that Photoshop’s Gradients are not really smooth (even with Dither checked). Gaussian blur doesn’t seem to cut it either.

A lot of people forget what tutorials like these are for. Tutorials are for learning skills to APPLY to works of your own. The final image here may look amatuerish, but the concepts are very well founded and illustrated. Go further with them and create something that isn’t so “amatuerish” of your own.

Nice tut.

Very cool and so easy.

Very inspiring too.

Thank You

Also..I found it fun to do as one can create a map of their own world.

And to whomever made this “we designers” remark..not all of us feel the same way.

Sometimes I like to dinker around creating my own world..the tutorial gives me a base to work from.

I like simple tutorials…being “professional” isn’t synonymous with being complicated with millions of steps.

Anyways..it is nice to see that one can make some nifty stuff with simple filters.

Now that I know how to do this..I might try doing a selection of the map, expand the borders and fill with a color and texture to create shoreline…so many possibilities.

Nice tutorial, Jonathan. Getting Photoshop to quickly spit out a random coastal outline is something I, for one, *do* find useful. I’m posting a link at the Cartographers’ Guild, a community of fantasy cartographers. If fictional maps are something you have a more than passing interest in, you should come by and check it out. We’d be glad to trade tips with you!
http://www.cartographersguild.com

Thank’s, very usefull!

Hey im a super noob to photoshop and I have a problem: When I fill the picture with the bucket tool with brown and then after try to fill it with a gradient tool to make that lighter spot, it replaces the filled brown spot all together e.g All i see is a bright brown spot and everything else is white. How do I fix this? thx

I hate to break it to you but this is just not very good. Looks amateur. You didn’t even anti-alias the edges of the map.

Looks pretty cool but has anybody even tried to reproduce this?

I did and unfortunately I have to say this tutorial skips a lot of important steps and does not give sufficient information about how to do some things.

But still it is a start

Bad tutorial. Instead of using a smart object, you just merge layers. Instead of using a gradient overlay, you use improvement…

good tutorial thank you.

Oh wow, I remember this tutorial. It’s the first tutorial I read that got me into the whole Photoshop + Web-design craze… I love you psdtuts

Hi, I tried your tutorial and really liked it. I will be doing a bit of tweaking to get the effect I want. Overall your tutorial was quite easy to follow. I learned how to use a couple of PS techniques that I hadn’t used before so that was nice. Thanks so much for posting it. I gave a link back on my blog so my readers can enjoy the tutorial as well.

great picture but how to create a account plz reply me on this Email:s.khizarfarhat@yahoo.com plz reply me ok.

Re Smart Objects and such.. Not everyone has or can afford the latest greatest version of photoshop, so it’s nice to see tutorials that can still use the capabilities of the older versions.

And it would be nice if people put as much effort into improving on things rather than tearing things down – if this tutorial is so horrible, write your own.

The point of it is to teach techniques that might otherwise be overlooked. It’s a springboard, not an end result.

That having been said, I had fun with this one, learned a few new tricks (i’d never worked with the grain filter before, and unlike some people commenting previously, I DO have use for non-realworld coastlines), and made my own version (using tips I’d learned from other tutorials over the last few days off this site).

This tutorial inspired me, and that’s exactly what it’s meant to do – i’ll be working and tweaking this one for awhile, i have a feeling, but it’s got a great foundation.. http://home.cogeco.ca/~coyote/sigils/map3.jpg

Thank you Jonathan!

Thanks, this was very usefull.
I made one too. Check URL

thanx! it’s really wonderful and super easy! I love this website and all the people who make such a good job here!

loved it n so easy thanks man

Woo! nice one.. helped me get a cool looking map right away! Lots of thanks!