Torstan's page

You're welcome. Hope it works out for you. Post again if you get stuck.

Jon

Okay, here you go.

1. Open map in Gimp.
2. Take the measuring tool (shift-M) and measure the number of pixels in a square (probably best to measure the number in 10 squares and divide by ten to get the number per square. It's more accurate). Note that the measurement appears on the bottom bar of the main window. Make sure the tool is measuring in pixels (there's a drop down on the bottom bar you can sue to set this).
3. Go to Image->Scale Image and set the dpi to the number of pixels in a grid square.
4. Save As... the file to a new jpg file.
5. Import the file into posterazor - it should recognise the same dpi you set earlier.
6. Walk through the posterazor steps to get the pdf.

Hope that helps.

Jon

Thank you for the update. Well done to those who got their maps through and I look forward to hearing more about this SECRET PROJECT when it becomes a little less secret.

Equally in Gimp if you drag out a rectangular selection box over the grid it shows you in the info bar at the bottom what the dimensions of the box are. You can tweak the size of the box to get it bang on so that you know the size precisely.

It should just be a matter of clicking and dragging. You can hold down ctrl when you do to make it snap to 30 degree angles. Also, once you have clicked and dragged once, you can go back and move the anchors at either end to make sure they really do line up properly.

I'm afraid I don't have photoshop so I can't help with that question.

@Quillion - well when creating maps for you results in them being published in high quality adventures I can't really complain :) (yes I do private commissions too).

As for the grids, I wouldn't bother with labelling them if you are going to print off the different areas on paper or card. As you put them all together you'll get confused with which labels apply. Best just to print with a grid and no labels I think.

I did find one small glitch with posterazor. It doesn't work on grayscale images. If you have a grayscale map you want to use, open it in a graphics program and save it as a full rgb image (in gimp this is done using Image->Mode->RGB). That should work fine.

Agreed. Clone in Gimp works too. It's the tool that looks like a stamp.Pick a large fuzzy brush. Ctrl-click whre you want to copy from and then paint the area you want to cover. Just be careful with the grid lines.

You need to make sure that the image is of the right scale. The best way to do this is to find out how many pixels there are in a grid square. One way to do this is to open it in Gimp (free, open source graphics program - google it and it's the first hit). Click on the measuring tool. This looks like a pair of callipers. You can also select the tool using shift-m. Now click on one side of a square and drag to the other. At the bottom of the window it show you the measurement of the distance you've dragged over. The drop down menu there allows you to pick the units. Make sure its pixels. Now you know how many pixels are in a grid.

Now to print one grid to in inch, you need this number of pixels per inch. Go to Image->Scale Image and change the resolution to the number you measured. Hit okay and save.

Now in posterazor you can open it up and run through the process. When you get to Step 4 make sure you select the size in percent option and set it to 100%. This will create a poster that prints with one grid spacing to one inch.

Hope that helps.

I got pointed to it by a few people over on the Cartographer's Guild boards. They're really the ones to thank. Hope it does the trick.

If you do drop in over there, make sure to introduce yourself - they are a very friendly bunch.

I dug out the long version of the tutorial on my workflow and it's here, but I'd still recommend the link above for great introduction to regional map making in Gimp.

PosteRazor should do the trick. Hope that helps.

Not a problem at all - I just reread it and I have to agree! You don't need a tablet to start making a pretty map and if you are already using GIMP then I'd recommend this
tutorial.

That steps you through making a regional map (in a slightly different style) and will cover most of the terminology I used in my very speeded up version for my style. The link above is not by me, but by one of the mods over at the cartographers guild. There are many more tutorials over there, and if you post a map, everyone will chip in with helpful advice - including myself. Probably best to continue this discussion over there rather than hijacking the map display thread. Also, there we can put images in the posts, which makes it a lot easier to write tutorials on mapping :)

Thanks. It was my first attempt at a regional map and I'm really pleased with the way it turned out. The basic steps are pretty straightforward. It was all done in Gimp with a cheap Wacom tablet (a Graphire with an A6 active area).

The short version is this:
1. Lay down the lines that separate the different terrain types on a transparent layer.
2. On a new layer beneath this place a layer of varied brown colour - you can use a parchment texture from the web here for good results. I tend to create my own.
3. Now add in the colours on their own layers. I tend to use a large fuzzy brush and one of Gimps built in gradients with the 'Use colour from gradient' turned on and the pressure sensitivity turned off to lay in large areas of colour with a little colour variation. You can always use the smudge tool to get rid of any strokes or patterns that are too obvious. I then duplicate the layer and set the first layer to overlay and the second to normal with an opacity of 50% or lower. By fiddling with these settings you play with the look until you get a feel that looks right. If you can set up layer masks from your lines that you did at the start you can save hours here because then you don't have to worry about colouring over the lines.

Right, at this stage you have all the colours laid in and you've played around with your colours to get a nice balanced look. Now we lay in the light and shade. It's a bit of a cheat, but it works a charm.

4. Add a new layer, fill it with 50% grey and set the layer mode to overlay. Nothing has happened at this stage.
5. Now paint on this layer with low transparency white and black brushes. What you will see is that highlights and shadows appear on the coloured map. It gives form and shape to the map. That's where the mountains and the dark centre of the sea region comes from.

6. Labelling. Finally find a nice font and lay in some labels. You can always give them a white drop shadow to pop the names out of the coloured background. If you set the layer mode of the shadow to overlay or soft light then you can soften the glow into the map a bit.

I hope that helps. If you want more (or less!) detail on the different steps I'm happy to discuss it.

One of the things I enjoy most about the game is creating the maps. I guess some of that has to do with the fact that I now keep up with my old gaming groups over the internet - the downside of moving countries every couple of years. As a result, we use maptool and that has caused me to pull my finger out and make prettier maps for us to play on.

So some of the recent maps are here:

Regional map

Fight at the Stormwatch Inn encounter map

Goblins in the mines!

Ah, nothing like a meeting in an inn and fighting goblins in a mine to get a gaming group back in the saddle after 10 years. They felt like they had never left. I promised to break out some more original storylines for the following adventures.

These are quite bare encounter maps as the contents are placed in maptool as interactable objects, along with the lightsources. There are many more maps on my deviantArt account (the destination for the links above). The ones linked to here are all CC licensed so feel free to download them and spread them about. The others have varying copyright but that should be clear from the pages. At the very least, they can all be downloaded for home use. If they are of use, please note that the download button on the left of the pages gives you the high-res versions. I hope you like them!

There are some great maps here on this thread. You guys should certainly drop into the cartographers' guild and post them there for fame, fortune and friendly crits.