Canonfire!

Wed Oct 20, 2004 10:42 pm Old School Maps

Hello everyone, I'm new to the forums, but I've been lurking at Canonfire for quite some time.

I've been working on a very high quality old-school style Greyhawk map for the past 12 months ( Shocked

) and it's finally complete. It is 43" x 32", current through CY590, and in Adobe Photoshop format. It looks very much like the Darlene map.

One great thing about the Photoshop format is that the map has separate layers for the map, geographic labels, cities and a hex grid. That way, a DM can edit the map or labels as he or she sees fit, without too much work.

The file is 11.5 megs zipped. 30 megs unzipped.

So, I have two questions:

1) Can Canonfire handle the bandwidth for the Photoshop file? I also have a 24" x 18" version which is about 7 megs zipped.

2) Should I also offer the map in a non-Photoshop format? The 43x32 map is 15 megs as a zipped jpeg.

Since the file sizes are so large, I wanted to get some feedback.

Here is a small preview taken from the 24x18 version showing Gran March and the Kron Hills:

http://www.fof2forever.com/wogpreview.jpg

Thu Oct 21, 2004 6:07 am

1. Yup

2. Yup

No hexes and coordinates though, huh?

As you can see with myt recreation, it weighs in @ 30MB .bmp. (bmp!? it is supposed to be linking to the .jpeg version, grumble...)

http://www.greyhawkonline.com/canonfire/abyss_cy589_darlene_map_redo.jpg

I really don't like the "look" of my poorly graphic'd Darlene recreation, but it is necessary for me to have hexes Wink

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Thu Oct 21, 2004 6:11 am

Hiya GridIron,

I have a question about the Photoshop format with the layers. It has a photoshop extension, right? I mean it will only open in Adobe Photoshop to be able to access the layers feature? I love the idea of the layers but I use Paint Shop pro, but not Photoshop. I like using a paint program to do a map and I've never used a map building program. I suppose just because I'm used to using PSP and I can do whatever I want.
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Never get into fights with ugly people, they have nothing to lose.

Thu Oct 21, 2004 6:33 am

Thu Oct 21, 2004 6:34 am

Thu Oct 21, 2004 6:43 am

I wonder if I could go into PSP and do a batch conversion from Photoshop to Paint Shop....I don't know if you can, like changing a bmp to gif or what have you. Not sure if PSP has a Photoshop extension listed to convert.
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Never get into fights with ugly people, they have nothing to lose.

Thu Oct 21, 2004 8:14 am

Thu Oct 21, 2004 10:11 am

Fri Oct 22, 2004 4:27 am

For those who want and/or understand the usefulness of Photoshop's layers, Adobe makes the lower-end product Photoshop Elements; it uses the same .psd format. It's around $50 (I think) -- not cheap, but affordable for some.

My two cents here.

Jack
big-time Photoshop user for maps
and Photoshop Elements for animated gifs

Fri Oct 22, 2004 7:58 pm

Nicely done!
Is there anyone out there that could blow up a Greyhawk city map to print on, sayyyy, four sheets of normal size paper? Is this even possible?
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Imagine what you could learn if you could learn to imagine!!

Sat Oct 23, 2004 2:54 am

Regarding four-page poster maps:

Microsoft Excel can do it. Insert your image into Excel, then go to Print Setup. You can instruct the computer to 'fit to' 2 pages by 2 pages (or whatever). It may take a bit of fiddling to get exactly what you want, but that's it in a nutshell :)

Later

Jack