I've been working on this off and on for a few days. I appreciate all the help and input.

I experimented with matrices, and I think a scaled unity matrix (contrast) and adding brightness is exactly what I needed.

The multiply blend mode gives the texture underneath. This is a success.

Now to actually finish the text. That's another story...

Thanks again.

I have two suggestions. I agree with what JulianDracos wrote, by the way.

Don't get a 4K display. I love them for everything except CC3. Scaling CC3 for 4K doesn't seem to work for me. A 1080 HD display is perfect for CC3, in my opinion.

Get SSD for storage. I think it's hard to find a model without SSD. It's important enough to mention, though.

There's a webcomic, xkcd, that sometimes has comics about maps. I enjoy these a lot. The latest one is a crazy projection with the US state of Kansas as the outer edge of the map.

Have any of you experimented with projections in unusual ways? For example, the maps I saw in primary school use Mercator projections that made Greenland look much larger than it really is. It gave me a skewed idea of what the world looked like. Has anyone used this kind of effect in a map or game? I think it could be fun.

I will leave that to Xargun, as that is the owner of the maps. I also refrained from posting them here to avoid spoilers for the players!

I was asked to do everything but the roads, settlements, and labels. That left just the basics to do. I had a lot of fun doing it.

An interesting note: We selected SS1b as the style. I used that for everything including the symbols. I eventually split some things into their own sheets, like the hills vs mountain areas. I think I made my own river style based on the existing lake style. The point is that I used only what was in that style and nothing outside of it. Rather, I tried to do that. I somehow got some Darklands hill symbols in there. I don't know how that happened. It turned out to be good because the hills went well on that map. The downside was Xargun had to buy that annual. (Though I think one can never have too many annuals.)

I think this is great. I love the texture.

The only thing I suggest is to compare the length of the cliff's shadow with the shadow of, say, a building. I think the cliff shadow is too short.

Maybe that's a perspective thing. Most of the map is overhead, but the cliff is not. I'd say that if the cliff were narrower and the entrances were at a sharper angle, it would match even better.

These are just comments, as I think the map is really good.

Loopysue! They can "shed some light!" At least *I* got it.

How to make the mountains pop? I'm not sure they need to change. I kinda like it. Maybe a shadow of some kind, but I don't think it's needed.

I like it!

Here's an update. I added some detail. I'm stepping back to evaluate the entire map.

Click here for the larger gallery image.

Have you tried JPG? I understand the thought that it's not perfect, but with the right settings I find that it works very well. Try different compression levels. I think that might be something worth looking at.

Good luck.

Hello. Let me share a lesson that I just learned. I had a problem with transparency acne, and it took me a while to solve. I had an inner fade effect on a sheet, above a bitmap background. The background was green grass, and the poly above it was black so as to suggest a dome-like shape. Of course, the top poly had acne. Nothing new here. So, I made a liner sheet in between that was a copy of the top sheet with the acne. I used an RGB Matrix effect to make the line sheet bright red. I thought this should have solved the problem, as I've *done this before.* At least I thought so...

Here is a shot of the liner and background sheets with no sheet effects:

There's a black poly with red RGB Matrix on top of a greed bitmap background. I have the actual top layer hidden for this discussion. When I turned on the inner fade, I got this:

Yikes! Why would a *red* layer cause acne on top of a *green* background? Any guesses?

Solution: The RGB Matrix effect did *not* help the acne. The acne was caused by the intrinsic color of the poly, not the computed color after the RGB Matrix effect. In other words, even though the poly looked red to me, the edge fade still took it to be black when it came to acne.

I changed the poly to be explicitly red, and I removed the RGB Matrix effect. Drumroll....

The lesson that I learned: Transparency Acne relates to the color of the top layer without any effects applied to it. Don't use an RGB Matrix effect to shortcut a change to the poly color.

I learned a lesson here. Maybe it was just "Dumb Cartographer Day," and I needed to drink more coffee. Either way, I hope this helps somebody someday!