Excellent! It works. Thanks Joe. I just wish I'd known about that years ago.

I had started to import the symbols, then open the results in GIMP to select alpha and sharpen the mask, fill with black on a new layer, then invert the mask and trim the semi-transparent pixels away before merging the two layers to form one antialiased image with nice clean edges. It takes too long, though, when you are still drawing new symbols on a time limit.

The symbols generated without any kind of antialiasing look rougher at lower resolutions, but at least they don't have those white fringes on them anymore, and I don't have to waste so much time preparing them all by hand now.

It must be different in Australia ;)

I went on a photography course and was told off for not placing the flower right in the centre of the shot.

But the real point of what I was saying was that it actually doesn't matter at all - as long as it looks somehow balanced to the person who created it. Some of these rules make me giggle.

You're right - that's pretty, but way too colourful for the parchment trick to work on this version. If we were to use an RGB Matrix Process (Yes, I got the name twisted back to front last time I mentioned it), the map would be generally a mid grey, which wouldn't work very well either.

However, there is a solution close at hand.

Fortunately for us Mike Schley did a black and white version of this style. I'm not sure if the new settlement symbols he's been doing for the free monthly content will be there, but this should be relatively easy to convert.

Start by creating a new map in the Mike Schley Inks Overland style that is the same size as your current colour map.

Then hide all the sheets you don't need to copy across from the first map (shown below) and use the Copy and Paste tools in the Edit menu to copy everything else across to the new blank Inks map.

Once you have the map in the new template you can use the Change Properties tool to swap the colour polygon fills with their black and white equivalent, and the Symbol Manager to Replace the colour symbols with their black and white versions.

Then try the parchment trick, and you should have a much clearer conversion.

This is a brief description only - don't be afraid to ask how to do something if you get stuck.

:) I am hoping that someone will make a map of the world one day in which all the country names are replaced with the most common form of greeting.

Ok, I think Remy and I posted at the same time. Remy certainly points out something I hadn't thought about being the problem at all, but which is probably your main issue here.

If you have deleted the CC3 symbols from the map they will still be in the Symbol Manager. The easiest thing to do is to Purge, save the map, close it, and reopen it. You should be rid of all the old symbol references then, and free to place the new trees.

(Purge is a button in the Symbol Manager)

I wouldn't use Affinity to do it either. I'd use GIMP. It's the only app that can sharpen a mask if such proves to be necessary.

I think my idea of something being too much work is probably quite different to yours. Only yesterday I processed 364 symbol pngs to 64k colours instead of full colour - one at a time by hand. All in the name of reducing the sheer size of a new style for download next month :)

(I use Corel to do that particular job, since none of the other apps seem to be capable of it)

I don't create fills in Affinity because you can't make things seamless in that app without some serious hard work. It is much easier to do them in an app that is designed to create seamless fills (also really expensive now that Genetica has become abandonware), or to 'draw' them in Krita, which has a 'wraparound' mode where the image is turned into a seamless plane you can draw things on that join up with themselves at opposite edges. Krita is free, so is by far the most cost effective option of the two

If you want to see examples of what you can do in Krita, look at the fills used in the Ferraris Style, which were 90% hand drawn in Krita (the paper base was generated in Genetica), or check out the grass textures in next month's annual issue, which was also hand drawn in Krita.

Creating textures like this does take a bit of practice, however, so best set aside some time for it.

It's coming on really well, though I think you may have misunderstood me when I suggested the paper texture in the symbols. The idea was to multiply the texture over the top of the entire symbol so that the paper texture is effectively mixed with the colours of the symbol rather than just a background, so that in the editor you are using to create your symbols you get this:

• Paper texture layer, set to multiply mode
• All the layers the symbol is drawn on

For the frames, maybe just a simple line at zero width around each one, and a blend mode that is set to overlay with opacity reduced to such an extent as to make them nearly invisible. Be careful, also to leave at least a small space all the way around the inside of each frame so that the text doesn't touch the sides. Probably better to reduce the size of the text a bit so the symbols don't start to look small and lost.

That's a good map.

I'm pleased to hear you are enjoying the style :)

As a side note here - that transparency acne in the south west corner can be remedied by redownloading the updated installer and using it in repair mode. The textures have been repaired to prevent it in most cases since the original publication.

You're welcome :)

Now click the :CC2PRESETS: button and then click the Attach to Drawing button in the dialog that appears and save the file.

We might never know how that happened, but if you get into making your own palettes in the future those top 2 rows must always be left as they are because they affect the colours of the interface.

In answer to your question - the default palette is used in the vast majority of templates, though there are a few styles that have their own variation of the palette, like the one I just showed you.

Hi Everyone! :)

During the Live Mapping session yesterday, where Ralf demonstrated the new Marine Dungeon style published as the July issue of this year's Cartographer's Annual, he mentioned that we had already discussed the possibility of there being a few additional symbols in the same style at some point in the future. So now I am trying to make a list of what everyone would like.

Just as a reminder, this is the example map from that style.

Remember that you can use symbols from other dungeon styles in conjunction with Marine Dungeon, so you don't need to ask for things that we already have in other similar styles that work ok with this one.

Other than that, all requests considered.

Thank you.