Sat-Image Cleanup

[gwiddik 27]

Hi there,

i have a question to all of our experienced map maker... are you cleaning up your sat image ?

If yes... what are you removing, adding and / or changing ? (Besides clouds, picture errors and stuff)

[wantafanta 13]

im also curious... i figure lakes/rivers gotta go and buildings.. not too sure what else...

[itsdonjon 25]

Of course, yes. You need/should (to) remove all the houses, trees and bushes from the map, because it will look like sh** from a certain distance.

[badluckburt 78]

And my personal favourite, shadows :butbut:

This reminds me I need to get back to mine but I'm having too much fun coding atm :(

[wantafanta 13]

hmm do you guys usually leave all of the water surrounding your island a solid blue fill or texture it with sand or something, and when you say trees... do you mean trees that are just off by themselves or forests aswell?

Edited January 27, 2015 by wantafanta

[jakerod 254]

I think a lot of people make a completely new one when that is possible. I know Bushlurker tends to but will sometimes overlay the old using a blend mode on it to add some detail. I normally just make a completely new one. I tend to make my forests brown and where trees are slightly darker than the grass near them. I turn buildings into a gravel type texture or sometimes just make them a relatively solid grey.

[wantafanta 13]

ahhh, i see... so i guess im on the right track!. this is the first time ive ever really started working with photoshop for anything more serious than resizing/cropping images so i guess i should probably take the time to learn how to paint in PS before i continue on my satmap...

[jakerod 254]

ahhh, i see... so i guess im on the right track!. this is the first time ive ever really started working with photoshop for anything more serious than resizing/cropping images so i guess i should probably take the time to learn how to paint in PS before i continue on my satmap...

If you just want to remove certain things you can try the clone stamp with a soft edged brush. It works well. I was able to remove clouds with it over natural areas fairly easily and believably. Didn't work so well in cities though since I had no idea what was actually under the cloud.

[wantafanta 13]

the problem im having, is adding texture back to areas that i do have to paint over.. like lets say i wanted to give the roads a bit of an asphalt texture.. how could i go about doing so? or adding in a bit of a grass texture to some area's that just dont look as nice as they possibly could.

[badluckburt 78]

the problem im having, is adding texture back to areas that i do have to paint over.. like lets say i wanted to give the roads a bit of an asphalt texture.. how could i go about doing so? or adding in a bit of a grass texture to some area's that just dont look as nice as they possibly could.

The Clone Stamp tool in Photoshop that Jakerod mentioned will let you do that.

You use the tool to sample a part of an image, it can be the one you're working on or a different one. Then, when you start painting, it will paint the area you've sampled, if you do this on a separate layer it's easier to manage.

My roads looks horrible atm though, I need more sampling materials. But it works great for grass.

You can adjust the area you sample and my advice would be, sample small bits, paint a little with them and sample again, paint again etc. That way, if you're sampling on the same map, you don't get the repetition.

GIMP probably has a similar feature in case you use that.