Drawing a Map in Photoshop

First thing’s first; this tutorial is written mainly to remind myself of the steps I go through when making a map…much of this will sound like a lecture but it’s how I work and what I’m thinking, my steps might not be perfect and my observations might be incorrect. Next, look at a GLOBE of the earth not a flat map, this is because a flat map will distort things near the poles to make them look larger than they really are (Greenland looks huge on a flat map). Get the proportions of landmass to ocean roughly in your mind (our earth is 70% water, I think) and take some measurements if you want to by using a piece of string then holding the string up to a ruler. For this tutorial I’m going to do a small continent (2000 X 2000). 1. To get maximum detail I set my resolution way up there at 300-600. The size of the image will give us 1 pixel = 1 mile thus 2000 miles high and wide and the resolution is only for print purposes. I could do this at 100 dpi but if I printed the map it would be larger and then most printers cannot handle much beyond 300 dpi so if you intend to print your map then go with 300 dpi. If your system cannot handle these dimensions without chugging it’s guts out then cut the size in half, this will give you 1 pixel = 2 miles, still not too shabby, eh? If your system can handle this then try a higher image size, this will give you 1 pixel = ½ mile, or ¼ mile or whatever. Or try doing a full earth (the earth is roughly 25,000 miles in circumference around the equator and slightly less from pole to pole so it wouldn’t roll very well due to this beer-belly but for simplicity’s sake I use 12,500 so use 25,000 X 12,500). This image size really makes my pc chug so I just make a bunch of continents and at the end make one big composition. 2. Background information: look at some topography maps or Google earth maps of mountain ranges, swamps, beaches, deserts, rivers, lakes, forests, canyons, arctic poles, or any other geologic phenomena you