19 replies to this topic

[Parmenion]

Hello cartographers,

First sorry for my english. I try to begin in cartography, i know photoshop and illustrator. I have downloaded DEM and vector data from my region. Now i need software and there is to much software and my budget is near to zero $ lolo

so i would like

1- to do the shaded relief in photoshop but i am not able to open the dem in photoshop i am on PC. What is the workflow to open dem in photoshop in 16 bits format on PC ?
2- to edit and organize the vector data before importing them in illustrator. Exemple i need to crop a specific region for exemple otherwise there are to many vector data in illustrator and it is very slow.. what soft to use i think of manifold or global mapper ?
3- tutorials or book recommandations... this tutorial is cool http://www.photoshop...e-in-photoshop/ do you know other in the same style ?

Thank you very much for any help you will give.

[Hans van der Maarel]

First of all, yes, get either Manifold or Global Mapper. Both will set you back about $250, but will make your life a lot easier. Illustrator and/or Photoshop on their own aren't enough if you want to import and use GIS data. Probabely Manifold is the best option for you because it has a decent output to Illustrator.

Then, start playing with it and get to know the software. If you have specific questions, check here to see if they've been asked before and if not, just ask them. Look at samples, try and get a clear idea of what you want to achieve.

Keep in mind there's no single one magic application that allows you to do the whole range of mapping. I personally use sometimes 4-5 different applications for one project, just for the simple reason that app A is really good for one thing whereas app B is better for another little part of the project.

Good luck!

[Parmenion]

First of all, yes, get either Manifold or Global Mapper. Both will set you back about $250, but will make your life a lot easier. Illustrator and/or Photoshop on their own aren't enough if you want to import and use GIS data. Probabely Manifold is the best option for you because it has a decent output to Illustrator.

Then, start playing with it and get to know the software. If you have specific questions, check here to see if they've been asked before and if not, just ask them. Look at samples, try and get a clear idea of what you want to achieve.

Keep in mind there's no single one magic application that allows you to do the whole range of mapping. I personally use sometimes 4-5 different applications for one project, just for the simple reason that app A is really good for one thing whereas app B is better for another little part of the project.

Good luck!

Hello Hans,

i have checked here for tow question i have and not find solution :

1- What is the method(toshop tutorial) to incorporate the shaded relief in a project ? i do reference to the article here http://www.landtrust.....shaded relief paragraph "Using a Hillshade".

2- For the moment i try to do the relief shading in photoshop and i am blocked maybe a compatibility issue. The DEM i have are from geobase.ca and if i export the DEM in PGM 16bits via globalmapper here is what i obtain in photoshop cs :



so is it a compatibility issue or do i someting wrong ?

3- If i need a specialized software to do the shading relief i would like to have one who propose different illumination model (article on reliefshading.com) like diffuse reflection etc... what are the soft who give this kind of choice for the illumination model ?

Thank you for any advice. It would be cool to start a topic for beginners with link book tutorial just an idea...

[Hans van der Maarel]

i have checked here for tow question i have and not find solution :

1- What is the method(toshop tutorial) to incorporate the shaded relief in a project ? i do reference to the article here http://www.landtrust.....shaded relief paragraph "Using a Hillshade".

2- For the moment i try to do the relief shading in photoshop and i am blocked maybe a compatibility issue. The DEM i have are from geobase.ca and if i export the DEM in PGM 16bits via globalmapper here is what i obtain in photoshop cs :



so is it a compatibility issue or do i someting wrong ?

3- If i need a specialized software to do the shading relief i would like to have one who propose different illumination model (article on reliefshading.com) like diffuse reflection etc... what are the soft who give this kind of choice for the illumination model ?

Thank you for any advice. It would be cool to start a topic for beginners with link book tutorial just an idea...

• Do you mean adding a hillshade layer to a map that you're producing in Photoshop or Illustrator? First you have to produce the hillshade, preferably as a separate file, then simply open it up in Photoshop, copy it and paste it on a new layer in your map document. In Illustrator, you can use File -> Place to get the same result.
• I'm not familiar with PGM, I would recommend using TIFF for this.
• I personally use VNS, other options would be Terragen, Bryce, Surfer, 3Dem, MacDem, Leveller or even Manifold and Global Mapper. VNS has the advantage of being highly configurable (but it has a steep learning curve)

You may have found this one already, but ShadedRelief.com has some excellent tutorials.

On a somewhat related note, feel free to introduce yourself so we can have an idea of who you are and what your background is.

Hope this helps.

[Parmenion]

i have checked here for tow question i have and not find solution :

1- What is the method(toshop tutorial) to incorporate the shaded relief in a project ? i do reference to the article here http://www.landtrust.....shaded relief paragraph "Using a Hillshade".

2- For the moment i try to do the relief shading in photoshop and i am blocked maybe a compatibility issue. The DEM i have are from geobase.ca and if i export the DEM in PGM 16bits via globalmapper here is what i obtain in photoshop cs :



so is it a compatibility issue or do i someting wrong ?

3- If i need a specialized software to do the shading relief i would like to have one who propose different illumination model (article on reliefshading.com) like diffuse reflection etc... what are the soft who give this kind of choice for the illumination model ?

Thank you for any advice. It would be cool to start a topic for beginners with link book tutorial just an idea...

• Do you mean adding a hillshade layer to a map that you're producing in Photoshop or Illustrator? First you have to produce the hillshade, preferably as a separate file, then simply open it up in Photoshop, copy it and paste it on a new layer in your map document. In Illustrator, you can use File -> Place to get the same result.
• I'm not familiar with PGM, I would recommend using TIFF for this.
• I personally use VNS, other options would be Terragen, Bryce, Surfer, 3Dem, MacDem, Leveller or even Manifold and Global Mapper. VNS has the advantage of being highly configurable (but it has a steep learning curve)

You may have found this one already, but ShadedRelief.com has some excellent tutorials.

On a somewhat related note, feel free to introduce yourself so we can have an idea of who you are and what your background is.

Hope this helps.

1- Yes for exemple i am in photoshop with a layer how represente the rasterized vector, a white background and another layer where i want to place my shaded relief. The goal is to make the relief more subtile compared to the other. Generally a shaded relief is grey, so my question is what manipulation cartographer do to have a subtil three-dimensional effect. Just playing with transparency of the layer ?
2- using tiff do not give me the same image as PGM 16bits.
3- Vns is expensive why are you using it ?

Thank you for your advice it is cool. I have introduced myself.

[Hans van der Maarel]

1- Yes for exemple i am in photoshop with a layer how represente the rasterized vector, a white background and another layer where i want to place my shaded relief. The goal is to make the relief more subtile compared to the other. Generally a shaded relief is grey, so my question is what manipulation cartographer do to have a subtil three-dimensional effect. Just playing with transparency of the layer ?
2- using tiff do not give me the same image as PGM 16bits.
3- Vns is expensive why are you using it ?

Thank you for your advice it is cool. I have introduced myself.

I think it's a bit more complicated than some layer manipulations in Photoshop. From what you've written, it sounds like your workflow is downloading DEM files, opening them in Global Mapper and exporting shaded relief from there. Is that correct? Nice looking shaded relief often takes a lot of trial and error, going through various settings (depending on the software you use of course). It's almost never "push a button and something nice comes out".

If you have a greyscale shade layer and you want to combine it with an underlying map, you can indeed play with the transparency (although I personally would experiment with adding the map as a ground effect in VNS and applying the shading to it there).

How do you mean TIFF doesn't give you the same image as PGM? Is there a specific reason why you can't use TIFF?

Yes, VNS is expensive, but it's also very full-featured and it gives me the control I need to produce images the way I want. To give you an idea of the kind of stuff it can do for cartographers: Cartography page at 3DNWorld.com. Mind you, pretty much all of those images had some post-processing done on them to get that result.

Hope this helps.

[Parmenion]

1- Yes for exemple i am in photoshop with a layer how represente the rasterized vector, a white background and another layer where i want to place my shaded relief. The goal is to make the relief more subtile compared to the other. Generally a shaded relief is grey, so my question is what manipulation cartographer do to have a subtil three-dimensional effect. Just playing with transparency of the layer ?
2- using tiff do not give me the same image as PGM 16bits.
3- Vns is expensive why are you using it ?

Thank you for your advice it is cool. I have introduced myself.

I think it's a bit more complicated than some layer manipulations in Photoshop. From what you've written, it sounds like your workflow is downloading DEM files, opening them in Global Mapper and exporting shaded relief from there. Is that correct? Nice looking shaded relief often takes a lot of trial and error, going through various settings (depending on the software you use of course). It's almost never "push a button and something nice comes out".

If you have a greyscale shade layer and you want to combine it with an underlying map, you can indeed play with the transparency (although I personally would experiment with adding the map as a ground effect in VNS and applying the shading to it there).

How do you mean TIFF doesn't give you the same image as PGM? Is there a specific reason why you can't use TIFF?

Yes, VNS is expensive, but it's also very full-featured and it gives me the control I need to produce images the way I want. To give you an idea of the kind of stuff it can do for cartographers: Cartography page at 3DNWorld.com. Mind you, pretty much all of those images had some post-processing done on them to get that result.

Hope this helps.

I think too. I try to break up a workflow to understand. A beautiful exemple here
The author(congratulation) say «Shaded relief was created using Visual Nature Studio 2 and enhanced manually in Photoshop CS» i suppose it is the greyscale who was enhanced ? i have seen method to optimize it on shadedrelief.com i am ok with that but after the greyscale is optimized a graphic method was used to mix the hypsometric color to the optimized shaded relief no ? if i understand you it has been done in visual nature studio (ground effect) ?

[Hans van der Maarel]

I think too. I try to break up a workflow to understand. A beautiful exemple here
The author(congratulation) say «Shaded relief was created using Visual Nature Studio 2 and enhanced manually in Photoshop CS» i suppose it is the greyscale who was enhanced ? i have seen method to optimize it on shadedrelief.com i am ok with that but after the greyscale is optimized a graphic method was used to mix the hypsometric color to the optimized shaded relief no ? if i understand you it has been done in visual nature studio (ground effect) ?

No, by the sound of it, the hypsometric colors were added in VNS, then a render was made which included the shading. That resulting image was then manually optimized in Photoshop before being added as a background layer in Illustrator. At least that's how I usually do this kind of stuff...

[Parmenion]

I think too. I try to break up a workflow to understand. A beautiful exemple here
The author(congratulation) say «Shaded relief was created using Visual Nature Studio 2 and enhanced manually in Photoshop CS» i suppose it is the greyscale who was enhanced ? i have seen method to optimize it on shadedrelief.com i am ok with that but after the greyscale is optimized a graphic method was used to mix the hypsometric color to the optimized shaded relief no ? if i understand you it has been done in visual nature studio (ground effect) ?

No, by the sound of it, the hypsometric colors were added in VNS, then a render was made which included the shading. That resulting image was then manually optimized in Photoshop before being added as a background layer in Illustrator. At least that's how I usually do this kind of stuff...

ok so we don't speak about the same optimization find here http://www.reliefsha...analytical.html ? i think there is no interest to do this kind of adjustement on hypsometric rendered shaded relief. Between picture 3 and picture 4 a Tonal lightening technic in photoshop is applied. What exactly is the tonal lightening technic in photoshop ?

Hans Can i see some of your work ?

[Hans van der Maarel]

ok so we don't speak about the same optimization find here http://www.reliefsha...analytical.html ? i think there is no interest to do this kind of adjustement on hypsometric rendered shaded relief. Between picture 3 and picture 4 a Tonal lightening technic in photoshop is applied. What exactly is the tonal lightening technic in photoshop ?

Hans Can i see some of your work ?

Well, there are of course various ways to approach this problem. Since I use VNS, I can't easily separate the shading from the underlying terrain, so I have an option of either rendering shading directly on the hypsometric tints (which I usually do), or rendering hypsometric tints without any shading whatsoever and a separate layer with a white terrain and shading, then combine them in Photoshop. Obviously the second option takes a lot more time (double the rendering time)

Tonal lightening refers to the reduced contrast of the shaded relief in image 4, as it is used as a background image for a thematic map.

As mentioned in that article, if you want to get *really* stunningly beautiful shading, you will have to do a lot of manual editing afterwards.

Sure you can see some of my work, although it's not nearly as good as some of the samples shown on the reliefshading site (time being a limiting factor). Portfolio and another one.

[frax]

Parmenion,

That grayscale image that you posted before shows that you are on the right track, you should be able to use that to create a shaded relief with hypsometric tints - provided any possible negative values are fine (a common problem).

A guide that I really like, is Alex Tait's tutorial on how to do shaded relief in Photoshop:
http://www.internati...ef_Tutorial.pdf

[Parmenion]

ok so we don't speak about the same optimization find here http://www.reliefsha...analytical.html ? i think there is no interest to do this kind of adjustement on hypsometric rendered shaded relief. Between picture 3 and picture 4 a Tonal lightening technic in photoshop is applied. What exactly is the tonal lightening technic in photoshop ?

Hans Can i see some of your work ?

Well, there are of course various ways to approach this problem. Since I use VNS, I can't easily separate the shading from the underlying terrain, so I have an option of either rendering shading directly on the hypsometric tints (which I usually do), or rendering hypsometric tints without any shading whatsoever and a separate layer with a white terrain and shading, then combine them in Photoshop. Obviously the second option takes a lot more time (double the rendering time)

Tonal lightening refers to the reduced contrast of the shaded relief in image 4, as it is used as a background image for a thematic map.

As mentioned in that article, if you want to get *really* stunningly beautiful shading, you will have to do a lot of manual editing afterwards.

Sure you can see some of my work, although it's not nearly as good as some of the samples shown on the reliefshading site (time being a limiting factor). Portfolio and another one.

reduced contrast not only there is another thing. Try to reduce the contrast in photoshop you don't have the same result. If i can understand this specific technic to combine a shaded relief to a background color so i am in bizness lolo You say you combine them but what specific tool in photoshop do you use ?

I have seen your portfolio there are pretty good work. I have to go out for some days i will continue this interesting conversation later ;-)

Thank you.

[Hans van der Maarel]

reduced contrast not only there is another thing. Try to reduce the contrast in photoshop you don't have the same result. If i can understand this specific technic to combine a shaded relief to a background color so i am in bizness lolo You say you combine them but what specific tool in photoshop do you use ?

I have seen your portfolio there are pretty good work. I have to go out for some days i will continue this interesting conversation later ;-)

There's no specific tool, you just create a new layer in file A, then copy and paste the contents from file B into it.

[Parmenion]

reduced contrast not only there is another thing. Try to reduce the contrast in photoshop you don't have the same result. If i can understand this specific technic to combine a shaded relief to a background color so i am in bizness lolo You say you combine them but what specific tool in photoshop do you use ?

I have seen your portfolio there are pretty good work. I have to go out for some days i will continue this interesting conversation later ;-)

There's no specific tool, you just create a new layer in file A, then copy and paste the contents from file B into it.

Hello Hans,

Finally i have found some interesting info http://www.internati...Illuminated.pdf playing with hue saturation combined with transparency and reduced contrast are probably the key to include the shaded relief. I think i have enough information to begin a litlle project. I have a problem of performence in illustrator when i import contours i would like to join all that contours how cartographers do usually with this problem ?

[Hans van der Maarel]

Finally i have found some interesting info http://www.internati...Illuminated.pdf playing with hue saturation combined with transparency and reduced contrast are probably the key to include the shaded relief. I think i have enough information to begin a litlle project. I have a problem of performence in illustrator when i import contours i would like to join all that contours how cartographers do usually with this problem ?

Hmmm... I'm a bit weary of an 8-page tutorial that somehow fails to include a sample of the map described in it...

Good luck, and please do show us your results!

As for Illustrator performance, what kind of hardware are you on?