18 replies to this topic

[frax]

The problem with doing it in Photoshop is that you can have it set up so that your water features are on top of background land features (e.g parks that extend into the water and include some islands, for instance). What happens is that the water ends up covering anything below it. There are work arounds, of course, but you need to ensure that you resulting water image is on the bottom.

I don't get what you mean - I export the land polys to photoshop (everything else is water/sea) and then create the glow from there - save it as a psd and bring it in as a background layer in Illy. One could do it as a semi-transparent feathered thing, or color all the water/background in PS. Other things goes on top, labels, parks, islands, etc.

[frax]

Reviving an old thread - I think I figured out how to do it nicely in Illy using a Live Effect.

Your land paths, add a new stroke using the appearance pallette, below the main fill. Then set that stroke to something big (the maximum radius you want). Now select that stroke, and apply the gaussian blur effect on it. Try first with the same radius you used for the stroke. Voilá!

Your appearance pallette should look something like this...

(note that I did some extra things there - a drop shadow on the main fill, and I also set a 50% opacity on the vignette)

Now I just need to figure out how to do bevel/emboss in Illy, like you can in Photoshop!

[Hans van der Maarel]

Just tried this and it works a charm. The only thing I would add is that if you have islands that are close to eachother, it's probably a good idea to make a compound path first, to avoid vignettes overlapping islands.

[David Medeiros]

I take a similar, if not opposite approach to this... I use the land polygon to create an enclosed ocean polygon with it's outer edges extended beyond the map frame. Fill this with my water fill then set an Inner Glow with the a darker fill color. Same effect. If there are island you do need to create a compound path.

A version of this method can be used to create a multi step fade from shore to deep ocean. You simply copy and paste a new ocean poly beneath the current one with a third color, use an opacity mask and gradient (if I recall correctly) to blend the two main body colors together.

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