Ryandor.com

i know when you select an area with the magic wand, you can smooth the selection... but how do you smooth the actual drawing? this would be a really convienent way of making sure you have no single pixel divets or sticking out. theres gotta be a way, anyone?

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contact via aim ashestodust

I noticed when I first started making maps that it was hard not to have any 1 pixel edges. So I stopped using the lasso tool and just used a really big brush. You can clean things up really well by using a smaller brush. I almost never go to a 1 pixel brush. That way I don?t have any 1 pixel tiles to worry about.

As for using the wand, if you don?t have any 1 pixel tiles, it wont select them. (see above)

In a normal world you would use the antialising to 'smooth' out the edges. But here in this strange little world we have fashioned for ourselves, you cant. Just remember a UO map is all about smoothness!
Mountains or valleys, coasts or roads it?s all the same. Think Smooth!

Even if it means you have to draw it that way in the first place. Sure it takes longer. But its worth the time.

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Dragonfire
http://www.tragena.net
New screen shots added!

The way I do it, once I smooth the selection, then I go around the selection border with a brush the color of my land area to catch any water tiles that got trapped inside the selection. Then, I invert the selection, and take a brush the color of the water, and go around it again to get rid of any land tiles sticking out. Hope that makes sense.

yea thats what i'm doing now. i got over all the edges and clean up the stray pixels and the edges. I just figuered maybe there was a shortcut in photoshop.

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contact via aim ashestodust

If it's like.. water that got caught in, and there is no other water in the selection I just do the same as i do with mountains (read the mountain post :p) only I deselect the pixels I want gone, instead of select.

So tolerance on 0, and disable that one function on there too (darn, forgot the name eh ).

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Wands don't kill people, wizards kill people

i should be more specific.

this is what i do, in photoshop.

1. select a piece of land with the magic wand.
2. i then go to the menu, select>modify>smooth
3. put 1 pixel in as the radius.

that makes the selection perfectly smooth without and single pixels jutting in or out. my question is how do i make it so the selection becomes my land mass?

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contact via aim ashestodust

You can also use expand/contrain selections

In my map actions it's F2 and F3 shortcuts.

Make your selection, then hit F2 a couple times, then F3 a couple times and you'll have a smoothed selection.

Just yet another way of doing it, although be warned you're selection will not be as exact as you may want it.

-Ryandor

hmm, i tried that but it doesn't comepletely solve the problem, if at all. expanding can destroy alot of detail, and it still doesn't make sure no pixels jutting in or out.

i took some screen shots.

first this is a shot of my most common problem, single pixels sticking in or out


if i select it, then smooth the selection, the selection lines become exactly how i'd smooth it as if i were doing it by hand with a brush


the question is, how do you select those pixels, the ones sticking in and out?

so far i've figuered out that if i go to select>color range and then sample the blue, it selects just those blue within the smoothed selection at while point i can just use the paint bucked to change them all green.

the only thing i haven't figuer out is how to select the green pixels that are jutting out, doing the opposite per say.

any thoughs? seems like alot of work to figuer out, but if i get this down i never have to fine tune my entire coasts with the brush pixel by pixel, and that saves alot of time.

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contact via aim ashestodust

i just figuered it out, it was simple but too obvious.

1. magic wand the green, smooth the selection.
2.go to select>color range and sample the blue.
3. fill in the selections with green.
4. deselect everything.
5. magic wand the blue, smooth the selection
6 go to select>color range and sample the green
7.fill in the selections with blue.

this is great because i can do this when fixing the borders of any two colors, treat green and blue as variables a and b. its a bit more invovled than i wanted though, maybe i should set up a set of actions that do this?

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contact via aim ashestodust

Yeah... that's it

much easier and faster than just using a big brush!
lol

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Dragonfire
http://www.tragena.net
New screen shots added!

i started using this method and i've found it doesn't work 100% of the time, it has a small chance of creating stray pixels. however, its at least 90% effective, just do it, then scan over it. easier ffixing one or two by hand than all of them.

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contact via aim ashestodust