Ya know... theres alot of little tricks & such that I've picked up over the years of Digital Image editing & producing Movie Posters & Video Boxes for movie companies, but the primary thing "I" feel makes the difference in my maps is that I refuse to do something Just Like what other people have done. I envision my map in my head, do a little pencil sketch, then go straight to Photoshop.

In the near future I'll be putting some more indepth tutorials up here to show how I do "Specific" things on my maps. BUT, I am not going to do a 100 page tutorial on producing colormaps. That is about what I expect it would take to answer all of the questions & possiblities. Besides, the next map I make will be produced at least 50% differently than the last. It's something you do based on what you want, not based on what you HAVE to do.

I have over 100 meg of tileable textures that I am constantly delving into. These are Never used As Is. They are always modified, merged, altered, multiplied... whatever it takes to get the effect that I "feel" in my head. A usual map of mine will have at least 30 or 40 layers, each of which usually end up with it's own layer mask to allow me more full control of what is masked. I DO look alot to nature for how Mother nature does things. The most important thing I try to keep in mind is that "nature is not repetitive... nature is random". Unless im building an intentional Symmetrically designed map I will not focus on making things opposite of each other or where they Logically should be. Thats not realistic. Even on those maps though, I use textures that are Naturally based & not necessarily "Filter Produced" through Photoshop. Sometimes I will build a basic texture using a Cloud filter or something like that, but I always end up multiplying some other texture over it to make it more... um.... natural.

So... in short... what is the best way to make better colormaps? FIRST, get & learn Photoshop or Painter. Those are the primary tools. YES, you can use Bryce or KidPix, but the end result most likely will not have the character & personality of an Artist Built cmap. Do the Tutorials to those programs. Learn them inside out. Learn them sideways. Learn them to a point that you do not even have to think about HOW to do something, only what you WANT to do.

TUTORIALS
by Clem

Indexing Cmaps
One of the biggest ongoing annoyances I find in a majority of colormaps is the lack of attention to good indexing. People seem to just assume that Photoshop knows what it's doing when you tell it to "Index" your map. That's not the case... now you can Take Control of that indexing & look alot better in the process.