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A lot of 'realistic' cartography is gradually adding subtle elements that cumulatively paint a 'this looks real' picture. So here is before and after rivers, it's not a lot but it lends to the heights of these islands.
No Rivers --> Rivers
While the map is drawing at 1:28M I'm drawing the rivers at 1:3-4M, it means they can look kinda chunky at the drawing scale but they smooth out as you pull away.
1:4M Drawing --> 1:28M Layout Scale
And because of course I am, I'm like I should add rivers to the landscape. It's a pretty far out 1:28M scale but if I dot the landscape it might help the depth element...
So of course I'm defining Major/Minor symbols because I'm a details kind of guy.
Today on Blue Planet I'm reconciling any inconsistencies between the various scales and make sure it's internally consistent.
Black outlines are Endeavor Is Region, Green is the Globe.
This is way more art then science even though I was in Histogram hell. Gives a decent sense of depth with a bleeding cliff wall into darker deeper waters.
It's way more art than science just trying to give a feeling of depth without leaning to hard otherwise it tends to look kind of plastic like.
These are light touches like 80-90% transparency with the blending.
I still have a lot more experiments to fine tune this in Pro. But it starts to look more like this
Next up Layer Blending, the goal here is to seamlessly blend the shadows and highlights from the Hillshading into the Colour Plate base.
1 - Hillshade with a Z-factor of 3
2 - Bottom Landscape of Land/Water Colours
Next up I'm tossing out the contours I drew in the water in favour of the more blended look of the DEM. But I'm keeping the contours I drew for the Land to give it a more 'measured' or topographic feel.
This creates the core layers of the base colours for the map.