I’ve had occasion, from time to time, to show my colleagues in the UW Cartography Lab the technique I use to combine shaded relief with other map layers in Photoshop. After a recent request to share the technique again, I decided to make a video, so that people can watch at their own convenience. So, if you’re interested in this:
then watch this:
(make sure to view in HD, so you can see the details I’m talking about). If you’d like, you can also follow along with the same file I’m using: https://www.dropbox.com/s/6teczksvgajrxdb/ReliefTutorial.psd?dl=0.
This tutorial is, and will remain, free, but if you derive some value from it, you are welcome to make a donation to support my continued work.
somethingaboutmaps 
Thanks for sharing Daniel.
Will change my technique and dump multiply and use linear burn and screen.
Looks fantastic
Hi, this is a great tutorial. May I ask how you generated the hypsometric tint? was that in GIS or Photoshop? And is it also a copy of the hillshade with color applied? I would like to try generating my own.
cheers,
Lucas
For this example, I believe I did it in Photoshop, though I have also done it in GIS. It doesn’t use a copy of the hillshade, but a copy of the DEM itself. So, in ArcMap, for example, you can load in a DEM and then colors are automatically applied based on the values in the DEM — usually the default setting is a black (low areas) to white (high areas) setting, but you can go in and change that to a variety of other ramps. If you have a similar black-to-white image in Photoshop, you would use the Gradient Map tool to alter its colors, which is what I did in creating the example. Hope this helps!
great thanks Daniel, I’ll give that a try
Thanks Daniel for this awesome tutorial.
I followed it pretty closely making my own shaded relief map but the hypsometric tint has me stuck.
I’m not the best at picking colours for my tints.
Do you have any recommended colours or sources you go to for different styles?
I’m looking for something semi-realistic after seeing these maps.
https://www.etsy.com/au/listing/908142924/hydrologic-map-of-the-united-states-of?ref=shop_home_active_5&crt=1
I’m afraid that I do not. I think the most useful piece of advice is just to look at a lot of other terrain maps and try sampling their colors, then adjusting until you have something you’re more satisfied with.
Also, I usually use land cover, rather than a hypsometric tint, though that takes a lot longer to build up: https://somethingaboutmaps.wordpress.com/2016/10/03/terrain-in-photoshop/
Ah that’s too bad. I’ve been looking around at other maps trying to sample them. Harder than I thought.
I’ll have to look into land cover and learn a bit more about that. Would make for a much more realistic map if I can make lots of masks for a desert or forest etc
Thanks
Your tutorials are the best. It’s so hard to find good Adobe/Cartographic/GIS resources on the interwebs. Cheers!