Help with creating a flight map

[Lady_Winter]

Hello everybody,

I am in the midst of designing my wedding invitations and have arrived at a few roadblocks.

We have friends and family all over the world and I'd like to incorporate that into the design. My plan is to have a world map with a heart on our town and (fictional) flight routes from all their homes to us. Think this but with a dotted line. Now I know how to make a dotted line (small brush, increase spacing) and I know how to puppet warp a straight line into a curve, but when I try to puppet warp a dotted line it just moves the separate dots instead of warping the line. Or is there a better way of doing this? Most of all, is there a way in which I can post-hoc change the style of the flight path? I.e. thicker, thinner, harder, softer.

I'd be very grateful for any pointers you could give me! Thank you all in advance!

 

[Carson]

I would try messing with the perspective a little bit. Edit < Transform < Perspective, If this doesn't work PM me and I'll personally take a look at it if you wish.

 

[hawkeye]

Use the pen tool for the curved lines and stroke it with your brush. If you're using CS6 or CC use the pen tool as a shape and set the stroke to dashed lines.

 

[IamSam]

This is very simple. And you don't have to PM me!!

I suggest using the Pen Tool to create a path that you can stroke with the Brush Tool.

First you set up your Brush Tool, apply a path with the Pen Tool set to path, then right click and select stroke path.

Here is a tutorial for this technique:

http://www.markinns.com/articles/full/make_a_dotted_or_dashed_line_in_photoshop_follow_a_path

Sorry Hawk, I was typing at the time you posted.

Here is what Hawkeye is referring to:

http://elaineandpeter.com/adding-a-dashed-or-dotted-stroke-to-a-vector-path-in-photoshop/

 

[Lady_Winter]

Sorry for replying so late, there was a New Year's Eve Party and some subsequent lack of sleep...

Thank you for the path tutorials! I have actually not worked with paths before, so I didn't think of that. I'll try it out right away and see if it works for me. I'm quite excited to learn a new tool.

 

[Lady_Winter]

I think I'm missing one crucial step.

When I follow the elaineandpeter tutorial everything works out great. But I want to trace a path, not a form. So I've created a path, then select the Path Selection Tool and have my path layer selected. But I can't get the flyout menus to come up. The same happens when instead of the layer I have the path selected in the path tab.
I have no problem filling the path with a brush stroke, so dotted lines work now, but can someone tell me what I'm missing? Thank you!

 

[IamSam]

Open the map image in Ps and duplicate. Turn the original layer off.

Select your Brush Tool.
Open your Brushes Panel.
Choose the size of the dot you wish, I used a 5px dot here, larger for demonstration.
Set your spacing for the dots. I used 175%.



Create a new layer above the duplicated map layer.
Select your Pen Tool.
Click on the starting point of your dotted line. (Florida)
Click on the ending point of your dotted line, (England) hold the click and drag the handle to create a suitable curve to your liking.



Right click and select "Stroke Path".



Then choose Brush and check off "simulate pressure".



Hit enter to make the Path invisible. You should be done with this "flight path"!



Add more Flight paths on separate layers.

Here's a SS of my layers panel. Be sure to name the flight path layers.



edit:
Here's the way I would do this.....
When you set up your brush, also check "Shape Dynamics", then when you stroke your path, check the "simulate pressure" on.........and you get a nice tapered dotted path.

 

[Lady_Winter]

Hey Sam, thanks for your detailed tutorial! That was very nice! It actually didn't hit exactly what I needed, as I was already able to create a dotted line, just dashed ones were an issue. I was just writing a long post explaining my problem when I found the answer!

My way of doing it (maybe too complicated) is to create a path and save it as a shape. I had always avoided that because it automatically gets filled and looks like something cut off a circle. But now I just load my custom shape, delete the fill color and set the desired stroke. Looks dandy! When I'm done I'll show you some results.

I just wanted to say that you guys are awesome! Thanks to everybody who helped!

 

[Lady_Winter]

Hello everybody,

it's a little late but I promised to show you results. We're really proud of our invitations and got many compliments for them so I want to thank you all again, too.

Here is an example of what the front looks like. As I mentioned above, it's different for everybody, depending on where they're from, what language they speak and a few other things (yes, that's 24 different invitations, lots of fun to manage).



I hope you like it, too, couldn't have done it without you.