Highlighting on a map.

[mathiasschnell]

Firstly, I'm using Photoshop CS4.

I'm attempting to make a webpage where, given some information, the map will highlight specific counties on this map...



Right now I'm trying to put red-ish highlighting over each specific county, cut out the rest of the map and save it as a new picture that can be overlayed over the original using PHP. The main problem is that this just looks very sloppy and any method I've tried to make the map more smooth and uniform in color has outright failed or come with complications.

Example



So basically I need a way to either smooth out and clean up the current map to make it better for overlaying colors for highlighting, or just need a better way to highlight the counties without the sloppiness I've gotten thus far. Also, taking a brush to the original image and attempting to be precise and highlight around the borders and would just be painstaking and difficult for me (only have a mouse and almost no artistic skill).

 

[iDad]

I did a map highlighting counties..for someone .. heres an idea for you you

 

[ibclare]

This is a good opportunity for the magic wand tool. Make a new layer and set it to color. Set tolerance at around 20. Click within the county on the original layer; it should select just one. If you set tolerance much higher, it will cross counties where the outline is thin. Then fill the selection with chosen color on the color layer. If you want to fill in the o's and such, hold down shift and click the wand again. This will leave most of the county name dark blue. If you don't like this effect, click the wand inside the county, then take the lasso and shift, draw the lasso around the name. This will add color to the name, overlaying it on the blue. With my example you'll see the two results.

That's the best I can suggest at the moment.

 

[mathiasschnell]

Just an update, I managed to make a good solution to this, partly taking ibclare's advice. Using the Magic Wand tool I chose the grey area within a county and then completed the selection using lasso or rectangle tool (to get the area of the word on the map). Then I'd make a new layer, set the map layer to 'Darken' and fill in the selection with the color of my choosing (a somewhat dull, cherry red). Then I'd apply some Gaussian Blur to smooth things up a bit and done.

 

[ibclare]

Good for you! Sounds like you had fun experimenting in Photoshop. That's what is so great; there are so many things to learn and apply.

Good going. Glad I could be of a little help. :mrgreen: