I have a problem (more than one if truth be told)

I am creating a grey scale image to use in Bryce as a terrain.

The image I amusing as a basis is an map with roads, contour lines, rivers etc.

I have drawn in the major coutour lines with varying levels of grey but have to fill in the areas in between to make an image suitable for bryce. And here is the question...

I can select the area between the countours and fill them with a gradient. How do I get the gradient to work on complex shapes which bend back and forth, with different distances in between?

I have a sneeking suspicion this cannot be done.

Cheers

im prettt sure it can be done, however Im unsure how to do it. if you were to use Adobe Illustrator, you can use gradient meshes to bend gradient any any amount of varying directions. You can then export as a tif file for bryce or some final tweaking in photoshop. photoshop doesnt, however, have gradient meshes, that i know.

I would think that this is too complex to achieve with PS gradients. They're so limited in direction. Do you need the terrain to match your map exactly? If not, you could try selecting the 'gaps', choosing two greys that are very close, then using the 'Clouds' filter (under 'Render') to fill the spaces where you wanted gradients. It's not predictible, but it can give you convincing landscape.

Thanks for the suggestions. I do not have illustrator. So that puts the tin lid on that one though. I know a guy at work who has it so maybe I can persuade him to go for an extended lunch while I try out your suggestion. I had thought of cluds in passing but not in ny detail. Sounds like it might be the way to go tonight. I will give it a try and see what happens. The problem is I am looking for it to be as close to real as possible. Its a place where my mum grew up and I spent a LOT of happy summers as a kid. Thanks again.

Yep - PS gradients are limited in direction and can not be "bent" as far as I am aware.

if the bent area is circualar, then u can just do a circular gradient then mask it, but i suspect that isnt it. maybe u can use "free transform" on the mask? if u want to do a curving one, then just select it small amounts at a time, becuz i kno that bryce's terrain map isnt very big. u should post the img here so that we can c in more detail wut u want.

Wow...thought I would take a breather from the Bryce forum and come in here to catch up on some Photoshop... Bending Photoshop gradients. Impossible, I've tried many things myself. Of course I'm not exactly/specifically sure what you need without seeing it. But, the only thing I have found that is close to what I needed at the time was the "Cutout" filter in Eyecandy 4000, with the setting of "Blurred With No offset". Perhaps a demo of that, or a tutorial on doing cutouts with just Photoshop would help with what you need. AgentSmith

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Perhaps you could make your selection, create a new layer, fill the selection with black, set the blending mode to screen, then use a layer style to apply a very large white inner-glow?

Thanks for all the info. The approach I will probably use is a combination of a number of the above. Paint the indiviual contours ar the major intervals (every 50 feet) at increasing level of grey. Fill the areas between with a mid tone between the contours. Blend the resultant fill. Use lighten/darken on areas which need special attention e.g. mounds/islands etc. On a separate layer paint the water features in black and blend this with the land to get the final version. Matching in the water features would be a inversion of the terrain map and lightening of the water fature areas. Will try and post a wip later. Will probably use a cloud effect to 'roughen up' the overall landscape. Nothing says 3-d like smooth cliffs! Thanks again