This may be a length guide or seem challenging, but it took me a lot of time and I hope some appreciate it, and if you ever need help I'm always available on skype. I've been asked quite a few times and seen quite a few forum threads about how to make custom maps for areas that are outdated on the runescape_surface map so I decided to make my first tutorial. And others to come if my method of teaching is good.
Making The MinimapMap
For now I will start with something simple that I was just requested to me.
I use the Snipping Tool found in Start-up > All Programs > Accessories.
Step 1) Go to the area you wish to make a map for, I will use Falador east bank to the garden keep it small and simple for now. Right Click the map and click face north for an accurate map, Always make sure its RS absolute north.
Step 2) Open up the " Snipping Tool " and take a snapshot of just the Minmap area shown below.
And Remember once you take the Snip with the " Snipping Tool " hit control + C and paste it into paint, or else it will have a very poor image quality.
< Correct
Example of saving the picture through Snipping Tool:
< Distorted
^^ See how it distorts the image quality? You don't want that and your map will not work in the end.
Step 3) Repeat This process moving quite a few tiles until you got the whole area you are making a map for. Picture below for the example I'm doing. As I said in "Step 2" remember after taking the Snippit use Control + C then paste into paint.
Note: Always leave some white space under your Minimaps so you will have space to work with when using Photoshop.
Step 4) Now after you have all your minimap shots into paint as shown above^^ save them as a .png file to your desktop or anywhere that you like. After you have saved the file open it up with Photoshop.
Step 5) You should now have something like this, shown below. Now you must select the " Elliptical Marquee Tool " that is circled by the red box.
Step 6) Now we will use the " Elliptical Marquee Tool " to draw a circle around the Minimap image, then once done right click and create a new layer from cut. Always remember after making a cut click back on layer 0 or the " Base " layer to make your next cut.
Step 7) Repeat step 6 Until all the pictures are cut and on new layers, Then click on the "Eye Symbol" for the " Base " or Layer 0 to hide the background, circled in red in the picture below.
Now you should have something that looks like this.
Step 8) This is my personal preference but I like to flip all the layers around besides the first one(Base Layer or Layer 0), It helps with blending the maps together easier since colors change when the map gets loaded through the game client. I will show in a picture below.
^^ Notice before it was 0, 4, 3, 2, 1, now its 0, 1, 2, 3, 4.
Step 9) Now that we got all the hard parts out of the way I know it might be overwhelming but this is really the easiest part, and I've seen some people do it funky ways.
We are going to start with layer 1 > Which is now our base going to select the " Move Tool " or press " V " on the keyboard, select layer 1 and drag it to the bottom of the canvas. If you don't know what the canvas is it is the checkered box in the background. Picture below. The Move Tool + The Layer are circled by Red.