[Quelty]

we are trying to make our reefs and coral to look like that pic, notice the dark spots. the down side is that when we add the darker colors and spots, repeating patterns may start to show up.

i'll post some screenies as i go. right now i'm doing the teadous part of adding a hi-rez satellite layer to the map_C so i can get the reefs in the right spot and depth. that's what takes so long. once i know what and where to trace, it won't take long to make the reefs.

Hi Thrud,
I dunno if this would work, just a thought I had. What if you have 2 layers in Photoshop, the satellite layer at the bottom and reduce the opacity of the map_C layer so that you can clearly see the layer underneath and once positioned it's just a matter of tracing over the top. When finished you'd take out the satellite layer. As I said dunno whether this would work or maybe you are doing that anyways.

Cheers

Quelty