Battle Map Gloomification (CC3+)

The most common complaint about my series of Barovian maps is that they are too bright, almost cheerful looking, which is really wrong for the setting.   I made the maps with the Dungeons of Schley (SS5) using the sheet effects pretty close to standard.  That makes for bright, easy-to-read maps that are, in fact, rather out of character for Barovia. 

Above: Original "Bright" Image

My first attempt at fixing this was to use Photoshop as a post-processor where I reduced saturation and darkened mid-range and dark colors to make it what I called Gloomy.  While that worked, at least after a fashion, adding a post-processing step is something to be avoided.  I just don't want to add extra steps to what is already a time-intensive task. 

My current approach is to set some global effects inside of CC3+ to achieve pretty much the same thing without the baggage of a trip through PhotoShop. 

This post shares the settings and shows the results in the two snips of the Mourning Gate area in this article. 

Above: New Gloomy Image

Sheet Effects Used

This is suprisingly easy in CC3.  Just:

1. Go to the Drawing Sheets and Effects menu,
2. Activate Sheet Effects (if not already on),
3. Click Whole Drawing for scope,
4. Add a Adjust Hue/Saturation effect,
5. Set the Hue, Saturation, Lightness as desired,
6. Ok and Ok to apply the change.

One thing to note, the saturation is (of course) implemented backwards from other graphics programs. A higher positive number results in a less saturated (more grey image).