Map of New York City

My fault map is smaller, wasn't paying too much attention concerning size... keep an eye on it next time.

Trying to figure out if I should have colors darker, brighter or a combination of both?

Also blue or paper ocean?

I like the blue sea. I agree that the colours may be a bit too bright, but as Pnt says, play around with it a little and I think it should work. The paper background... it doesn't look very good to me. It makes me think of... nah, I won't include an image for this

Well, i would like you to try playing around with a blue sea first.
I guess make the territories darker, and keep the sea fot what it is. Maybe some less saturation, dont know. Just play

Thank you for saving us that image ..but I have one in my mind!!!

I like the background...of coarse ...I made it!  hehehe
colors need work ...then we go from there.

Sorry,Internet down for a few days... sounds like the recent replies like to have the ocean blue but Thorpe, you prefer paper ocean?

Like vexer said, once ocean color is decided, then I can do colors based off that.

I really think the ocean would look best if it was the exact color in the map i previously posted a link to. The colors would be a lot easier to match if the ocean was that color.

New color and ocean update:

Vexer tried to match that color in your link and added a little water texture in white.

Since the ocean in very light in color, tried to add a mixture of lighter and darker colors and then spread them out across map so no one side was too bright or too dark.

Then added some texture and keep road opacity high to see all the roads.

Looking for input in this order:

1. Ocean
2. Colors
3. Texture
4. Roads

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/37/newyorkj.jpg/

The white on the water makes it too bright. I think it would look better with little to no texture, just a gradient like the other map i posted. But if you decide to keep the white texture then darken the blue a bit.

The colors you chose are kind of pukey. I would think that pretty colors would go better with that ocean color. You could try stealing the color scheme from pntbttr's europe map. I think it would look great with that color of ocean.

The land texture is very rough. Probably too much.

The connection lines are better but hard to notice in some areas.

The title is very blurry.

I'm not sure about the roads. It will be easier to make up my mind after the colors and texture are right.

Leedog, do you feel like you have made 8 maps yet? Trust me it gets easier with subsequent maps.

I agree with Vexer, the ocean looks too bright, but i like the texture

The colour white on the center island wasnt very smart - it has low contrast with both the ocean and the grey region on its left (take a look at the bottom-most territory of the white region, it almost looks grey...)
The land texture and the colours arent very good, dont know if its the problem of the texture or the colours (or both)

And I still think its weird there are very much roads in the blue region on the right, and only so few in the blue region on the left.

problem with outline at the top of the white region

I like the roads and connections much better...
I'd say lower the texture on the land like 50...and maybe add another texture over top of it
darken the blue on the ocean and I think it would be great...
for the colors I would just say lower the saturation a little bit and it would be great...

I love it...looks much better...

Waiting for the new update...then will comment.

New update:

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/818/newyorkb.jpg/

Trying new approach on colors and texture... if people prefer darker ocean, that can be changed.

...WOW! OK...um...I've been looking at it for a while and I think the colors are good but I think they need to be slightly darker, maybe even a lot darker...mini map is a mess...

They can go darker but just trying to get a feel... waiting to also see what Thorpe, Zap of Vexer might add to conversation... left mini map out until colors determined.

some of the colors are good and some of them are ugly but i think you are heading in the right direction. I am not sure about the texture and the ocean needs to be darkened. And would look better with more gradient shading using an overlay of large blurry low contrast generated clouds. Before generating the clouds layer choose the dark grey and then flip the foreground and background color and choose the medium grey. This will make your cloud layer lower contrast.