Different techniques exist for producing a shaded relief. The development of some techniques occurred recently, while others are only of historical interest.
Today’s fastest technique combines analytical shading with refinements in Photoshop.
If a digital elevation model is not available for your area, just working in Photoshop is the best technique.
A digital airbrush used by an experienced expert is a good solution for producing high quality relief.
Manual drawing is rare today, but might be the only solution if a computer is not available.
Although the Wenschow technique is no longer applicable, legacy Wenschow relief art is still in use today.Analytical shaded relief is the name given to relief created from digital elevation models. It is important to note that the quality of unaltered analytical shaded relief can be lacking for the production of appealing and descriptive maps. Nevertheless, graphical improvements to analytical relief are possible in Photoshop.