Making a decently attractive map from a DEM

[AureliusDokeianos]

ESRI's basemaps continually cause me issues because they include a lot of human geography that I do not want on my maps: oceans, for instance, includes major highways. So I need to make my own, but I'm not having much luck. I would be perfectly happy to create something like what these guys did for Mallorca. I have a DEM, and I spent a couple hours playing around with it and a slope map that I created from it, but nothing looks even remotely presentable. I've not been able to find much in the way of basic tutorials, either. In short, if I want to make something like that out of a DEM, what should I be doing? Is it just the colour scheme/distribution that is the problem here?

[MarkBockenhauer · Accepted solution]

Using Spatial Analyst extension Hillshade geoprocessing tool, might be what you are looking for.

This is a picture of source 'raw' dem.

This is  the result from Hillshade.

 then apply a transparency to the hillshade layer and set a color ramp for your source DEM.

[AureliusDokeianos]

Thank you, this is exactly what I was hoping for! I had run the hillshade but then failed to set a transparency...