So I've seen some very nice maps on here that were done using GeoControl -- notably Pasis' work, such as the Roadside Ambush set. So I bought myself a copy of WorldCreator (it just came out on steam, and is 20% off through the 27th!).

I've been playing around with it, and the basics seem fairly straightforward. There's tons more to learn about it, I'm sure, but it lets you make good-looking terrain fast.

But I'm having trouble with the next part: getting it into Photoshop. All I really need is some way to make Photoshop use WorldCreator's data as a height map or similar, but so far nothing has worked. I can export the data from WorldCreator as a TIF, but it invariably comes out super-blurred -- all the detail is lost. I can export as a normal map, and the detail is preserved, but I don't think CS6 supports normal maps for 2D objects (and I haven't got the Extended version with 3D capabilities). I tried exporting as a .raw image, and Photoshop was able to open it, but it didn't look anything like the terrain from WorldCreator.

I'm flailing, here. It feels like there's some kind of step I'm missing. Do I need to import the WorldCreator data into some kind of 3D program in order to generate something that Photoshop can use? Or am I just doing it wrong?

Totally confuzzled.