@Juggernaut: thanks for the advice. Unfortunately, I didn't see your post until now, and I've already redone it!

I tried another pass, I think what I did wrong before had to do with the selection part of the steps...I didn't feather the selection when I should have, maybe, or I didn't turn the selection off when I should have. At any rate, when I re-did it this time, I didn't get that ridged effect. I also triple-layered the colors on the forest, and added both a texture bumpmap and a bevelling bumpmap, to make the forest pop out a bit more.

Here is my final effort as far as mountains and forest go:
Click image for larger version. 

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