Hi there and thanks for your reply

Well, in a perfect world, I would love to open the PSD in GIMP and have it look just like it does in PS. Obviously, we don't live in a perfect world :p.

So, at the very least, I'm trying to figure out how to get the main continent outline (stored in an alpha channel) to "behave". I'm creating a selection from the alpha channel, creating a new layer and then filling it in white.... but for some reason, GIMP seems to want to maintain its transparency, even though I don't have any of the "lock" boxes checked for its layer.

So it's a really weird situation. That I'm a GIMP newbie whose fingers are programmed to want to do PS shortcuts probably isn't helping either heheh.