The Dark Empire

[Diamond]

Trees: simple but time-consuming. I just drew a tree, scanned it, and made a brush out of it. Then I placed every one individually (the time-consuming part ). The layer's set at 50% opacity (trees are black 000000) so they look like they blur out a bit and take on some of the background color.

[CC_JAR]

Trees: simple but time-consuming. I just drew a tree, scanned it, and made a brush out of it. Then I placed every one individually (the time-consuming part ). The layer's set at 50% opacity (trees are black 000000) so they look like they blur out a bit and take on some of the background color.

It wouldn't be as time consuming if you set the brush options to scatter trees, I'm not really sure how to explain it, but in PS CS3 there's a row of buttons vertically beside the mini-pic and layers bar, click the one that looks like brushes in a cup, and click scatter, adjust the sliders to suit your needs..
You may also want to use the marquee (selection box) or better yet, the lasso tool to select your wooded areas and not have trees scattered into the river when you paint.