This is my first ever attempt at cartography. I'm creating a world in a very similar way to HandsomeRob's beautiful Sorol. I'm sure other people have done similar projects but this was the only one I've come across so far.

I want to expand on all the facets of this world, exploring its nations, races, politics, history, culture, geology etc. I love what Rob has done using Google Earth and the Wiki and I want to pursue a very similar style to this, but a very different kind of world.

Moxaia is very technologically-advanced. Not a fantasy world as much as a sci-fi world. It will have huge megacities covering its landmasses and its warring nations go to battle in giant mecha (I also model mecha - this is a massive back-story for them).

I have drawn up this map using Fractal Mapper and Photoshop (my first ever map):
Click image for larger version. 

Name:	Moxaia World Map - Satellite.jpg 
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I'm relatively happy with it. I think the continental layout is a good one generally, although the mountainous regions aren't convincing enough for my liking. I have a layer in Photoshop of the tectonic plates and the directions they move in, but the mountains haven't turned out to reflect these very well.

I have a few issues:
1. Seeing as I want to put a Google Earth together, I need to wrap this rectangular image around a sphere. I hadn't taken that into account when I started this, so the continents aren't streched out in the right way for this to look good. Is there a way I can remedy this?

2. I want to end up dividing the planet up into smaller sections and doing detailed atlas-style maps for each area, exactly how Sorol was treated, but the base world for Sorol was done in Fractal Terrain, whereas Moxaia is just an image file. Is there any way I can follow HandsomeRob's atlas-style tutorial beginning with such a file?

So I have the option of aborting, starting over again using FT and wasting what I've already put together; or botching some fixes to these problems. I just want to know if these problems have decent solutions. If they don't then I want to cut my losses as soon as possible and start on the FT map. Any thoughts AT ALL are welcome.