Hello there! I stumbled on this forum a few months ago when snooping around for techniques to update a map for a text-based RPG game I write in, but I was a little too intimidated to introduce myself right after joining. I'm a complete graphics-editing newbie and have only been successful fiddling with a few things in the GIMP thus far. I'd like to improve, especially after seeing the beautiful work that members here can produce, so I've been lurking around these last few weeks looking at tutorials and WIP maps to get a better sense of what the heck I'm doing. I still don't know for sure, so I'll probably have a ton of questions as I experiment.

My ultimate goal is to be able to make a nice map for a new game my friends and I will start sometime next year. We're finishing up the storyline of the current one now, but I figure it will probably take me at least that long to be able to learn all I need to make the new map. In the meantime I'm playing with random other maps that may or may not get used in the future, depending on how well they turn out. I've been following a really wonderful series of tutorials for map-making in Photoshop, but since I use GIMP instead I'm having a little trouble translating all of the instructions. If anyone has a had a similar experience or can point me to a thread about this particular issue that I may have missed, I'd be very grateful.

Anyway, I hope to see you all around! I look forward to improving and seeing all the great work produced here.