Ha - don't be embarrassed about time spent. I look at these maps the carto-ninjas put up with "I spent an hour on this" and I think "this I could also do ... in 65 hours, maybe." At least, don't bemoan so long as you had fun doing it. If it is ever umpteen hours of agony, to get a certain effect, THEN you have sufficient motivation to get your head around some of the better tools.
Really, if a computer will run WinXP without being too laggy, it'll probably run the Gimp or Inkscape (or numerous other reasonably priced tools - those are just leaders in capability) -- the issue is usually how big your map file is. If you start to balk at 1000x1000 pixels, back off to 700x700 or something. There's other tricks to let one work on large-ish files without encountering the blue screen of death - things like working on X number of layers over in a separate file - say while working out your labels - then flatten that to one layer and reimport to your main file. Too, beefing a computer up to run the Gimp adequately might mean no more than getting another stick of memory - a slow CPU speed will be a fixed limit, but memory is usually a do-able upgrade, without breaking the bank.
If you have been cleaning maps up in Paint, you are going to LOVE the Gimp. Working with layers will be the single most revolutionary leap in your abilities. Take the second map above - one of the main things that would improve its legibility would be just to blank out the symbols under your labels. Say, even leaving the color, but masking the hills, trees, etc. Doing that would be a royal pain on a one-layer Paint image, but if you have labels on one layer, and background on another, it gets easier.
You drew that forest by hand on paper? You are a more patient man than I. In your lurking here have you run across reference to The Tree Thing? That would be a grand timesaver.
Re: your intro - -yeah, I'm old too. The whippersnappers on here (which would be generalizing too much - there are a few others working on their second half-century, and plenty of 30- and 40-somethings) sometimes don' know how good they got it. <assumes exaggerated crotchety voice> Computers? Wha ah rem'ber when they only gave us ones, and we had t' bend them inta zeros by oursel's. By hand. Lemmie show you the Middle Earth map I built out of ascii art on a dot matrix printer in '84.... got it around here somewheres... <pulls out crumbling greenbar printout> See? Now thet's usin' primitive tools. An' color monitors? Had them from the beginning - I think green and black are both colors, right?
<snaps back to present reality> Anyway - welcome, and well met. If you're picking up the Gimp as your next tool, try a few of the tutorials herein, and you'll be amazed what kind of mappishly wonderful stuff you can produce.
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Originally Posted by jbgibson
