So I've been working on a world map for my fantasy novel, set in the world of Astalon, on and off for quite a while now. Basically, this is a late middle ages (think late 1400s/early 1500s) setting inhabited by 4 elemental/faery races and humans.

As for the map itself, I have some slight experience with Photoshop but no experience in cartography so I decided to use some of the tutorials posted here. I've gone through 2 changes of style before finally settling on something that felt right, looked good, and was easy to follow step by step: Ascensions Antique-style maps tutorial. In the process of making my own map, obviously I deviated from the tutorial slightly to get something that felt right for my own map. I've changed mountain brushes around 3 times and am currently using some brushes posted here by Quabbe. I've also changed font mid-way. You can see all of that in this album which depicts the progress of my map until now:

Astalon Map Progress - Imgur

I've still got loads to do and my brain is melting a little bit from trying to come up with names for everything but I've attached the current version of my map and will keep you guys updated as things progress.

Regarding the symbols, the star within a circle depicts capital cities, the circle within a circle depicts cities, the small white circles depict towns, and the three small black dots represent major ruins (I still have to add/think of more of those, I've only included the one that features in my book so far). Other things to mention are that there is no major pattern in terms of the colours assigned to the different countries with some exceptions: I used green for Elven territory, grey for uninhabited, and light blue for Undine/water elemental territory. I plan to use a different colour for an inset map I'm going to add later of a floating island (it was there in the corner of some of my previous iterations of this map, shown in imgur)

I might be giving my brain a rest for a few days. In the mean time, I would love to get your opinions and advice! Also, the tutorials posted here are really helpful and great

Click image for larger version. 

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