That's rather like asking "What's the best vehicle?". There are different tools for doing different things, and you may need more than one.Originally Posted by theconlanger
That's rather like asking "What's the best vehicle?". There are different tools for doing different things, and you may need more than one.
For now I just need something not overly complicated to make a continent for the purposes of taking a continent and adding in more detailed topography and cites and so on, and also as a way to show how topographical naming and city naming works.
Really it depends. Maybe raster graphics would work better for you, maybe vector graphics, maybe both. For labelling in particular, a vector graphics editor is a good idea. But there is a lot to maps beyond graphics. A map is not just a pretty picture. It's really more of a matter of understanding what a map is, and what it's for than a matter of software. Once you understand maps, software is still quite important, particularly with real life geography. (To be fair, I make a living by writing geography software so I'd have to take that position). GISes, or simpler tools like G.Projector are useless without that understanding though.
I'd recommend at a minimum, you try both GIMP (Raster) and Inkscape (Vector). Maybe you'll like one way of doing things, maybe the other, and maybe you'll find both together the right way to go. Maybe you'll prefer other particular software, but those two should give you an idea of what to look for. G.Projector is also worth a look; even if you don't understand it, it should give you an idea what kind of a mess you can get into if you draw a map as being "flat" without any concern for the curvature of the globe.
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