Salve, Cartographers!

[Coriolis]

Hello, everyone. arsheesh was kind enough to point me this way.

I'm an aspiring science fiction novelist. My first manuscript is a five-part romp through a post-apocalyptic Middle East. It weighs in at about 92,000 words. I took up cartography because:

a. Maps are cool.
b. I wanted a lot of them in my book.
c. Commissioning five maps for the book is an expensive proposition.
d. I'm cheap.

I started trying to make maps a few months ago. My first efforts were about a notch and a half above finger-painting, but I keep trying things here and there. Up until today, I was working with Photoshop Elements. It's a good program, and I made a few decent, if somewhat simple-looking (arsheesh was kind enough to call them "clean") maps.

Today, I discovered GIMP.

Basically, I spent the day playing with filters in both GIMP and Photoshop. Solid Noise, emboss, and Gaussian Blur worked wonders on the GIMP side, while Photoshop's Neon Glow filter allowed me to prepare the images and give them a contoured look. It's not quite a natural look, but it's far better than what I had before.

These were the result: a cover and a city map. Both were continuations of maps that I made in Photoshop.

So anyway, that's my story, this is the stuff I'm making, and I welcome any suggestions as to how to make them look better (especially the cover).