Well, something still isn't working right for me and I can't quite place it. The old map (my introduction) was too bright and cartoony; I also went way overboard on brushing cottonballs into the nebula. This one is nearly the same image reconstructed from scratch, but much subdued. Though stars have glow, they no longer have twinkle trails like from a bad soft focus photo of a christmas tree. Heh, so it's more like what a guy with bad LASIK would see.

If I were to start over, what do you think thematically would work? We've got

1) a pseudo blue-marble style I'm more than satisfied with. Not completely realistic, but not cartoony either.
2) The fictional Inner Sphere forms a 2-d blob of space on our arm of the Milky Way (a fraction of the Star Trek alpha quadrant if you will).
3) This map is of the Draconis Combine capital; a neo-feudal society with heavy Japanese influences (they're big on Bushido... cheesy but, hey, that's the world MechWarrior occupies).

I'm looking for something 60-80% realistic. Fantastic and striking, yet subdued enough to stay in the background behind the map hexes. Very high quality "artist's interpretation" is what I'm shooting for.

Also it should suffice for any future maps I do. Ideally, I'd just be switching out continents, planets, and jump point locations.


edit: This looks intriguing but may be too much for a background... dunno I like the idea: http://blog.hexagonstar.com/galaxy-tutorial/#