International borders

[Midgardsormr]

At this point, it's probably a good idea to set a border stroke. Click the layer styles button and choose "Stroke..." I'm using a 1pt black stroke on each country.

Continue that process for all of the countries you want to appear on your map, making sure that no two adjacent countries have the same border color.

The easiest way to do this fast is to make all your layers, right-click on England, and choose "Copy Layer Style." Then select all your other layers (click on the top one and then shift-click on the bottom to select all of them), right-click on the selected layers, and choose "Paste Layer Style." All of the countries will receive the same inner glow and black stroke.

Now you simply need to go in and adjust the effect for each layer individually by double-clicking on the "Inner Glow" effect.

About 30 minutes later, I have this:


I've obviously been a bit sloppy. A bit more time spent in selections, and a better source image, would make this look a lot nicer. Now, I want to put this onto a nice parchment, so I go looking for a texture:


I place the texture behind all my country layers, and change the blending mode of each one to darken, so the white vanishes, leaving only the stroke and colored border behind.