Howdy all. Total noob here: to digital mapping, to gimp, and first post. I want to join the praise-a-thon and thank Rob for his wonderful tutorials. Like a number of others, I got hung up on the mountain stages in both the Artistic Regional Map and the Simple Mt. tutorials. I liked the look of the latter best so I stuck with it. The "Aha" moment came when I realized that one tiny step--intuitive to those with more experience--had been assumed but not written. Starting in Step 7, I realized that I had to "select>>none" in order to make the rest of the steps work. I didn't see that written down but the screen grabs used clearly show no selection. This may very well be a no-brainer to the more experienced here but it hung me up for hours! Thanks again to Rob and to the group. There's a great deal of inspiration here and once I got mine to work I was kicking my heels.

I've attached my first map Geardagas. My Mts look a little "young" because I added a little gaussian noise at the "blur" level thinking it would help feather into the rest of the map better. I'm happy with them just because I made it through to the end and didn't get hung up. I believe I'll do better next time. On to rivers, forests, and towns!