I'd like to give you more detailed info but my monitor died and I'm typing on a tiny laptop with no graphics to speak of.
Detail - hold off on the detail until you have considered your immediate needs from the map. If there has to be a forest or lake in a place do that first. Leaving areas you aren't concerned with vague is not a bad thing - it extends the lifespan of the map. You can add detail there later.
Rivers - good tutorials on rivers here. Consider designing them roughly in photoshop then exporting that layer to a vector program. I find it useful to work backwards with rivers. If you return to the coast (where the river is widest) and then draw your rivers into where they are smallest your lines will overlap in the right areas.
Rivers have two regions on a map. A flood plain where they have eroded the severe slopes and a river bed. Plan the river bed and then stroke out the flood plain.
Vegetation - This is affected by height, wind and rain. Only height is obvious in a map so you have pretty free reign. Cloud patterns that 'look good' are better for me than planning every detail. In photshop pattern overlay is your friend. Consider lighter base layer (probably a cloud pattern) with a darker overlay. Get your colour from the cloud pattern and your detail from the overlay. You can also emboss a layer on top of the colour. Experiment with competing layers. Plants are competing for space - variation feels more natural.
Be content to throw layers on top of your land mass and remove where you dont want them. Use your river layer to carve out sections of forest unless you think the trees would have grown over the river.
I think its a very successful strategy with maps to mediate between methods to keep a compromise of layers. Flood plains should not be uniformly wide or deep. Trees should not be one colour. Not all vegetation should be trees. Gravity always wins but not uniformly - some rock resists erosion.
Whatever software you use commit to layers and work out a pattern that works for you. It will take a while for you to find out what you like and how you like to do things. Once that happens things will go much faster and more consistently.
On the topic of layers - one trick I use a lot now I borrowed from Torstan. (wont find better maps than his IMHO) Make a gray layer set to overlay. The gray should be 127,127,127. This gray is invisible when you set the layer property right. Now you can darken or lighten your image quite a bit without touching the lower layer. Simply Burn or Dodge the gray layer. This is great for shadows and highlights. Most important its non destructive to your original layer.
Detail - yes again after much of your work is done. I don't have to tell you that you may plan what you want but sometimes the best details spring as inspiration from the map. When you've got the thing as you like it, take a moment to look for anything it might be telling you. If you're gaming its a pain to share a work only to find that there's this tweak that changes too much, but its such a great idea!
Prepare your players with the idea that maps might develop as the story develops and don't get too attached to any one view. Your game world will develop faster and more completely. My players need a new adventure and my world just might sprout another ruin, mountain, town or trade route. This is when I really appreciate a map built with layers and a little elbow room to 'get it right'.
Anyway, Thats it off the top of my head. There are many more adept map makers on this board and you're off to a great start.
Sigurd
There are some fantastic textures and elements in the 'Mapping Resources' > "Mapping Elements" Section of the website. Don't miss these.
Ascension has some great photoshop tutorials.
RobA is on track for becoming our Uber Gimp
Torstan will show you how powerful the brush and decent drawing skills can be.
I've read many, if not most, of the tutorials here and they all have something to offer. Its much faster to read tutorials targeted at mapping but there are many more for whatever software you use.
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