I have much to learn

[jfrazierjr]

I was careful when building the map to preserve as many useful layers as possible so yes I have the colour blocks as separate layers. I'll have a play with masks, glows and blurs and tomorrow if I get a chance and see what I can come up with.

Thanks.

While I suggest using layer masks for most things, here is an el-cheapo way that takes less time than with masks (I am sure there are other ways)

• select a region with the magic wand tool
• New layer
• Stroke selection (Edit->Stroke Selection) set to perhaps 5px (play with this a few times until you get what you want at the end with whatever color you want the border to be(a variation of the colored part for that region)
• Now you have a line around your selection on both sides, so CTRL-I to invert, which selects OUTSIDE your selection.
• Hit delete
• CTRL-I again
• Gaussian Blur to taste. Since you have a selection, the blur will only go in the direction away from the selection and won't "bleed".
• You could also lower the opacity of this layer some
• Repeat for each region

There are also some plugins that will do this faster.

Now, with that said, the reason to use layer masks is that once you have your layer set up with the mask, you can swap colors out instantly and maintain the exact same effect instead of having to go back and redo the blur part(which you might get the wrong size and have to tweak over and over).