My first map.

[RobA]

One word of caution, beware repeating textures for organic fills because if one can see the tiling of the texture it really takes away from the effect. The grass fill on your map has this problem a little bit, but it's easily fixed. Just use a clone brush (not sure if Gimp has one) to mix up the texture a little bit and break up the repetitive edges.

I agree - a nice start!

One way to get rid of the pattern artifacts (in the grass layer) is to apply a high pass filter effect (using the following steps)

1. duplicate the grass layer
2. gaussian blur the new layer
3. invert the blurred layer
4. desaturate the now inverted, blurred layer
4. switch layer mode to overlay
5. play with the opacity if required
6. merge down
7. adjust levels (if desired)

Try it to see how it works. Depending on the blur radius, the effect will vary.

-Rob A>