Incredible! I have had a homebrew world that has spent years in pitiful penciled mediocrity as I've dreamed of coming across someone who could turn it into something respectable. In the meantime I've gained PS experience, but never had to use it creatively like this, so couldn't put the pieces together to do so. Now I find this, read it, and realize I can do it! I've begun already, and will be putting up a WIP....wherever they go. I hope the idea of using a hand-drawn, scanned map as a land mass basis will be helpful.

All I did was scan the fore-mentioned map, trace the coastlines and fill in the inland bodies of water with a small black brush (on another layer, of course), then fill the oceans black with the paint bucket. Make that the background layer for the "Clouds/Threshold" set, and tweak the clouds layer opacity to taste. I went with 60-ish%. After some cleaning up, it broke up the coast nicely, filled the oceans with various, surprisingly geologically sound archipelligos, and added a few inland lakes for my consideration. That's as far as I've got so far, having to restart the process twice for various failures on my part to pay attention to some important details that really messed things up later that I couldn't figure out how to fix.

I'm gratly encouraged by seeing other's work here. Razcor...a-ma-zing! I absolutely love your ocean floor and river deltas. And kat, your ocean does indeed look impressive. I love the paw!

Does anyone have an idea for making large plateaus, like mongolia-style? I could also use help making a few smaller, yet still very large ridges, and several small but very tall rock spires.

Thanks! I'm sure my stay will be short-lived, but I'd appreciate any help you guys can give me, and I'll try to contribute things I figure out along the way.