New Mapper - What's the first step?

[Locution]

Well I am by no means an expert and my talents pale in comparison to many others here but I have been drawing maps for many years and before I started using Photoshop I began by grabbing a pencil and scribbling an interesting shape onto a piece of paper. Nowadays I do almost the same thing but utilize different techniques with Photoshop. It all starts with a cool looking land desigh. Once I have that the shape usually inspires me to add landforms (mountains, forests, deserts, etc). I honestly don't put much thought into whether the location of these landforms are "realistic" beyond having deserts in temperate zones and forests near water. Once I am happy with my placement of these features I work on rivers and lakes, then cities and towns and finally labels.

Like I said, however, I am by no means an expert and there are a very many talented artists on this site that can give you better guidance.

[Ascension]

The first step in most of my maps is Filter - Render - Clouds Once I have that hard work done I take a break and chill out for a while then the rest sort of falls into place Pretty much as Loco said, though: landmasses, mountains, rivers, forests, deserts, plains, swamps, miscellaneous geology like volcanoes and canyons, place borders, place towns, place roads, name everything, then finish graphics like compass, title, scale, etc, and wrap it all up with any artistic treatments like grunge, folds, burns, or artistic style...like making it look painted or inked or whatnot.

[Midgardsormr]

I usually start with what I need the map to do. That is, I have some idea of what story I want to tell, how many nations and what size of landmass I need to tell it. Then I sketch out a rough relationship map of all the geopolitical factions and their issues.

Then I sketch the coastal outline, draw rough political borders, and drop in topographic elements where they make sense for my story. I then look at it from a geologic perspective to make sure it doesn't violate any major rules and revise based on that assessment.

Then I scan the rough map and bring it into Photoshop to start on prettifying it.

That's my current process. It's been different in the past, and I'm sure it will be different again in the future.