Thanks, guys. I'm totally with ya Daelin. I've been searching for a faux painted look (a la Picasso) since before I ever bought Photoshop and I'm finally close. I think I'll try the new techniques on the non-filtered version and see how that comes out because I've totally lost my rivers now. The sketchy continents will stay as is since those places do not need detail for the challenge. The main gist of the new technique is 16 layers of motion-blurred noise-over-clouds (white clouds deleted on half, black deleted on the other half), then hit each layer with the Swirl filter from Eye Candy on very low settings to give a lil twist. For those without Eye Candy you can use the distort-twirl filter at 1 or 2...I think it's twirl, will check later. Then bevel two layers and add drop shadow to simulate texture. I'll do up a mini-tut when done and others can perfect my experiment.